Friday catblogging: introducing Mrs. Kennedy

I’m fascinated by this catblogging thing that all the bloggers are into, even the political bloggers and others who usually write about utterly un-cat-related and un-adorableness-related things. Carnival of the Cats, a metablog about catblogging, explains its own existence as a "non-political respite from the vehement echo chamber that the Blogopshere tends to spin itself into during the week. It also demonstrates that even the mightiest or meekest of pundits still have a love of cats in common." All of which is also a pretty damn good explanation for the phenomenon of catblogging.

But why do bloggers -- and by bloggers I mean geek bloggers, because I think it’s safe to suggest that blogging about anything is nothing if not geeky (in that good way I’m trying to promote) -- why do bloggers love cats so darn much? Of course there’s the whole tiger-on-your-couch, Wild Kingdom-in-your-kitchen thing that appeals to cat people of all ages, but I wonder if a love of science fiction and fantasy, which is a dominant meme among geeks and perhaps a defining characteristic of geekiness, is a contributing factor? (Cat ownership is rampant among serious SF/F fans.) SF/F trains you to recognize that the way things are isn’t the way things necessarily have to be, enables you to see the cultural programming we’re all subject to, helps you see the strings that pull us all in a way that not everyone does... and it does that by introducing you to alien societies -- whether they’re in the future, on another planet, or in a magical realm.

And cats are certainly alien in a way that dogs aren’t. Not to put down dogs -- some of my favorite people are dogs -- but they just aren’t as complicated or mysterious as cats. Individual cats each have their own agendas beyond all that obvious napping and eating, and the continual discovering and rediscovering of that is part of the intrigue of living with cats.

All of which is merely to justify my own indulgence in flogging kitties on the Web, metaphorically speaking, of course:

This is Mrs. Kennedy. She’s not named for Jackie O. or anything silly like that -- she’s named, because I am a geek, after a character in a movie, a series of movies, actually: Napoleonic sailor Archie Kennedy (as played by Jamie Bamber, now all over Battlestar Galactica) in the British Horatio Hornblower films. And she’s named after Archie because, like him, she was a meek little creature until she got thrown in the slammer (in her case, the carrier in which I transported her home from the shelter), at which point she turned into an escape-crazed maniac.

She’s cute, huh? And good thing, too, because it’s pretty much the only thing to recommend her. She’s the world’s dumbest cat -- I’ve witnessed her sniff at a burning candle, get her whiskers singed, and go back and do the same thing again 10 seconds later -- and she’s a mean little minx 90 percent of the time, too. Her looks are her saving grace... and the fact that the other 10 percent of the time she isn’t being a little monster, she’s bursting with the kind of personality that goes along with being rock stupid and constantly rediscovering your own tail.