mephistopheles (1982 - 2000)
hecate
I love cats because they are never guilty. Dogs are like recent converts to Christianity,
forever cringing and publicly accusing themselves while secretly treasuring their vices.
But cats are forever pagan, chiefly interested in making themselves ever more comfortable
and beautiful, not necessarily in that order.
It is my privilege to be responsible for the worldly welfare, pleasure, safety, and vanity of two cats, Mephistopheles and Hecate.
Mephistopheles came into my life about 15 years ago. His mother was a feral New York street cat, and I helped her give birth to him. He is the genetic baseline of a cat, what all cats would look like if confined to a desert island and left alone for several generations to interbreed -- a silver tabby. He proudly wears a white ruff and has enormous white feet, having been gifted with extra toes. He is so very smart that we often refer to him as "The Purrfessor." Due to old age (ssh, don't tell HIM that), he has lost a couple of teeth, and so wears a permanent snarl, like Elvis.
Hecate adopted me about eight years ago, during a lonely year I spent in Los Angeles working far too hard at keeping The Advocate in business by editing the company's porn magazines. Meph was feeling rather hard-done-by when I kept my 9-to-5 hours, so I acquired a companion for him and something rare and lovely for me to enjoy watching. The animal rescue volunteer who had put this tortoiseshell kitten up for adoption thought that her name was Spumoni. I was immediately informed, after we had passed muster in a home visit and been left custodian of the kitten, that she was a fell and dark Goddess and should be named accordingly. Hecate has told me more than once that clothes dryers were invented to make fluffy and soothing heaps of clean laundry for her to nest upon. Her clear-eyed predatory ways are an excellent role model for me.
Below is a poem I authored several years ago about the chief virtue of cats (gluttony, of course). Perhaps it will be included in my first children's book. Heh heh.
Every cat's a carnivore.
They eat meat and nothing more.
Oh, once a day some milk or cheese
Will make a cat into a pig,
But that's because the cow's too big
To drag under the couch to eat
(All except the horns and feet).
Beef and goat and cornish hen,
Ham and pheasant, tongue of wren,
Liver and baloney too,
Steak-and-kidney pie and stew,
Nightingale's wings and rolls of sushi
(No wonder they have such big fat tushies!),
Bacon, turkey, and hamburger,
Freshly cooked or just leftover,
Trout and scallops and slippery eels,
Pork chops, mutton, thin-sliced veal -
They will eat it up so fast
They won't even know what passed
Their sharp white teeth and greedy gullets,
Snapper, bass, or broiled red mullet.
If a cat steals your sandwich,
You don't need to make another.
It will always leave you half.
You can keep the bread and butter.
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