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Tuesday, June 5,1973
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High Diddle Diddle, Here's A Cat That Asks Riddles
University Daily Kansan
By ZAHID IQBAL
Kansan Associate Editor
When, late last semester, the Kansan acquired a feline descendant of Charles A. Dana's famous office cat, (and named it, in a burst of imagination, "The Office Cat") I sighed and resigned myself to having to read the inevitable editors' it would put out. Little did I know at the time that yet another new writer would speak, and insist on being heard on matters that a cat really has no business being vocal about.
But Jerry has proved to be no ordinary cat, as I have found out in the course of several late-night discussions. He is a cat fan. When he goes to Washington, to be precise—running like greased lightning till he was halfway across the country. The reason for such a precipitate flight from the nation's capital become known as Jerry's story unfolds.
FOR THE MOMENT, he appears to be feeling quite secure, locked in a corner of the room. He doesn't want attention.
in the navel of the United States from what he expects to be a cascade of water from some mysterious gate above, "the nation tries to rid itself of the grime of recent years or of two that has taken up residence in various caskets and scams of its structure."
Until today, much of what Jerry has been saying has sounded both incoherent and incredible. But most of what I have been able to piece together from his Eastern-delivery seems to be borne out by things I read in the newspapers a day or two before I was born. (I am very smart, is either a very smart cat or, as he claims, a very unsmart one who, until recently, lived “in this great, big, white house on top of a hill.”)
WHAT JERRY PROMISES to reveal could be momentous, unlikely, or even outright fabrication. A cat that has already gone through its quota of nine lives can speak. I am preparing myself for night-long conversations with him with some trepidation.
I plan to put down here only what appears to be truthful or interesting. Otherwise, cats are best kept in their place, especially presumptuous ones. For Jerry, that means the confines of my room. To let him invade the Kanas's newsroom would be risky. For, although no two yet reacted to the news about the death of the editorials, the sight of two cats at the typewriters might evoke comment or upset the night security men.
Riddles--that's what he likes. "If you were given the choice," he says, "would you rather ride an elephant or a donkey?" Ever-conscious of my image and dignity, I assure him I would blindly, unquestioningly, choose the elephant.
And I can only guess at what Jerry would have to say in his editors. Some of his comments I can understand and agree with.
JERRY FORGETS this is the world's greatest democracy, and that Americans vote every four years to keep it so. And when I tell him so, he knows he's corned and changes the subject to something grossly trivial.
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Such as when he says that high meat prices are part of a Communist plot to deprive all good Americans protein. But when he says that Americans have been culled into a sense of passive submission to everything around them, that's when he's going too far.
"What if it was a 7-foot elephant and went charging under a bridge with an 8-foot couch?"
I assure him that I would get off faster than he could say, Jain John Cooke, and let the man go.
"WHAT IF the elephant were to start wallowing around in a muddy stream, covering itself with muck and slime?" Jerry wants to trap me into saying again that I'd jump off, but I am too smart for him.
"Hah. You won't get me that way," I tell him, "I'd stay with the elephant. I've seen elephants washing themselves in streams and you wouldn't couldn't get round to washing itself, too!"
Jerry smiles, nods several times, says "That figures," and goes on to sleep. I bet you that's the last time that that damned cat pulls any riddles on me.
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