I saw a newspaper headline today announcing that, for the first time in the competition’s history, a cat was going to compete in the Westminster Dog Show.
Now, I didn’t read the article because I really don’t care about the Westminster Dog Show, or any dog show, for that matter. I also don’t see the point in a cat competing in one. It’s a cat. A dog’s show’s a dog show. I don’t think I need to labour this point. The cat’s clearly going to lose. What appealed to me about the headline is that I’d finally found a good analogy for my experience of life.
I’m surrounded by dogs, jumping through hoops, in competition with each other for some prize that their owner’s going to get rather than them. Most of the dogs are going to lose, and all that the winner’s going to get is further enslavement. But at least dogs don’t have to think.
I’m not going to win the competition because I’m a cat and this is a dog show, and a cat can’t win a dog show because it’s not a dog. I’m not going to jump through the hoops because why bother? I didn’t ask to be in this fucking show anyway and I don’t like dog biscuits. My lack of cooperation is going to piss off both my deluded trainer and the idiot audience who gave up valuable time and money to watch this fiasco.
But there will be one or two people in the audience who are cat people, and for those people it really doesn’t matter what I do because I’m going to win in their eyes by virtue of being a cat, so all I have to do is be myself. Miaow.
