September 30th 2009

    I understand why the Grey Cat has taken to catnip.  It provides for a rearrangement of possibilities.  Suddenly he believes he can climb like an ancestor.  A memory, written into genes, released in a moment of freedom, and what a joy it must be.

    I picture him up there sobered by the questions "What was I thinking?" and "How do I get down?".  Nor is this the first time.  So I suspect that while each rescue lacks dignity for him, there is a memory of it that perhaps sails on the breeze of interpretation rather than offers him a salutary lesson in the problem of descent.

    In his hangover chair he can then dream of the possibilities.   The well bleached world, just this side of oblivion where the mull of vision allows a mind to wander into places that at the time make perfect sense.   

    Catnip, however, also produces a phenomenon I will call "paranoia of tail".  Characterized by behaviors suggesting a deep suspicion that something with ill intent is following.  Which by the analysis of ancestral memory must reach very far into past generations to that time when cats might have had no tail. 

    "Paranoia of tail" is a cruel delirium.  And it is anthropomorphic perhaps but I have been there too.  So I can sympathize with a ravaged Catnip plant, and I can wonder whether I should move it further from temptation, incase one day the Grey Cat thinks he can fly when he is chasing Mockingbirds.     

tim candler

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