Love Song of Cats

I wasn't quite sure what to expect with "The Tin Drum."  My older one had recently asked about books involving World War II.  In fact she'd asked this about nine months ago.  I got her a few things and in the process started to read them myself as well.  "Slaughterhouse Five" I reread this summer.  "The Naked and the Dead" I read for the first time this fall. A friend whose opinion I always respect reminded me of "The Tin Drum."  Right. Gunther Grass was a Noble Prize winning author.  I recalled he’d had some controversy a few years back.  Confirming, it appears he was a member SS Wafen when he'd otherwise always insisted he was a mere pre-adult member of the Hitler Youth. I recall a movie that was released in the late seventies that had a wild-eyed boy, crying. 

Now I’m one hundred pages in to it.  Oskar has willfully crippled himself.  Oskar has shattered the glasses of the teacher and the classroom windows on his first day at school with his screaming voice and Oskar has managed in spite of all challenges to hold on to his drum, even when he is standing naked on the beach. What there hasn't been much of thus far is anything to do with World War II.  Rather what's interesting thus far is the protean normalcy of everything except Oskar and his condition and his instrument.  Surely though we are only in the opening fifth of the book.  The war will invariably descend soon.

We have a cat.  It is now in heat.  I had to look up to be sure that female cats can have heat.  They can.  Our cat is un-spayed.  This will change.  But till it does she has taken a commanding, heat-like fascination with my wife who is the one person who wants the least to do with her.  The cat is lying on her back rolling and making flirty noises.  My daughters didn't understand until they understood.  "You know every love song you've ever heard?  She's in the middle of that."

It must be a strange hell to be in heat without access to any of your species.  Outside there are a few strays to climb the walls and duck down on to our patio.  A few of them must know she's in here. A few times she must have heard them call and had the unique love song of cats reach her ears. A few times she must have registered that there was more to the world than humans or birds.

Thursday, 03/02/17