TS Eliot Redux

In the "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," one particularly memorable poem begins, "The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter." With all due respect to TS Eliot, he goes on to give said cat three different names, proving that it isn't so much a difficult matter, as a multiple matter. May I suggest instead, that the RAISING of a cat is a difficult matter.

Kitty O is a case in point. He doesn't want to be raised as much as wish to raise me...especially in the middle of the night when either nature calls, (what I refer to as the 'bladder gladder' trip) or he has just remembered a date with the possum who lives next door in a tree. I am, as ever, his willing servant, dutifully letting him out and equally dotingly never trying to raise him because-- it's a very difficult matter -- which means I might as well think he is purr-fect.

Quite different from the second Commissioner Oscar D'Costa mystery I am currently writing. It's not perfect, it needs to be raised to a higher level, and though I lay awake at night wondering how to do just that, inspiration is not always cooperative. But I am nothing if not cattish, as in, I will keep trying, in much the same way that Kitty O keeps refusing to be raised.

As I write this, he is curled up next to me, leaving me very uncomfortable, but he, of course, is happily snoring. In another part of my computer, the novel awaits.