ESSENTIAL WRITER TOOLS PART ONE: CATS

This essay originally appeared in The Inner Swine Volume 15, Issue 3/4, Summer 2009.

ONE OF THE greatest things about being a writer is the ability to engage in all sorts of eccentric and bizarre behavior and have it laughingly accepted by society because you’re an artist, an artist traditionally known as either a drunk or a madman. Being a writer is more or less like being publicly diagnosed with Weirdo Disease and from that point on everyone’s willing to believe anything about you:

POLICE: Sir, you’re not wearing any pants.
ME: Is OK. Me writer.
POLICE: Ah. Published anything I’da heard of?

This is of course partly due to the plethora of examples from history showing writers to, in fact, be either drunks or madmen, often both. As a writer, you’re free to do all sorts of odd things and have people just shrug their shoulders, accepting you for who you are. This is because as a writer you’ve already made the choice to earn something akin to what a third-world cobbler for Nike might expect to earn over their lifetime, and are thus excused from society’s normal requirements. Let your beard grow wild and free? Why not, you’re going to be living on Top Ramen for the rest of your life. Wear suspenders and a belt? Vote Libertarian? Spend your life murdering every living thing you’re allowed legally to murder?

The world shrugs, as you’ve already made the insane decision to write for a living.

So, while wallowing in the pants-free and deoderant-optional lifestyle of the working author, I can understand why, despite the obvious social and financial drawbacks of such a lifestyle, so many folks aspire to be professional writers. After all, financial security and respect within your community are overrated, especially when compared to the ability to wake up at four in the afternoon, immediately begin drinking, and call it ‘research’.

So I’ve decided to help anyone who wants to be a writer by outlining some of the main tools you too can use to establish yourself, since ‘writing’ these days is more of a lifestyle choice than a profession, based on the fact that for something to be a profession you have to actually earn money at it. There are many things a writer must have in order to prosecute their art and look writerly while doing it, but I thought we’d start with the most basic, the most fundamental, the single thing that tells the world that not only are you a writer, but you’re a serious writer: A cat.

Or cats, plural; the more the merrier.

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Some may be shocked by this. Surely there are more recognizable totems for a writer to, er, tote—bottles of cheap liquor, ink-stained fingers, battered leatherbound notebooks filled with cryptic jottings, an Elephant gun—and yes, yes, we will be getting to those in later installments of this exciting new commentary series. But while they might be more recognizable, trust me: Cats are the secret sauce in a writing life. If you’ve been trying to sell a novel without success, look around: See any cats? If the answer is no, that may be your problem. If the answer is yes, try drinking more. If the answer is goddamn cats are drinking my bourbon, it’s time to dust off that constrained language book you were gonna write in college, before the world crushed your dreams.

Cats, cats, cats: From Christopher Smart to Ernest Hemingway, they are a single thread in the rich tapestry of Letters. I myself have four cats, which should in no way indicate to you that I am merely choosing this subject in order to turn my boring staid lifestyle in hot underground ziney goodness. Cats are the tiny four-legged gods of literature and any writer who claims otherwise is lying. Or a dog person, which is even worse.

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Cats are in fact infinitely useful when it comes to writing for a living. Cats are like the hitchhikers’ towels in convenient meat form, not entirely unlike nature’s Swiss Army knives. We will not, for the purposes of this edumifactionary essay, discuss their obvious uses that do not have anything to do with writing. We will not discuss the fact that they make very fine hats. We will ignore their usefulness as paperweights, their delicious flavor, and the fact that they are reliable dousers.

This still leaves plenty of uses for our feline friends in the writing field:

CATS ARE USEFUL EXCUSES

A writer’s life is filled with annoying deadlines because no one understands our need to be paid to do nothing most of the time, so cats sitting on your keyboard, consuming your manuscripts, and dominating your will with their intense ability to stare for hours can come in handy when your other excuses (alcoholism, sixth dead grandparent in as many weeks, crippling agoraphobia, gout) are rejected by your publisher. The ability of the modern cat to ruin plans and destroy hopes and dreams is well-recorded, and sometimes all you need to get The Man off your back is the sound of mewling kittens in the background of a phone call. You can also refer mysteriously to your cats by name and never clarify that they are, in fact cats, implying that they are children you are struggling to feed.

CATS ARE GOOD INSPIRATION

When in doubt, add a cat that can talk, a cat that is self-aware, a cat that solves mysteries, or a cat that is secretly god. When your plot requires advancement, a cat is a wonderful deus ex machina to move things along, as cats are famous for ruining plans, destroying evidence, and throwing up hairballs during emotionally taut moments.

CATS ARE NOT JUDGMENTAL

Unlike their haughty fellow housepets, dogs, cats accept you even when you startle awake at your desk, pantsless and uncertain of your movements over the previous hours. Cats will take your secrets to the grave, my friends. Do you wander the house in a bathrobe, bottle of rye in your hand, talking to yourself as. . .some writers I’ve, uh, heard about do? The cats will never tell, or care. Their implacable serenity has driven some to hatred, but as a writer you will know better: Cats bear secrets, and if you stare at them long enough, and drink heavily enough, you can discover them.

CATS ARE FRICKIN’ HILARIOUS

Man, just go to www.youtube.com and google “cat” and you will get hundreds of humorous videos of cats being humorous. If you don’t find them to be humorous, you might be a soulless demon in the guise of a human, so you should have that checked out.

CATS ARE DELICIOUS

Just kidding.

Some may feel that cats are unmanly—more a girl’s pet than a man’s—and that writing is already a profession lacking in machismo, since all you do is sit at a desk making shit up, instead of building things or killing people or working on your abs like real men do. So the amateurs would opt for a more macho animal companion, like a bear, or a Doberman, or some sort of domesticated yeti named BooBoo. Ah, but this is the exact opposite. No less a man’s man than Ernest Hemingway—a man who volunteered to be shot at in wars and who personally tried to hunt and kill every living thing in the universe—loved cats, so much so that his old home in the Florida Keys is still brimming with the descendants of his cats, many of which have six or more toes because, apparently, illegal breeding experiments on cats in pursuit of a cat super race is also a manly pursuit Hemingway dabbled in.

So, your initial step towards becoming a rich and powerful author—capable of toppling governments with a word and commanding armies of minions with a wave of your frail, liquor-ruined hand—is: Cats, and plenty of them. Forget a Master’s Degree, forget workshops or writing groups or conventions—to get started, adopt some cats. Doubt me? Be careful, or I will send my minions after you.