Two Cats, a Bar and a lonely Wasp

Circa 2004

Somewhere in another time and place, over a rainbow far away and beyond anywhere that even the intricate human mind is equipped to take us, two cats walk into a bar.

One of the cats immediately orders a pint of Guinness, then sets about turning the creamy head with a spoon, hoping that it will metamorphisise into cheese. Not the type to ever relax and forget about work, he’s trying to create some cheese to use back at the laboratory, where the mice that he experiments on from nine to five, are getting hungry. He’s not planning to feed them. It’s just that he wants to wave some cheese over their cages and see what happens, all in the interests of science, and the advancement of the human race.

By using the phrase “human race”, I have of course given it all away.

It is now clear to you that the fictional cat, to whom I allocate human characteristics, is in fact a human. It’s a metaphor. An artistic indulgence, if you will, created to add colour and life to this otherwise dull story of mice and cheesecakes.

The other cat is not a drinker, so he orders a couple of slices of whiskey cake. While looking at the menu, he notices that they serve cheese cake, and he thinks about telling the other cat but by the time the thought processes have made their way around his unsophisticated brain, the alcohol fumes from the nearby whiskey cake have taken their toll, and our cat number two is out for the night.

Meanwhile, outside, their friend is standing looking irritated, and wondering why he always has to be the reserve cat in these stories. He seriously considers starting a campaign to ban pubs from restricting cats to two at a time, but after a few minutes he finds a ball of string on the ground, and spends the evening playing with that instead.

And that brings me to my point. It has always, always been a source of bafflement to me, how they manage to make string so long. I have never seen a sheep with a sixty metre hair on his back. And believe me, I should know.

In the early nineteen eighties I worked for the Irish Secret Service, and my job was to try to find out why Hollywood insists on making films with leprechauns in them. My research, of course, brought me on the trail of a fairy ring, in a mountainous area populated by sheep farms and terrorist hideouts. Leprechauns, as you’ll know doubt know, only appear in spaces of between two and seven feet in width, and in cheap Hollywood movies aimed at people whose great grandmother once accidentally visited Ireland and thought she was born there.

So in each area that I visited, I would calculate the average distance between the sheep as they grazed, and try to determine whether a two to seven foot open space existed between them at most times.

Anyway, since I seem to be a little short of further things to say today, how about a little of what we all know you people come here for. Poetry.

I wandered lonely as a wasp
That floats on high o’er veils and hills
And gets spotted by a wasp hunter
Who lifts his gun, takes aim and kills

I strolled and pondered why we’re here
And clocked up several hours of thinking
Eventually my mind did clear
And into logic I did peer

Clear as a bell it all became
My doubts they did begin to wane
Just in case, I reconsidered
But clarity was still unhindered

It’s obvious it seemed to me
A lower species we must be
Otherwise why would we begat
Eight lives less than the humble cat?

Cultured readers can find a whole page of fine poetry here.