When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

13 October 2005

Smug Kitty


Smug Kitty
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.
Friend Scott, former NYC neighbor and now Seattle resident and proprietor of the entertainingly filthy and incredibly not-safe-for-work blog Bill In Exile, writes us to ask:
Is there a reason that Mr. Gato always seems so self-satisfied when you photograph him? He's positively the G.W. Bush of smug facial expressions of the feline world.
Scott, thanks for writing in.

You're quite right, Mister G. does have a certain ineffable smugness about him.

(That's *all* that he has in common with Dubya, though... as nice a man as our veterinarian is, Mister Gato would never, say, nominate him to the Supreme Court on the basis of proximity and friendship. I'm betting Gato would look for a strict constructionist, or possibly a Law and Economics guy like Posner.)

I have thought long and hard about why this is... my cat's smugness, I mean, and not his preference for libertarian-conservative intellectual judges.

I think I know.

Like many NYC media figures, Mister Gato came up on the mean streets of the City... when the animal rescue folks finally managed to snare him, he had been living on the street in Brooklyn for his entire life.

He was pure sinew and scar tissue when we got him, and over the last year and a half has morphed into a fat, sleek, purring engine of absolute contentment. He knows that he has only to twitch a whisker, and we will rush to fill his dish with fishy nuggets, or pet him or scratch him or play with him or whatever the hell else he might want. The Chows are completely subservient to him as well.

So that look on his face? It's the same one Mike Tyson wore for a while.

He's looking out at the world and thinking, "You're all my bitches. Heh."

All best,

Barry

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