Ron Rosenbaum, blogs, cat people, dingo kitty chicken jerky

Shakespeare, Nabokov, Bob Dylan And My Adorable Kitty

kitten stretches Looks like that tainted pet food thing went further than we thought—a straight shot to the heart of The New Journalism.

My own attitude almost reminds me of the epigraph to Nabokov's Pale Fire. The one from Boswell's Life of Johnson in which Dr. Johnson is ruminating about a crazed young man going around London shooting cats. And then reverting to thoughts of his own cat, Hodge, Johnson says (I'm doing this from memory: "But Hodge shan't be shot. No, no, Hodge shan't be shot."

It's some sad, beautiful fusion of wishfulness, wistfulness and dread. The possibility too horrible to contemplate. it sounds selfish, but it's more self-protective.

But then this morning when I'm halfway across the country, to learn to my horror that my Hodge may be being poisoned at that very moment by the callous morons who can't be bothered to care enough to figure this out til ten days or so after the first warnings were issued... You know who should be shot? Well I probably shouldn't dwell on what should be visited upon these dimwit subhumans.

Somehow you knew that when Ron Rosenbaum started catblogging it was gonna play out this way. —balk

Pet Food Rats: The Shame of an Industry [Ron Rosenbaum]
EVEN MORE ROSENBAUM CAT FUN: Saul Bellow and the Bad Fish [Slate]
And! Dingo Kitty Chicken Jerky Recalled!

[Image via]

3:14 PM on Wed Apr 4 2007
By balk
2,724 views
8 comments

Comments

TheUpMyAssPlayers at 02:29 PM on 04/04/07
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Awwww that IS a cute kitty. I love my cats.
asketchymess at 02:34 PM on 04/04/07
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Thank goodness the Kreepie Kats' steady diet of prescription pain-killers, poppers and sugar substitutes hasn't yet been adulterated by the pet food industry.

No, No. Kool-Whip shan't be shot.
Seeräuber Jenny at 02:46 PM on 04/04/07
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Connectedness Index: 404

Yes, I am well acquainted with the R.R. cat-alog.

It began with his pimping of his cat Stumpy in a photo in the N.Y. Observer in order to get apartment leads. (That Stumpy really could strike a pose.)

Years later, I almost wept upon reading about The Death of Stumpy, and sent a check to the Stumpy Memorial Fund, although, given someone's incompetence, it was returned.

And no matter what he says in the Slate article, his cat and his friend's cat have nothing on my cat.

So I guess I'm just the kind of ailurophilic, over-educated, intellectually pretentious reader that is his bread-and-butter.

Dammit!
pbica at 02:47 PM on 04/04/07
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Aren't cats the kids we wish we had? No toilet training, quiet, amusing, relatively inexpensive. The best part: leave food, leave water, and leave for the weekend!
KarenUhOh at 02:51 PM on 04/04/07
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Connectedness Index: 897

Plus cats seldom humiliate you by taking your $33,000 a year off to Dartmouth to write articles in the school paper about how fucked up they get every night.
JupiterPluvius at 03:09 PM on 04/04/07
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Oh, Ron Rosenbaum. Making the job formerly known as "crazy cat lady" a little more gender-neutral with each magic blog.
Diglett at 03:18 PM on 04/04/07
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@KarenUhOh: That's the real reason we chop their balls off.

I once sat in on a class RR was teaching, and he was dictating a list of 50 things you need to know about being a journalist that it took him 25 years to learn but you all get it in one sitting, you spoiled twats. He only got to 7(c) by the end of the three hours.
sheistolerable at 03:20 PM on 04/04/07
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@KarenUhOh: Obviously you aren't raising my cat.