Wednesday 21 December 2005

Cat Photograph, Fairly Gratuitous



About two weeks ago I began writing a fiery post speaking out against the disdain and scorn routinely heaped upon bloggers who write about their relationships with animals. Supposedly this is the most pathetic and feeble form of blogging. Cat blogging equals abjection ground zero, with getting journalists sacked being the corresponding ne plus ultra and what we should all be aiming for I suppose. I wanted to talk about how wrong this attitude is, how it's just another form of the doctrine of the separate spheres and its attendant depreciation of domestic, intimate, private life. I wanted to write about Virginia Woolf's radical book Flush, a biography of the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, and how even its most sympathetic readers usually see it as an allegory for the life of the intelligent but silent c19 woman artist, that is, as not *really* about a serious attempt to imagine the life of the dog, full of sensation and physicality and love and intelligence, but without the powers of language....

But I can see I'm not going to get it done, so I thought I'd just post the above photograph, which dates from Basil's earliest days of residence with us, and tell you about a little memory that came back to me, out of nowhere semeingly, a few days ago: after Year 12 I spent a year in a TAFE folio preparation course, as many people did who wanted to get into art schools. The Photography teacher was a very nice helpful woman, but I remember her standing at the front of the class and hissing out, venomously, with her face screwed up disgustedly, "DON'T bring me any photos of your CUTE LITTLE KITTENS or I'll be sick on them!"

8 comments:

Tim said...

Great photo. I fully support blogging about animals. Especially cats.

Phantom Scribbler said...

Vampire kitty says: depreciate me at your peril!

Cozalcoatl said...

Great evil cat...

I'm going to blog about my ferrets very soon. One has not much time left on this mortal coil so it will be sooky interspersed in boing.

R.H. said...

Pussy got dentures.

Anonymous said...

My, what long teeth you have!

Quite clearly I see no problem at all with pet-blogging.

cfsmtb said...

Harry & Cleo just remarked, what a ripper pair of choppers! kzxzrwc!

Armagnac Esq said...

Nothing at all wrong with pet blogging. I've sometimes thought about writing a blog on behalf of my burmese, try to take a different third party second species perspective on my own foibles and problems.

Anonymous said...

On the film industry newsletter I run, I link to animal blogs - cats are best - every Friday.

It is very important to celebrate the fact that life is not made up of bloody work & bloody tv & bloody films & bloody media politics.

Cats and what people do with them is a beaut weapon in this ongoing campaign. Sadly, I have only Coco the Wonderdog who is averse to cats and too old to change.

- barista