More Cats

 A lover of T. S. Eliot shouldn’t say too much against cats; Old Possum himself was a cat lover extraordinaire. “O well, I never, was there ever a cat so clever as magical Mister Mistopheles.” Andrew Lloyd Webber read Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and promptly thereupon made the Eliot estate rich with royalties, a flow of cash that keeps on giving. However one might wish old TSE to be remembered for “But to apprehend the point of intersection of the timeless with time is the occupation of a saint” or “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” still it is satisfying enough that he be known for “Macavity’s the Mystery Cat: he’s called the hidden paw.”
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    I received a lot of delightful emails. There were the cat-defenders, of course, one calling them “wonderful creatures that God created” and another appreciating a cat’s “low maintenance.” And there were those who wished to defend the Episcopal Church, by saying (for instance) that the “catlick church” was the one in trouble. Dog-lovers came out of the woodwork; one assured me that not only the reader but his dog had issued a canine “Amen” to the piece. Another bemoaned the “fat cats” who “gobble up anything that flies into the churchyard”!
    One quoted Jeremiah—“because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away,” a hitherto unappreciated ecological prophecy. And another writer sent me a cat emoji.
    I am charmed (and blessed) to have such a readership.
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    My wife, Susan, once had a letter published in the New York Times: roughly speaking, she was defending cockroaches. I hope to find it for a future column.
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    What theologians read. John Henry Newman preached on “the love of relations and friends” on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, Dec. 27. In it, he deals with the question of whether Christians, called to love everyone, can or should have particular friends, people they love more than others. It’s a classic, and it’s here: http://newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume2/sermon5.html
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    Out & About. This Sunday, Nov. 17: the “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar on The Warden by Anthony Trollope. You still have time to read this, and if you haven’t, I highly recommend it. Trollope is one of the most delightful writers ever. The seminar is held in the education building of Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation.
    The next seminar will be on January 26, 2020, on A Canticle for Liebowitz.

Cats

I read it in the Washington Examiner magazine and so it has to be true.

    The bird population in the U.S. and Canada has decreased by nearly three billion over the past fifty years. There are several culprits, but one caught my eye: cats. It seems we humans are keeping more and more feline pets, and these purring companions, who deceive us with their softness and their air of knowing sophistication, are actually bloody-minded in a way that is harming our environment.

    Let your cat outdoors, and it goes for the birds.

    Other causes have led to the diminishment of the bird population: poisons that we use to kill bugs end up being digested by birds, who then die; large glass windows also lay low many of them. But the increase of household cats remains itself a significant factor in the birds’ demise.

    How many birds have survived? This the article doesn’t say, although it suggests the total decline since 1900 is about 30%.

    The author quotes a suggestion from the Audubon Society to counter this sad trajectory: “growing native plants is an easy and effective way to provide food, shelter and safe passage for many of the birds in decline.”

    But then the author showed her cards, and I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

    “Another solution, of course,” she wrote, “is getting rid of all the cats.”

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    I wish I could blame the membership decline in the Episcopal Church on the growing number of cats.

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    Even if the correlation (Episcopalians down, cats up) isn’t causal, it is clear the cats will outlast us.

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    Out & About. The next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will be on The Warden by Anthony Trollope, the first of his Barchester chronicles. Trollope is a delight and funny and sometimes painfully sharp. In Dallas, at Church of the Incarnation, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 17. If you read the book you’re welcome to the conversation.

     (The subsequent book will not be The Cat in the Hat.)

 

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: