Animal States
Cats are fluid, dogs are solid, with all the semantic and semiotic nuances that these words entail.
Today I sat at breakfast watching the two animals I call 'Flumpy' and 'Frumpy' (names withheld to protect animal rights). Flumpy is a five year old male cat and Frumpy is a fifteen year old female dog, both of the gingerish persuasion and both as mongrelised as anything, being nice animals saved from the alleys, and very affectionate.
Flumpy was... flumphed. I guess there's no other word that adequately and onomatopoeically enough describes the boneless liquid pool of fur that a cat can become at an instant's notice. He had collapsed into a puddle at the bottom of his hammock, the indoor groundsheet we'd suspended above his home. If you looked hard and long, you could see one ear erect, like the fin of a particularly lazy shark swimming in a sea of ginger fur. Occasionally, it would twitch, as if the shark were changing direction.
Frumpy was just being a doorstop. If you missed the thing on the brown tiles that seemed a little like a cross between a small tent and a mousedeer, you would bump into it and fall down. But she had a clearly defined shape, was an obvious obstacle to ambulatory progress (i.e. walking around). Actually, nobody ever bumped into her because she was always in the same place at the same time, like a lighthouse or a shoal. Flumpy, on the other hand, tended to evaporate from sight, as is the way of all cats.
I think they are a little like that when up and about as well. Frumpy will bang into your leg. Flumpy will ooze over your foot. Again, the solid/liquid analogy maintains. Yes, there is a whole theory of physical states waiting out there for the intrepid researcher.
Today I sat at breakfast watching the two animals I call 'Flumpy' and 'Frumpy' (names withheld to protect animal rights). Flumpy is a five year old male cat and Frumpy is a fifteen year old female dog, both of the gingerish persuasion and both as mongrelised as anything, being nice animals saved from the alleys, and very affectionate.
Flumpy was... flumphed. I guess there's no other word that adequately and onomatopoeically enough describes the boneless liquid pool of fur that a cat can become at an instant's notice. He had collapsed into a puddle at the bottom of his hammock, the indoor groundsheet we'd suspended above his home. If you looked hard and long, you could see one ear erect, like the fin of a particularly lazy shark swimming in a sea of ginger fur. Occasionally, it would twitch, as if the shark were changing direction.
Frumpy was just being a doorstop. If you missed the thing on the brown tiles that seemed a little like a cross between a small tent and a mousedeer, you would bump into it and fall down. But she had a clearly defined shape, was an obvious obstacle to ambulatory progress (i.e. walking around). Actually, nobody ever bumped into her because she was always in the same place at the same time, like a lighthouse or a shoal. Flumpy, on the other hand, tended to evaporate from sight, as is the way of all cats.
I think they are a little like that when up and about as well. Frumpy will bang into your leg. Flumpy will ooze over your foot. Again, the solid/liquid analogy maintains. Yes, there is a whole theory of physical states waiting out there for the intrepid researcher.
Labels: Animals
etched with acid at 12:10:00 pm
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