Insights

This page is devoted to the observations of fans who have gone above and beyond the demands of casual reading, noting a slip-up in the Cat Who... series's logic, or perhaps noticing something that adds context or clarification to a confusing in-book situation. Lara writes in concerning Qwilleran's observation in The Cat Who Saw Red that cats only "sense" colors and are unable to actually physically see them: "Someone should tell Qwilleran that cats CAN distinguish colors. Granted that maybe when this was written, the vision of felines was not understood, but still... One source tells that all cats can see green, some can see green and blue, and few cats can see green, blue and red. It has to do with the rod and cone receptors in the retina... Another source said that cats are red-green color blind. This source implies that cats see red as green...but doesn't color blind mean seeing the color as gray?" Those of you who have read The Cat Who Saw Red might remember Qwilleran catching a bar of two of Dan Graham singing the strains of "Loch Lomond" off and on. Eileen notes: "In Saw Red, Qwill hears someone outdoors humming a tune, and fondly remembers that it was his father's favorite song. If the father died before Qwill was born, how would Qwill know what his father's favorite song was, much less feel sentimental about it?" It could be argued that Qwilleran's mother might have just told Qwill about the fact, but it seems unlikely that Qwilleran would develop and attach such a sentimental, nostalgic association to the tune as described within Saw Red's pages on hearsay or a second-hand account. A previous C-Pad tried to attempted to address the quandary of deducing Qwilleran's age; one of the issues involved was the problem of the 18-year gap between the publication of ...Turned On and Off and Saw Red. Jan has a rather salient point to make that I failed to: "You overlook the most obvious and important reason why there cannot be an 18-year gap between the books published in the 1960s and the first one published in the 1980s: Cats don't live that long." Jan continues: "Koko was an adult cat in the first book. If the 18-year gap were included into the story line, he would've been over 20 years old when The Cat Who Saw Red was published in the 1980s and would most certainly be dead today. As it is, both Koko and Yum-Yum must be in their teens, geriatric by cat standards, which explains why Braun must cram so many murders into such a short span of time. The Cat Who Robbed a Bank doesn't even span a whole month, and follows right after "The Cat Who Saw Stars with no significant time gap between the two books." From Ben H. come three interesting tidbits, the first concerning famed Something general manager William Allen: "'William Allen,' the white cat who was first the mascot of 'The Pickax Picayune,' and currently the General Manager of 'The Moose County Something,' was most likely named for William Allen White (1868-1944), who was for many years the editor -- and resident curmudgeon -- of the 'Emporia Gazette,' Emporia, Kansas. White was considered by many in the newspaper trade to be the quintessential small-town editor's editor, and was widely admired for his habit of 'telling it like it is' without the cant and hypocrisy rampant in big-city papers." Ben finds more newspaper history/terminology in Could Read Backwards: "In the first chapter of 'TCW... Could Read Backwards,' Arch Riker tells Qwill the name of the later-murdered art critic: 'George Bonifield Mountclemens -- the Third!' Qwill's response is: 'That's a stickful!...' Well, a 'stick' in this context is the specialized tool used to hold hand-set type; one could put only so many individual characters in/on the stick. To say that something is 'a stickful' is to imply that it is too long, or overly involved. And below is some info regarding Koko and Yum Yum's namesakes. Yes, you may have caught the couple of bars from the operetta The Mikado Mrs. Highspight sings that give Qwilleran the idea for Yum Yum's name, but what else do you know about it? "The character names 'KoKo' and 'Yum-Yum' indeed appear in Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado.' In the operetta, 'Yum-Yum' is one of the 'three little maids from school;' the others are named 'Peep-Bo' and 'Pitti-Sing.' Lillian Jackson Braun's Siamese, therefore, isn't "non-namesaked.' [Gaah - guess I'd best change the FAQ, then!] (In the G&S piece, Yum-Yum does not marry KoKo; she marries Nanki-Poo... and the G&S KoKo ends up with the somewhat elderly (and forbidding) Katisha.)" Daniel notes the rather interesting implications of a line within Lived High: "On page 252 of the paperback version of The Cat Who Lived High, Qwill meets Robert Maus (now Roberto) and Mary Duckworth at Roberto's for dinner... "'Roberto, this is a great occasion,' Qwilleran said. 'It's been three years since we last met, but it seems like three decades. Let me tell you that your restaurant is handsome, and the food is superb.'" Is this a tweek of a mention that there was an over two decade gap between TCWSR and TCWPB? I know TCWSR was published in the middle 80's but didn't LJB keep it on the shelf since the 60's? Just a thought." Wa-hah! Ben strikes again: "Has anyone else remarked upon Mrs. McGuffey, retired schoolteacher and Junktown shop proprietress in The Cat Who Turned On and Off? When Qwill interviews her, she declares proudly that she had '...taught him [Andrew Glanz] to read -- twenty-five years ago...' Hmmmm... Is there a more appropriate name for a reading teacher than 'McGuffey'?" Not, as Ben notes, if your school stocked the famed McGuffey's Reader. Heh, an insight from your humble site maintainer. How shocking. Actually, since I gleaned it from a children's book I was leafing through at Sam's Club, the natural order of the world hasn't been upset too greatly... Qwill's vacation spot in The Cat Who Moved a Mountain is (over)loaded with potato-namesaked people and locales - the Potato Mountains split by the visions-of-butter-inducing Yellyhoo River, the town of Spudsboro, the Spuds, Taters, and Lumptons... One would think at first that Lake Batata luckily escaped this trend, but it turns out that "batata" is a Native American word for..."potato". So, no rest for the pun-weary, alas. Hey, my Michigan-dwelling friend Joe just might have unearthed the basis for Came to Breakfast's Breakfast Island! His scary, unsettling info: "Somewhere up [in Michigan's upper peninsula] is an island tourist trap that my school used to occasionally take field trips to. I never went myself, not really getting the whole appeal of getting out of school only to get to be bossed around even more by your teachers. Well, one of the main attractions there is, did you guess it....fudge! One thing I found very interesting, was the fact that automobiles are banned on the island!...Note too the stores listing, the categories being 'Fudge | Gifts | Retail' While I'm sure not all that unique for touristy islands, there's also a ferry service. The fact that there's tours by carriage is also interesting!" He also included two links for info - CampMackinaw.com and Mackinac.com. The latter site yields an additional correlation between Breakfast and Mackinac Island - bridge is "everywhere", according to columnist Stu Stuart (with a name like that, he belongs in a Cat Who... book himself). Of course, on Breakfast, it was dominoes that were so profligous, but perhaps Braun substituted an alternate table-game out of personal preference? In some quarters (mostly in the South (and Braun lives in North Carolina now), though this's hearsay, and I'm no giant font of info on Southern subcultures), playing dominoes is viewed as more genteel than playing cards... Angel_Kropf adds further verification of the above insight... "Being a Michigan dweller myself, I am familiar with Mackinaw Island and there's another similarity.....the rocking chairs on the porch of the hotel on Breakfast Island sound suspiciously like the rocking chairs that are on the porch of the Grand Hotel, the large, expensive hotel on the island." Another personal discovery concerning our favorite Fluxion photographer. One would think that Odd Bunsen's first name was derived from the nature of his behavior, but according to the syndicated "Boyd's Trivia" column (and can there be a more reliable source of info that Boyd's Trivia, really?): "Q: Many a man in Norway bears the name of 'Odd'. Why? A: Comes from 'oddi', originally a point or triangle of land where some ancestor lived.'" Ann has drawn some very interesting parallels between the Cat Who...s and The Mikado, to which I now must listen after reading the following: "As all true fans know, both Koko and Yum Yum were named after The Mikado's musical would-lovers Koko the Lord High Executioner and his lovely ward Yum Yum. Of course, in the musical they don't end up together, unlike their (superior) namesakes in Braun's books; but is there not an equal correlation for both Qwill and Polly as well? Qwill is (of course) an older Nanki-Poo, heir of the realm of Titipu County--oops, I mean Moose County. Polly (of course) has the thankless role of Katisha, the grand elderly lady with hopeless designs on the heir to the Klingenshoen crown. This might explain the cats' indifference to poor Polly; considering how so few readers like her, her musical contemporary was quite the grand villain! Just some mischievious thoughts on listening to The Mikado....." Another oddball from yours truly, this time concerning Could Read Backwards, a minor sub-plot in which concerns a famed painting of a ballerina and a monkey by a "Ghirotto". (The painting was rent in two long ago (probably by someone with better taste in art than the artist); Mountclemens has one half and is looking for the other other to make beaucoup bucks by restoring the original canvas.) In any case, I've run across Ghirotto's possible namesake - a "Giotto" who was one of the first painters of the Renaissance, though he seems to have addressed primarily religious subjects, not ballerinas and monkeys. I'm assuming that if Giotto and Ghirotto are connected, it's only because of something like a passing recollection in Braun's subconscious of the Renaissance painter's name that she just happened to name the Backwards artist after. (Oddly enough, though, Giotto's style is quite similar to what I've always envisioned being that of the ballerina painting...) An online gallery of some of Giotto's work is available here. A while back, the following was posting by Robin to the Cat Who... mailing list: "I just came across an e-mail hoax with a twist. Usually these things are SO tiresome ... but one thing about this one hit me - they refer to a 'Klingerman Foundation'. Now, does that or does that not sound very similar to the found- ation in our beloved book series? Could the originator of this hoax be a LJB fan?" It is, as they say, a definite possibility - to check it out and judge for yourself visit this site. The following two art-related insights were already mentioned in my "Random Thoughts on Sang for the Birds" C-Pad, but I think they qualify for includion here. After visiting the Art Center's grand opening, Qwill, Polly, Arch, and Mildred get into a discussion of their favorite artists. Qwilleran offers, "'If I could be any artist who ever lived, I'd be Winslow Homer'" - a meaningful choice if you recall Qwill's work on the modern art beat, where he took to Scrano's angular paintings of traingles because they reminded him of sailboats in a fog - and "he liked sailboats". It is fitting, then, that he take so to Winslow Homer, known so well for his paintings of the sea. Qwill still likes sailboats, I guess. Also of interest - subtext in Polly's portrait? In Sang for the Birds, Polly poses for Paul Skumble in a Windsor chair. Now, Mrs. McGuffey, the antique dealer from On and Off who theorized that "everyone resembles some sort of chair", saw Qwilleran as a Yorkshire Windsor. Does Braun just like the Windsor design? Or is this a way to neatly, surreptitiously include Qwill's presence in the painting? Finally, a definitve explanation for the events at the end of Saw Stars (skip to the end of the article). So now you know.

Smokey, the Patron Saint of Insights...