Random Thoughts on The Cat Who Saw Stars

While reading Saw Stars, I made note of a lot of random thoughts and loose ends I couldn't use in my review. Like inspires like, I suppose. Consider this clean-up duty.

• First off, you can ignore my earlier C-pad admonishment to not read the inside-dust-cover-flap blurb for fear of having the mystery spoiled for you, quite simply because there is no mystery to be spoiled.

• That said, let's turn to the topic that I'm sure EVERYONE will be talking about - GREEN KITTIES FROM OUTER SPACE??? Am I to BELIEVE that Qwilleran was actually ABDUCTED by GREEN KITTIES FROM OUTER SPACE?!?! Was Braun half-crocked??!? No, she couldn't have been - she'd've had to be whole-hog crocked to think up of a concept like this, much less deem it suitable for inclusion in a Cat Who... book. I'd like to add more to this, but all I can do is shake my head in disbelief.

• Well, no, actually, I can say more about this. Assuming, of course, that Braun meant the green space kitties to be real - as the book indicated with its serious recounting of the event, the sand on Qwilleran and Koko, and Qwilleran's newfound belief in UFO's after the event - and that he was abducted by them - as indicated by Qwill's experiences after he "blacked out" and before Koko woke him up ("I was pinned under a heavy weight - in total darkness.... My eyes were open, but I couldn't see, and there was a throbbing in my chest that alarmed me"), which are so typical of the stories told by people who claim to be abductees (yeah, I know, there have been other times when Qwill's had dreams about being weighted down or crushed and found Koko on top of him, but the distinct break between Qwill's little monologue above and his awakening, combined with all the other evidence, indicates that the incidents are separate and unconnected) - why would such creatures be interested in abducting humans in the first place? Braun's already made it clear that, to use her own words, "cats" - ordinary housebound cats - "are smarter than people". Green space kitties from an advanced civilization who have mastered the secrets of light-speed travel must be even smarter still. So, what would be the advantage of abducting such an inferior species for study? They couldn't learn anything from them - except, perhaps, to study weaknesses in their nervous, circulatory, and immune systems to introduce some sort of debilitating virus to the human race and free their domesticated brethren. Another thought - the extrasensory abilities of Qwilleran's moustache have been likened throughout the series to those of a cat's whiskers. Could this be due to (da-da-daaaah) alien implants? Is Qwill an alien-human hybrid? Is Koko truly from outer space? (That would explain a lot, including why he scampered off so fast to meet the spaceship.) I smell a parody.... Whatever the case, it's still ridiculous that I should be even discussing such subjects in the context of the Cat Who... series.

• That said, the cover art. It would've been quite pretty had it not been for that ugly hunk of green yarn on glued on the front. When I first saw a (small, undetailed) scan of the cover, I thought it was a leaf; an erroneous flight of fancy on my part, and it wouldn't had any connection with the book's material, but it still would've been better if it were a leaf. What a cheesy photo! What a dodgy scan! What a slipshod cut-and-paste job! (You can still see part of the "white" area that was supposed to have been trimmed around the string; I know amateur - not professional - webpage designers who never would've left that. Such corner-cutting seems to be semi-rampant throughout the first edition; I spotted a lot of typos in the text, too. One wonders if pressure to get the book published on deadline was involved.) A pity, because Walter Harper really did a nice job with the color scheme on this one.

• Once again, the exposition introduces Qwilleran with complimentary, fawning quotes from normally crotchety locals, as if they're "actual satisfied customers" endorsing a product, to get us to like him. This needs to stop. As The Cat Who Could Read Backwards demonstrates, the best way to get the audience emotionally invested in a character is to simply put him in a situation and let him go to and react as normal. If the character is realistic, strong, unique, and interesting (no problem with Qwilleran in any of those respects), the audience will be hooked by his very nature and personality alone. Showing is always more convincing and powerful than telling.

• Mildred makes "coddled" pork chops? "Coddled"? I'm not sure I'd want to eat anything that's "coddled". It's positively cringe-worthy. (Besides, most standard culinary processes are described using rather violent terms - "beating", "chopping", "pounding", "whipping", etc. I'm not sure that something as cutesy-sounding as "coddling" could produce anything respectable.)

• And since when did Arch Riker start calling Mildred "Millie"?

• Qwill likes Thomas Hardy? GAA-A-AA-AAGH!! I thought he had better taste than that. (Thomas Hardy, for those of you fortunate enough to have been spared being forced to read any of his novels in English class, was an nineteenth-century author who wrote loverlily drippy, sordid rural soap operas peppered with lost loves and pointless tragedies always culminating in an overdramatic, over-the-top climax in which all the right people are implausibly killed to clear the way for the two least-interesting and most-bubbleheaded characters to get married in order to pull out an undeserved happy ending totally unconnected to any previous events, lessons, or morals in the story - proof positive that Hollywood deoesn't have the patent on manipulative, thematically-bankrupt vapid formula plots.)

• While we're on the subject of the liberal arts, I would think that Visitor to a Small Planet - or anything written by or connected with Gore Vidal, for that matter - would be too far-out for Moose County tastes.

• I'm a "city dude", too, but I know what a "fryer" is in reference to poultry farming just from trips to the supermarket. I also know what a "sampler" is (from Whitman's Chocolates boxes, if anything), in or out of the context of needlework, and I don't embroider. A person who's as lexiphantic as Qwill should have no trouble with either word. The dumbing-down of our hero begun in Sang for the Birds continues.

• Speaking of "dumbing down"...*hem*...as a (formerly) avid adventure- and RPG-video game player, Qwill's entry for Ittibittiwassee Road in his little mental run-down of the places he passes while driving on page 16 - "turn left to Shantytown, right for the Buckshot Mine" - brought back memories of the signs in the villages of the old NES classic Castlevania II: Simon's Quest ("turn left for the Jam Wastelands, right for"...um...I forget. The signs were always "turn left for one place, turn right for another", though). For that matter, Wetherby Goode's joke "Intergalactic System of Managed Weather that would control temperature, regulate precipitation, harness winds, eliminate natural disasters, and promote global amity" reminded me of the weather-control system Climatrol in Phantasy Star II. I'm sure I'm getting a lot of bewildered looks by now. Ah, personal nostalgia, incomprehensible to anyone but the reminiscer. Moving on. (Before it was replaced, our house had a Climatrol furnace.)

• The "Snuggery"? The *"Snuggery"*? The "SNUGGERY"??!?

• Mooseville reveres the "Great Dune", hmmmmm? Sounds downright pagan. Even Masonic. (Especially the part about the Sand Giant.)

• Loved Qwilleran's carefully planned, meant-to-be-polite-and-subtle-but-instead-all-too-desperate hint-dropping in his efforts to convince Tess to leave. (How typical that each and every one of them should zoom right over Tess's head.)

• I understand Braun's reasoning in having Qwilleran keep a diary, and I sympathize with her intentions, but I don't think it works for the character. Qwill just doesn't seem the type to get that sweetly sentimental and introspective about his personal life (especially in view of his personal history) - he's more the "learn from it, move on, and deal with the present" type of guy. (Yes, we could cite The Cat Who Saw Red, but those were extenuating circumstances, and Qwill carried through in the end.)

• Yum Yum with the hummingbird was sweet. Yum Yum with her "baby" knitted kitten, as I noted in my review, was also sweet. This is one of the few books where, instead of doing things solely for the purpose of being cute and instead winding up merely cloying, Yum Yum does do genuinely cute things - innocently, without ulterior motive - and does indeed wind up adorable as a result.

• Continuing along the same lines, Qwilleran's visit to the retirement home, his kindly ways with the residents, and his inner speculation that his fondness for elderly ladies might be due to the fact that he never knew his own grandparents was both heart-warming (it's nigh-impossible these days to use that word in a genuine, positive sense, minuis sarcastic intent, but it's true) and intriguing. It begged further exploration.

• Is there really enough of a market for plastic plant rentals to support a whole business dedicated solely to that trade?

• The "Feeding the Chickens" float. All together, now - EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW. Wouldn't some sort of public health code prohibit the presence of mass amounts of fish guts on a parade float? Isn't that a more egregious affront to the parade's integrity and mockery of the holiday's import than mere candy-throwing?

• The whole bit about the ridiculously extensive smorgasbord of baked potato toppings was funny, even if the fad did die out in the late 80's.

• "He knew that Qwilleran liked to hear the story behind the story." Think about how unusual that sentence is; the narration always looks through the eyes of Qwilleran's perceptions of the supporting characters' personalitites, not the other way around. A very brief switch of perspective, but all the more intriguing for its rarity.

• A minor quibble with the start of chapter 8; it's Sunday morning, and, even though Qwill lives "400 miles north of everywhere", he's still able to get the Sunday New York Times right on Sunday morning. (Granted, it doesn't explicitly say it's the Sunday edition, but if you're not subscribing and only buying single copies, as Qwilleran is, the jam-packed Sunday issue is the one you're gonna shoot for and, most of the time, the only issue that small-town stores stock.) From personal experience, the Sunday issue of the Times never arrives in outlying areas until Monday at least.

• I found another Frobnitz in here. That's the third book in the row. I think the name is funny - heck, I named my website after it - but it's overused now. I enjoy running jokes, but not when they're run into the ground.

• Another instance of malaprop comedy - the "Ask Mrs. Gramma" column. The parody's too obvious. The humor's too blunt. This is below Qwilleran's usual snuff. (There wasn't any reason for the secrecy surrounding its authorship, either.) Braun should've modeled it after the style of the "Miss Manners" column. Judith Martin can be quite delicately, appropriately funny when she wants to be.

• All in all, in thinking over The Cat Who Saw Stars, I'm reminded of the stories the little old lady art critic for the Morning Rampage wrote - the one who attended the art shows and dutifully recorded what everyone was doing and wearing, but, in her attempts to be universally liked and not offend anyone, didn't write anything interesting or challenging about the art that everyone had come to see.

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