Random Thoughts on The Cat Who Sang for the Birds

Yeah, yeah, I know - it's rather odd to produce a Random Thoughts column for an old release. I re-read it recently for encyclopedia material, though, so here're my scattershot observations along the way.

• I might as well start off with an utterly pointless and vapid observation - It never occurred to me until its mention in Chapter 1, but now that I think of it, Qwill probably would look good in a black shirt. (Apparently, he hasn't worn much black in everyday casual wear, since Roger was rather surprised at the choice, and the shirt struck me as unusual as well.)

• The Spell Game was unqeustionably the book's jewel - fun even to read about, with the baseball motif so completely and cleverly integrated into every little detail in the proceedings - teams in uniforms and baseball caps, "pitcher" wordmasters, "umpire" judges, pinch-spellers, celebrity boxes, scorecards, a barbershop quartet and the national anthem (with everyone singing, a wonderful touch), right down to the hawkers selling programs, peanuts, and Cracker Jack. Braun really knew she'd found a good idea and ran with it, to smashing success.

• Y'know, the whole Mrs. Fish-Eye incident makes you appreciate what a horribly trying job teaching is. You do your level best and break your back to teach your students a useful skill, and, even with a student who turned out to be as decent a fellow as Qwill, you get at the very least (the very least, in these days of school shootings) called nasty names behind your back. When your pupils finally do realize the value of what you taught them - and, if you're lucky, the great pains taken to do so - they're years or entire decades removed from your class and unable to thank you anyway, leaving you devoid of even the most rudimentary gratitude for all your work. All in all, teaching's got to be one of the most thankless, least personally-satisfying professions out there.

• I note the revisionism in regards to Roger's personality in the scene at the Lois's in Chapter 1, attributing to him kindnesses - explaining away the natural origins of sounds in the night out in the country, etc. - that I specifically remember being extended by Nick Bamba. What I recall of the early Roger mostly consists of him giving out shifty, nervous, half-explained answers over at the Tourist Development Center and brooding over the sudden appearance of an out-of-towner costing him his underwater-exploration grant.

• And in regards to the subject he and Qwilleran were discussing at Lois's, the impact of faked automobile accidents on teenage drunk driving - there is none. (The sirens attract the kids' attention for about several seconds or so until they figure out that it's "Oh. The fake car crash." and walk right on, curiosity sated, to class.) And I do not mean to belittle the valiant efforts of the organizers of such events, but having attended a particularly prolific DWI-wise high school in booze-happy Montana, I speak from a depressing accumulation of first-hand experience. The kids who drink and drive only think of the here and now and themselves - a correlation between their actions and their consequences, especially concerning actions scheduled to take place several whole hours from the present, would never enter their heads. We had a car-crash reenactment (along with other similarly-themed events to which we became equally inured) at least once a year. We still reliably averaged a couple of fatal or at the very least severely-debilitating crack-ups annually.

• The Pickax Public Library has a logo? And it sells tote bags? In the old days, they would've given you a brown paper sack in which to carry your borrowed books home.

• Only in Pickax would being called a "Witch" be a great slanderous insult. Outside Moose County, it'd sound downright quaint.

• Since when would "Private Drive" signs deter Moose County busybodies?

• Y'know, looking at the description of Onoosh's restaurant in Chapter 3, I think the place would've felt more real to me had it been a bit more cobbled-together, less polished. Hammered brass tables and beaded lamps are a little too professional and not wholly realistic for what Onoosh could afford with her start-up money. Onoosh's charmingly earnest ever-present chef's toque is a little more in line with what I'd expect.

• Personally, I've had the opposite experience from Qwill - I've always found that ideas flow more freely to me when I'm up and pacing rather than in the "traditional newsman's position" of sitting down with feet slightly elevated. (To be honest, ideas actually seem to flow most freely when I'm out doing yard work or taking a shower or doing anything where I lack easy access to a pen and a sheet of paper with which to record them.)

• Qwilleran on his bird garden - "'Small birds throw the seeds out of the feeder; large birds pick them off the ground, but the squirrels try to muscle in. The politics and economics of a bird garden are more complicated than I care to comtemplate.'" Those aren't quite the politics or economics of our little bird-feeding haven. The small birds throw five or six seeds on the ground for every one they eat themselves, the large birds gobble whatever they can, and the squirrel hops on top of the feeder and antagonizes our Labrador retriever.

• The mention of Qwill, Arch, Polly, and Mildred having ventured Down Below for weekend shopping, ballgame-attending, and theater-appreciating excursions greatly piqued my interest. I think I'd find it greatly interesting to follow the foursome through one of their outings.

• Speaking of Millie, I would never think that she would be the champion of an entity as sterile, uppity, and unwelcoming as the Art Center. It's the total antithesis of her character. (Heavens, Beverly Forfar wouldn't let someone like her in the doors were she a run-of-the-mill prospective patron.)

• I do have to say, though, that the Art Center's grand opening boasted some interesting exhibits from what we saw. I would've liked to have seen the torn-paper art and the pay-per-word calligraphy demonstrations.

• I still say bedpans aren't intrinsically amusing in themselves, and the other items in Qwill's poem aren't all that interesting or nostalgia-inducive, at least as described.

• Line That Made Me Smile #1: "Qwilleran said, 'If I could be any artist who ever lived, I'd be Winslow Homer.'" Winslow Homer, known so well for his paintings of the sea. Qwill still likes sailboats. (And I must say that Homer's style is an extraordinarily perceptive match for Qwill's persona - simple and understated in presentation, but a thousand details fabricating a rich, textured, moving story, the accumulation of so much life lived frozen at an ordinary and yet somehow all-telling moment in time, beneath a seemingly unremarkable scene. One can easily see the qualities in such work that would appeal to Qwill - and those in him (and Braun) which they reflect.)

• Line That Made Me Smile #2: Arch's response to the above line - "'I'd be Charles Schultz.'"

• Line That Made Me Smile #3: "Equally rewarding was Qwilleran's introduction to Duff Campbell's lighthouses, which he had previously considered local landmarks to be sold to vacationers as souvenirs, like the Cape Hatteras lighthouse or the Eiffel Tower." "Like the Cape Hatteras lighthouse". Spoken like a true Carolinian, Lilian. ^_^

• While I'm on the subject of little tidbits in the book I enjoyed - Welcome Throwbacks to Cat Who...s Past: 1) The resurfacing of the venerable hats-on/hats-off Moose County eatery distinction mentioned in Qwill and Joe's trek to Chet's Barbecue. 2) No florid front-page obituary suitable for framing, though. Dang. 3) Polly posing for her portrait in a Windsor chair. Though I still object to the whole portrait subplot, I find the reference all the more satisfying in its obscurity - Mrs. McGuffey, the antique dealer from On and Off who theorized that "everyone resembles some sort of chair", saw Qwilleran as a Yorkshire Windsor.

• Unwelcome Throwbacks - 1) A comment from Chapter 13, sparked by Qwill's admiration of the pink suit Polly's wearing - "He had disliked the insipid pink worn by the late Iris Cobb" - "insipid"? Regardless of her (harmless and charming) sartorial tastes, how cringe-worthily rude to mention "Iris" and "insipid" in the same sentence! (All the more so for me considering that I couldn't think of Qwill on his spiffy new Silverlight bike without thinking of Mrs. Cobb's motherly admonishments of "you really ought to get a ten-speed, Mr. Q" in Played Post Office. It's rather sad on several fronts, really - not the least in Qwill's change of values from the time of Post Office, when he cherished his beloved rickety old bike.) 2) Qwill's comments on the library - "'You have to admit it's a grim old building, and the chairs are too hard! Modern libraries go in for color, comfort, and a friendly look. Fran Brodie could give you some ideas.'" It couldn't help but start me thinking that if this Qwilleran were around at the time of Played Brahms, he would've spearheaded of the committee to tear up and wallpaper over his beloved old grimy Press Club. (And an interior decorator for a library? I can imagine Moose County's taxpayers would go in for that.)

• Would it be physically possible for a parrot to be as articulate as Jasper? I've never had one myself (though there was a friend of a family a long time ago who had one who'd regularly escape from his cage and house, fly way up into the treetops, then get too scared to fly down and scream "Help! Help! Call the cops! Call the cops!"), but Jasper's seemingly complete command of all the syllables of the English language appears suspect. There seem to be just some sounds that a parrot's mouth and beak wouldn't be able to voice.

• It's amusing and somehow appropriate that a gallery in Lockmaster is the primary outlet for the works of Pickax artist Duff Campbell, which portray the Moose County landmark shafthouses. Moose County, at least in this case, doesn't appreciate its own real cultural treasures.

• Elizabeth on her slightly upscale gift shop's clientèle, spinning a half-metaphor for rich city-dwelling vacationers' attitude toward vacationing in the country - "My best customers come during the week - Chicagoans vacationing at the Grand Island club. They come over here in their yachts, have a drink at the Shipwreck Tavern, and lunch at the Nasty Pasty. They think it's all so quaint! Then they come in here and tell me about it and spend some money."

• Speaking of Elizabeth's shop, did the copious amount of merchandise that once belonged to her father or grandparents or great-grandparents strike anyone else? Her antique/gift shop bears a striking resemblance to the one in the Chevy Chase movie Funny Farm run by the matron who always had at the ready a long, involved personal story of nostalgia attached to any item a customer was interested in and who would couldn't bear to part with any of the family's old treasures in that respect. (How can Liz replenish her stock?)

• And Qwill's purchase within said shop - a chess set in jet and cinnabar? I'm glad Liz's supposed ancestral chess set found its home with a dear friend of hers, but cinnabar - what a horrible choice for a chess set. It's this hideously gaudy burnt-orange color and looks for all the world like '70's Formica.

• Qwill takes out The Whiteness of White to show to Celia, then pours them both some cranberry juice. Argh! Argh! Was anyone else out there crigning at the looming prospect of imminent stain disaster?

• From Chapter 12, on Sarah Plensdorf - "She was an older woman from a good family, well-educated but rather prim." I never saw Sarah as prim - a bit subdued at most, but not anytyhing approaching any degree of uppityness. I sense I like Sarah better than Qwill and Braun do, but still. (I was, by the way, glad that the story remembered to have her, such an ardent baseball fan, present behind the scenes at the Spell Game.)

• And speaking of the ostrich ordered by Qwilleran on that date in question with Polly, who questions the "legality" of eating ostrich, labeling it "rather untoward" and is reassured by the waitstaff that the birds were "raised on a farm especially for the better restaurants" - well, I think the Palomino Paddock is trying to pull one over on its 400-miles-north-of-everywhere customers. Ostrich is not really all that upscale - there are several farms up here in Montana that raise the birds (and emus as well) as livestock, and ostrich meat (and ostrich-oil hand lotion, saw that in a store as well) isn't all that hard to find. It's not to the point where our fast-food places are offering McOstrich burgers, but the restaurant in the story is obviously playing up the meat's exoticness with no correlation to its actual rarity. To sound like a grumpy old Pickaxian, it's another case of Lockmaster putting on airs.

• Feeding butterflies flowers frosted with sugar water is such a unreally lovely concept. (And from eating sugared flowers to drinking stale beer - sounds like a natural progression to me.)

• Because too many people were asking to buy it, Beverly had to shutter away the carving Qwill bought in her office away from the exhibit, but she won't let Qwill take it home because the exhibit isn't over. Yeah, that's committee-woman logic.

• The Rikers have an Indian Village condo too, now? Has anyone noticed how much Indian Village is getting to be like the much-mocked Muggy Swamp of Down Below - and finds it even more disturbing that most of our heroes are living at least part-time there now?

• What a monumental jerk Celia's son is! To order your seventy-year-old mother to uproot herself from a place where she is perfectly happy to come and be your domestic servant - yeah, no wonder your wife left you, sweetheart. I guess that Clayton is a prime example of recessive genes at work.

• And while we're on the subject of disrespect, did anyone else find it rather disrespectful for Rollo to be going after Maude's mailbox post so soon after her death?

• Thornton on the proposed new memorial park: "'I've been working with bereaved families for three decades, and I don't see they're going to derive much comfort from four acres of neatly-clipped grass! What they want is a ten-foot Celtic cross or a slab of granite with some words of solace chipped into the polished face - a visible memorial they can visit and talk to and point out to their grandchildren - plus, maybe, a memorial bench where they can sit and meditate.'" Um, Thornton, that's the H & H Granite salesman talking; pretty headstones can't give the bereaved solace, either. What the bereaved want no craftsman can sell them.

• I find it appropriate but so sad and pathetic that Phoebe would choose to open her despairing account of her boyfriend's abuse and murderous misdeeds and her timid but desperate plea for help to Qwilleran with a cheery "Hi!".

• Why did Qwill have a key to the Art Center? Did I miss something?

• And the #1 line that I absolutely cannot believe got through editing, from G. Allen Barter on Phoebe's confession - "'Could she possibly be a little wacky from being punched?'" Yeah, you know them wacky battered women, never know themselves what's flitting around in their dizzy little heads. I find it seriously disturbing that this comment is allowed to go unchallenged. In fact, look at Barter's other dialogue in the ending scenes - "It's morally wrong to cheat such a woman, but it's actually only a sharp business practice..." "There's a certain amount of coincidence, hearsay, and guesswork in your story.'" Both his words at face value and his nonchalance and lack of concern in the face of Ramsbottom's extensive wrongdoing reveal him to be quite a cold, self-centered person.

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