1:Unpalatables

[That is, things I can barely stand to talk about because, quite frankly, they gross me out.]

The year before I came to Western, I volunteered at an animal shelter in the area. I spent most of my time in the cat room, because they're quieter but fussier, and like to spill water and overturn litter boxes. Fun times. I never got clawed or bitten by a cat, though I have been scratched (mostly by jumpers) and nommed. Nothing too serious—a couple of band aids each time. My worst battle wound (lulz) came from a grey tabby named Sonny, who was an absolute sweetie pie, and I considered adopting. Anywho, he gashed my arm with his back foot when jumping down out of his cage one day. That one actually did bleed pretty bad, and I've still got a neat little scar from it. No biggie. Fine and groovy.

Until I heard about toxo. D:

Goddammit, cats.

Not cool--not cool.

I don’t like parasites; the idea or image at this point. I don’t like what a parasite is, in relation to me—what is does to me and my relations. Fuck off, flea—I’m not your world, and I’ve got a perfectly chummy relationship with mine that I don’t need you to interrupt. Parasites are still unpalatable to me in every form (even neopets form). If I had some sort of internal issue with my guts and whatnot, I could see medicine fixing it. Sure. I could see machines fixing it. Awesome. But parasites? No. Off. Now.

But what does off mean?

Say Gerald is a lethargic brooding character who, in the afternoons, scrawls poetry with one pale hand as he balances the weight of his body against the table. When he went for a walk with Louisette, she said she fancied him; he leaned against a tree and said he was short of breath and a bit dizzy. Louisette found this physical expression of his emotional response quite sexy. The whole town begins to shiver with talk of the enigmatic Gerald, who writes poetry in the afternoon with one slender, pale hand and wanders like one too heavy for this world. A marriage is arranged between himself and Louisette. Giddy and elated at having seemingly pulled this man from myth, his bride-to-be goes out of town for a couple months to make arrangements and whatnots until the wedding.

Gerald has a mess of hookworms in his gut. In the time between his engagement and his marriage, he manages to accidentally takes some Albendazole and cure (which seems an odd word here, but I’ll use it anyway) himself of his mess of worms. When Louisette returns, he walks up to the carriage with a bounce in his step. He helps her out with a pink and healthy hand. Although he is pleased to see her, pretty face that she is, he does not sway or claim a shortness of breath all evening. Perhaps he's even given up poetry, because he suddenly has the energy to do so much else. Louisette feels rebuffed. In the drawing room, Louisette fixes her eyes on Gerald and says, in a perplexed voice, “You are not yourself today.”

But what does this mean now? How much of Gerald’s character has been anemia and weakness, how much of Gerald, as Louisette and the town have known him, has been [the effects of] a bug? If she knew what it would take to get the old Gerald back, would she drop worms down his throat as he slept? What does she love, then? I will not say either or; I will not say she must love either Gerald or the parasite, because even if she does not fancy Gerald without the parasite, she also doesn’t fancy the parasite without Gerald, on account of ew.

I get a very ugly feeling when Master Abraham begins thinking of what use he can put Murr to, if his friend’s suspicions about the cat’s talents (or “clever tricks”) are true. It scrawls a very menacing image in my brain. What it cannot bend, it breaks—in this case, the enchantment of Abraham’s character. Although mysterious and weird in his ways, there is a certainty in his actions that I happily attributed to a sort of old and endearing wisdom. But this moment of fiendishness on page 78, when he imagines how easily he could squeeze a profit from his poor tomcat—it is as off-putting and disillusioning as when Murr succumbs to his cattishness and eats the fish head intended for Mina. Perhaps, as Jesse8162 suggests, the man and his cat are not so different. Still--I cannot help but prefer Murr to Abraham. I would like to say it is for more than the reason that he is a cat and Abraham is not, but I'm not sure that it is. If Abraham, by teaching Murr, has imprinted something of himself on the cat, then it is what exists in the places where there was no transfer that make Murr more endearing than his master.