Another Great Cat Column

Jon Carroll, the world's greatest writer of cat columns, has graced the readers of the San Francisco Chronicle with yet another classic. Click on the headline for the full text; this is just an excerpt.

Bucket's Role In the Universe

JON CARROLL Monday, August 9, 1999

TRACY SAID TO ME last night: ``What we really need is a second cat.''

We have two cats, of course. For the benefit of all the Chronicle editors who hate every single cat column and make funny puffing noises with their cheeks when they see another one coming along, let me remind these cynical naysayers that my cats are named Archie and Bucket.

Let me say that the People want more cat columns. ``Enough with the political crapola already,'' they remark. Some people bookmark my column on the Web, thinking it's going to be a feline laffathon, and they are ever so irritated when Orrin Hatch and Barney Frank wander through the doors.

Thus: another fine circulation-building cat column.

We have two cats, but we need a second cat. Bucket, we have come to realize, is a third cat. Bucket is a fringe performer. Bucket lives on the edges. She does not come when called. Her domestic pleasures consist almost entirely of finding ever more obscure hiding places in which to nap away the warmer hours of the day.

Bucket has these weird sporadic surges of affection for her humans. She'll go for weeks merely nodding as she passes, and then all of a sudden she's in your lap purring like a steam engine, rolling kittenishly, demanding major hands-on attention. And just as you get a good rub going, she hears a distant bell -- the elves, the elves are calling! -- and she sprints away, not to be seen again for 14 hours.

Classic third cat behavior.

ARCHIE IS A first cat. Archie is the alpha cat. Archie would like to be the only cat. It's impossible to talk to Bucket in a cat-appropriate voice. ``There's the Bucket, the Bucket-boo, there's the Bucket,'' a human might say, and all of a sudden Archie is underfoot.

``Here's the Archie, here's the Archie-whatever, here I am now,'' he insists.

So, on the rare occasions when we interact with her, we have to speak to Bucket as though she were a visiting clergyman. ``Fine weather we're having to be sure and would you like a scone?'' we say in adult tones while scritching her under the neck. Archie, in another room, does not catch on.

SO WE HAVE a first cat and a third cat, and we need a numero two-o. We need a cat that can fulfill the duties of the first cat if for any reason he is unable to serve. We need a cat that appears to recognize us when we walk in the room and takes pleasure from the recognition…