There has been a great polemic in Italy since the stance by the Jesuit's review “Civiltà Cattolica” against animal-rights supporters. It has been written that “the man, since he is spiritual being, he is not only different from animals, but he is superior respect them and so he has rights animals do not have”. Reactions were very hard and just a prelate, evidently not Jesuit, has declared to the newspapers: “It will be opportune to make a present of a dog and a cat to the Jesuits, I'm sure they would change their minds “. Let's leave this polemic and concerning animals, let's state a fact: it seems that ours is a favourable time mainly for cats. Many old superstitions and devilries have been set aside, a branch of the food industry cares of their nourishing, and it's normal to see them on television spots making wool balls rolling. Even in spots, before diving their snout into the bow, cats are shot while walking along a piano keyboard. That confirms me into the conviction that he would be a pianist by nature. There's a relationship between cats and music since ever, if a painter as the Flemish David Teniers jr. (1610-1690) painted a “cats concert “ complete with score, and if a plenty of metaphors poet as Corrado Govoni (1884-1965) attributed “epileptic violins” to their nocturnal miaowing. Writing about cats is difficult. Likewise the moon, stars, clouds, flowers and swallows the domestic feline is a protagonist of the literature. The risk if that of repeating images that are already library footage: from the “pose of great Sphinxes laying at the bottom of loneliness “, to “mystic eyes dappling golden atoms “, as Charles Baudelaire sings in the “Flowers of the Evil “, to the eulogies of Pierre de Ronsard, Nicolas Boileau, Chateaubriand, Théophile Gautier, Maupassant, Apolinnaire, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Pablo Neruda, Carlo Dossi, Umberto Saba. There's also the example of Lope de Vega (1562-1635) who wrote “The catmachy”, a burlesque poem of nearly three thousand lines. It surprises that the names invented by the Spanish poet have not found lovers among the cats' friends, that none of them calls a female Zapaquilda and Marramaquiz or Miciful a male.

The truth is, as a cats' friend said, the poet Nobel awarded Thomas Stearns Eliot, that giving these names to those felines is an undertaking destined to failure. Only the cat himself knows its real own name, registered in heavens know which unfathomable register of births. Eliot suggested a conjecture: when we see a cat “soak in deep meditation”, it means that his mind is fixed in the contemplation of the “thought of his name “. That's why, if the dog has been defined as a “candidate to humanity “, it seems logic to presume that the cat is “candidate to divinity “, as ancient Egyptians considered him. If I think with nostalgia about the tabby that has lived at home for many years and I remind him as he was motionless on the television or on the arm rest of the armchair, I really see again him as “a counsellor”. The taught me at least two virtues, silence and patience: two virtues that became more precious and unusual than the “golden atoms “ shining at the bottom of his eyes.

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What I'm going to tell is not a sci-fi tale, but a real fact. For his birthday a fellow that we will call Mr. X, receives as a present a personal computer, and in few days the family life becomes hallucinatory. The man gets back from work, just says hello to his wife and sons, and places in front of the machine: those keys replace little by little all the rest: love, dialogue, amusement, newspapers, radio, movies, television. If he must communicate something like “Tomorrow I'll be out for lunch “ or “Buy me the shaving soap “, the man does not use anymore notes, but the message appears on the screen of the “personal”. An unreal silence wraps the house. And if his wife protests, Mr. X drops her a line about: “Do not disturb me. Learn the Basic and report me what you want on my calculator “, manifesting by the screen his electronic irritation. The story ended in front of a court for a divorce trial. The unhappy consort of Mr. X, as far as it is known, has learned Basic, but not even that was useful to tie up again the already dead dialogue. The good-bye was unavoidable. The computer was there, in a corner of the living room, as a symbol of an irreparable technological adultery. The lady resisted the temptation to hammer down the hated machine. Since she became expert of Basic, calmly she typed the last message for Mr. X: “My dear, I leave you forever. Meanwhile I write you my new address for the alimony payment“.

 

 

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