I’m not going to talk about the execution of Saddam Hussein, because what is there to say? It’ done. Are things supposed to get better in Iraq now? Are we supposed to feel good about ourselves? Is this another milestone in the fight of good over evil? What is evil?
Instead, I’m going to talk about this Frequently Asked Question, one which certainly has no global ramifications, but is, you must admit, pretty funny, and gives me a chance to pay tribute to my cat, Barnaby, wherever he may be.
I rescued Barnaby back in 1995 from the arms of children that were dragging him around like a doll in the courtyard of the Oakland apartment complex where I was living at the time. It was a terrible neighborhood, and there were tons of cats living out of the garbage cans, proliferating and wreaking havoc. But there was definitely something different about Barnaby, he wasn’t a Tom cat like the others. He was clean, with beautiful colors and tiger-like markings. He was tall, not big, but tall, with a long tail and blue eyes. And he was nice: he let those children have their way with him, not like the garbage can felines who would bite you in a second. We figured that he must have been abandoned.
Barnaby adopted me and followed me to several apartments in several different cities and through several boyfriends, came with me back to my parents’, and still felt like he was mine after I’d come back from any trip. In 1998, Barnaby came with me to France. I took the trouble to get him the proper paperwork, pay the extra fee to the airline and to make sure I wouldn’t have a problem at customs. When I arrived, I remember looking around, trying to figure out where I was supposed to pick him up. Surely he wasn’t going to come in with the baggage? Then I saw a man carrying what I recognized as his carrying case. The guy walked up, put the case with Barns it in down in the middle of everything, and walked away. That was it. I was a bit horrified, but I grabbed him, grabbed my bags, and walked out of the airport. No one asked me for his papers.
And once again, Barnaby followed me to several different apartments and through a couple of different boyfriends. And the French were always impressed by him. They would say, “Qu’est-ce qu’il est joli. Et si haut sur ses pattes.” He was the big American kitty on the block, there was no getting around it. French cats are small and squirrelly, like most dogs here. But Barns was an original, he was exotic and made friends fast. And yes, people actually asked me, on more than one occasion, “est-ce que ton chat comprend le français ?” I would always say, “Well I think mostly he speaks cat, but…” But the truth is that he probably understood, “Ooh, look how cute you are,” in just about any language as long as it was said with one of those little baby-talk voices we all reserve for small cute things.
Just as I was finally taking a break from boyfriends and from moving around, just as I was getting ready to settle into a place of mine own and enjoy single life for awhile, Barnaby decided to go off his own as well. I don’t think he did it on purpose, although I can’t help thinking that he felt my need to be free of extra responsibilities. I left the door open while I was moving stuff in, and he fled to the attic. The attic was of course closed off to humans by a locked gate, and I trusted that he would eventually get bored and come back. But by the time he did get bored, he came down the stairs and then kept going, all the way down the seven flights of stairs and out to the street. I searched, I asked neighbors and the local shop owners, I put up flyers, rien. No Barns. Here in France they tattoo their animals so that if they’re picked up they can be traced back to their owners. Barnaby didn’t have a tattoo. My only hope is that he got picked up by some nice person or couple or family or whatever. At the time there was a whole gaggle of Romanians squatting the ground level of my building and a couple others in the neighborhood. The shop owner across the street crassly suggested that Barns might have ended up in a soup pot.
This is the point where I’m supposed to cleverly tie in the question, “What is evil?” But I couldn’t even begin to suggest that even if those squatters did serve Barns for dinner that they are somehow evil. The idea makes me sick and sad, but the image of their dirty kids running around without shoes, the women washing their dishes in the street because there was no running water in the space they occupied, the stink and the garbage that piled up, and the fact that they came all the way from Romania to live like that, that makes me sick and sad too. And while I try to think of something clever to say about how the hypocrisy of war makes me sick and sad too, I’m going to go look for some photos of Barns…
One hour and five photos later, every channel is still talking about the execution of Saddam and the situation in Iraq. Bush chose not to speak live, but sent the message that the violence surely isn’t over. Well, yeah. He attacks them, we attack him, they attack them, and everyone tries to take the moral high ground. I guess the better question is, “Who decides what evil is?” And, if everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else, hasn’t the devil won?