Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / Don’t Feed the Alligator, Do Adopt the Cat
Transcript
- 0:04From the On Air Across America newsroom.
- 0:07I'm Alex Ross and this is your Morning News update.
- 0:10The Trump administration says it cancelled approximately 315,000
- 0:15Affordable Care Act policies covering about 760,000 people.
- 0:20Officials cited suspected fraudulent enrollment and
- 0:23unresolved eligibility records. The administration projects $2.2
- 0:27billion in cancelled subsidy payments.
- 0:30Health policy specialists say more information is needed to
- 0:33determine whether eligible consumers were mistakenly
- 0:36removed. the United States and Britain have launched an
- 0:39American Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo from the Royal Navy's
- 0:43experimental uncrewed submarine X5 Excalibur.
- 0:47The September 13th test in Scotland evaluated whether an
- 0:51American weapon could operate aboard an allied autonomous
- 0:54vessel. President Trump has signed an
- 0:57Arctic security agreement with Denmark and Greenland.
- 1:00It allows expanded American military facilities while
- 1:03retaining Danish sovereignty and Greenlandic self determination.
- 1:07Transportation officials say a new air traffic control system
- 1:11will provide multiple communications routes.
- 1:13Following Monday's outage, approximately 9500 flights were
- 1:17delayed or cancelled. In baseball, Houston shut out
- 1:21the Mariners 7 to nothing and moved into a tie with Texas atop
- 1:25the American League West. For the On Air Across America
- 1:28network, I'm Alex Ross. I push that button, I can talk.
- 2:00Well, good morning, good evening, good afternoon.
- 2:02Wherever you are, whatever you do.
- 2:03A lot of things happening in the world today, most of them are
- 2:06far beyond our control, you might say.
- 2:09So perhaps it's time we took a pause and thought about life and
- 2:12thought about the laws of gravity.
- 2:14Lesbian bars, alligators and cats.
- 2:21Don't touch that dial. Just try to hear me out.
- 2:23For a while there was a bar. There is a bar founded upon the
- 2:28admirable principle that absolutely everyone should feel
- 2:32safe, welcomed, affirmed, accommodated, validated and
- 2:37wherever possible, apologized to.
- 2:41Unfortunately, they neglected to include amongst those protected
- 2:45groups the actual landlords, and when management discovered that
- 2:50ideological purity is not acceptable as a legal tender,
- 2:54they relax precisely one rule. And this produced the sort of
- 2:58calm, thoughtful discussion for which social media is justly
- 3:03celebrated. This brings us to an old rule of
- 3:06wildlife management and progressive community
- 3:09organizing. If you feed the alligator, it
- 3:12does not become grateful, it simply concludes that you are on
- 3:18the menu. A loqui conicio, Stand up.
- 3:21Tell those who oppose liberty don't tread on me.
- 3:35You want to tell you this is like the third take this
- 3:37morning? Sorry, had some technical issues
- 3:39and stuff so I didn't sleep well last night.
- 3:43I got a very low sleep score according to my according to my
- 3:46program. But what else is new?
- 3:50So up in Massachusetts there is a bar, It's called the Last
- 3:53Ditch Bar and Arts Venue. It's located in Greenfield, MA,
- 3:57which I did not know until yesterday.
- 3:59Is apparently this is what I'm told by people who know.
- 4:04It is apparently Pride Alley of the United States that this is
- 4:08the focal point of the LGBTQ plus AI community, not San
- 4:14Francisco. Is is Greenfield, MA.
- 4:17Didn't know that. This bar in particular is
- 4:23relatively new. It it it it didn't open that
- 4:26long ago, but it specifically identifies as a lesbian bar.
- 4:30It was created for their words, not mine.
- 4:33Quote dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, whatever
- 4:39that means, and their friends UN quote.
- 4:43They also had a policy because this is what you do.
- 4:46They had a policy of welcoming people into their bar who could
- 4:50not actually pay for services, drinks, food, whatever.
- 4:57And they had a second policy that specifically excluded the
- 5:02police. The police may not come in here,
- 5:05didn't know you could do that, but apparently you can.
- 5:09Conversely, they also provided free food, clothing, Narcan,
- 5:14fentanyl test strips, and sexual health information because by
- 5:18now in the 21st century, people don't know this stuff.
- 5:25The kicker is that they maintained A strictly a very
- 5:31strict COVID policy. Yes, it's 2026.
- 5:37I know that you know that the last Ditch bar in Connecticut
- 5:42apparently doesn't know that in 2026 they have a very strict
- 5:49COVID policy. They require all these people
- 5:52who are coming in dikes, transsexual gender freaks,
- 5:54workers and their friends. They require them to wear a
- 5:58properly fitted KN 95 mask or better quote at all times.
- 6:08This is 2026, September of 2026. Now, this is not your
- 6:15conventional neighborhood Tavern suddenly displaying
- 6:19indifference. This isn't.
- 6:21This isn't any of that. But all of this effort on their
- 6:27half to generate goodwill is in effect feeding the alligators.
- 6:32Follow me here. When you have a policy, a set of
- 6:37policies like that, who are you actually trying to please?
- 6:42Who are you actually trying to serve?
- 6:49The general idea of a business is you're trying to, you know,
- 6:52make money, provide service. Well, they got half of that.
- 6:57Or did they? Because they're sure not making
- 7:00any money. In fact, the person that owns
- 7:02the bar supposedly has a massive small Business Association loan
- 7:08for the bar and is sleeping in her car because she can't afford
- 7:12to live anywhere else and she can't make the payments on the
- 7:14bar. It's probably going to get shut
- 7:16down because unlike the lesbians, dykes, transsexuals,
- 7:21gender freaks, workers and their friends and not the police who
- 7:24are all wearing K9 K 95 masks, creditors generally don't care
- 7:28about that crap. They want to get paid.
- 7:31The bar is losing money. Customers were not showing up.
- 7:36Why weren't they showing up? Well, I don't know.
- 7:41They couldn't pay for one thing. That's probably one reason.
- 7:45And if you're getting all free food, all free, whatever, what's
- 7:48the what's the quality of that stuff?
- 7:51Oh, and you're again, you're going to a bar.
- 7:55I I don't know why you go to bars.
- 7:56I don't go to bars that often, but when I go to a bar, I'm
- 7:59going there for a specific reason.
- 8:02I want to relax, I want to watch a ball game, I want to have some
- 8:05good, some good eats or whatever.
- 8:09And if you're not getting any of that, what difference does it
- 8:12make how woke the bar is, how, how accommodating it is?
- 8:17It doesn't. At that point, you're just kind
- 8:19of going, well, why am I here? Customers were staying away from
- 8:23the bar. They're not showing up, so
- 8:24they're not getting paid. They're not paying anything.
- 8:27The bar employees were not being paid.
- 8:29Bills are mounting. And like I said, the the
- 8:32remaining owner there were original 3 has incurred massive
- 8:37personal debt trying to do this. So the bar owner decided that
- 8:43Saturday nights, one night a week, one night a week,
- 8:49Saturdays would become Are you ready?
- 8:53You're sitting down. September 2026 Saturday night
- 8:59would become mask optional. In other words, you don't have
- 9:05to wear AKN 95 mask, but only on Saturday nights.
- 9:10Now they didn't prohibit masks, they didn't say you can't wear
- 9:13one. They didn't abandoned all of
- 9:15their what they call precautions, they merely allowed
- 9:20customers the ability to decide for themselves one night a week
- 9:24whether they would wear a mask. Now you and I sit back and we go
- 9:30jeez OK remember, Remember when COVID was actually a thing and
- 9:38you could decide for yourself towards the end of it if you
- 9:41would wear a mask or not? How many of us quickly ditched
- 9:44the idiot masks? We are literally six years on
- 9:50from that and these people are still clinging to this.
- 9:54Management decided one night a week, one night for customers
- 9:58who aren't paying anything, who aren't showing up, could decide
- 10:02not to wear masks. Unless you think I'm making all
- 10:06this up, that there's no way this is really happening.
- 10:08I'm I'm telling you folks, I've read the Greenfield Reporter
- 10:12article came out September 22nd yesterday.
- 10:19The response to the owners changing of this rule was not
- 10:23yay finally we can show up and not have to wear a mask.
- 10:27It wasn't it wasn't. Oh thank God.
- 10:29Oh I hope people make good choices.
- 10:32No, none of that. Remember the community you're
- 10:36dealing with here. The responses accuse the owner
- 10:41of being Are you ready? Ablest eugenics, eugenicists, In
- 10:47other words, trying to kill people complicit in a mass
- 10:50disabling event, killing disabled people for convenience
- 10:54and revenue. And one commenter said or
- 10:59reportedly said that she hoped or they hoped because who knows
- 11:04that the venue, the last ditch bar that this person owns and is
- 11:07going into massive debt. They hoped that the bomb would
- 11:10the the bar would be firebombed. But how does a dispute about
- 11:16masking, voluntary masking 6 years after COVID at a private
- 11:20bar reach into the language of murder, eugenics, and political
- 11:24violence in Greenfield MA? I keep saying Connecticut but
- 11:32it's Massachusetts. They have recorded 0 COVID cases
- 11:36for the last two months. Again, how many did they have
- 11:40before that don't know, but they treat that as well.
- 11:43We haven't had any new cases for two months.
- 11:47But the critics of the removal of the compulsory map, by the
- 11:50way, this is the only place that requires this as an act of
- 11:54violence. Now you could have a legitimate
- 12:01position here. As many of you know, Rob, my
- 12:02right door partner, his wife is immunocompromised.
- 12:06They reasonably avoid crowded, unmasked indoor spaces because
- 12:11there could be a danger to his wife.
- 12:12And that makes sense and and no problem with it.
- 12:14But but Rod, it's not out beating people over the head
- 12:18saying if you don't wear a mask, you're trying to kill disabled
- 12:22people for convenience and revenue.
- 12:26The individuals also concerned here do not necessarily create
- 12:29an indefinite obligation for every private establishment to
- 12:32require N 95 masks. In other words, the fact that
- 12:36you want to wear one of these things does not make it
- 12:41incumbent on the ownership that they have to do so.
- 12:45One personal risks, one person's personal risk becomes a measure
- 12:49of moral worth. In this case, compromise becomes
- 12:52impossible because you're forcing me to do it this way.
- 12:55And things went downhill from there.
- 12:59As you can imagine, two days after the bar issued this
- 13:03policy, which was in early September, the bar issued an
- 13:07apology, an apology for the supposedly quote UN quote
- 13:14passive and dismissive announcement.
- 13:16They promised greater sensitivity towards the quote
- 13:19most intersectional of us. And this is what I'm talking
- 13:24about. When you feed the alligators,
- 13:27this is what happened. Instead of saying quit being
- 13:31stupid or ignoring the trolls, as as you know, becomes the the
- 13:38the the policy that you should be pursuing online, the bar
- 13:41instead concluded that they had that Oh my God, we've caused
- 13:45harm. And it then turned around and
- 13:48adopted the very vocabulary that its critics were using.
- 13:51And that affirmed the more critics moral authority.
- 13:54You just handed it over to them. Now you'd think, OK, well, they
- 13:57apologized, right? They, they, they said, Oh my
- 14:01God, we're sorry. We didn't mean to randomly kill
- 14:05disabled people. We didn't mean to be
- 14:07eugenicists. We didn't mean to be uncaring.
- 14:10Right. Oh, OK, You apologized.
- 14:12Great. No problem.
- 14:14No, the alligator is still hungry.
- 14:18And immediately the critics of this policy change started
- 14:23fighting other offenses. Because when you accept a
- 14:27framework in which any unmet preference can be reclassified
- 14:30as harm, there's no point at which at which restitution is
- 14:36complete. Every path became an
- 14:39intersectional offense. The bar owners, instead of
- 14:44saying get the hell out of here and pay your bill, decided to
- 14:50have a community meeting, a community meeting.
- 14:54A They decided to have a community meeting partially on
- 14:58Zoom because that always goes well.
- 15:04Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
- 15:07At the community meeting, Of course, masks had to be worn.
- 15:11Remote participation was available via Zoom.
- 15:15They brought in designated mediators, QQ jazz music here.
- 15:22Speakers were supposed to be given equal time, and the
- 15:26meeting began with a calming breathing exercise.
- 15:36And anybody who made online comments was those were to be
- 15:39read aloud in the room. The problem is, of course, that
- 15:43every accommodation that the bar made became an Ave. for attack.
- 15:47Hold an in person meeting. You're excluding those unable or
- 15:51unwilling to attend. Provide Zoom access to the
- 15:55meeting. Virtual participants were still
- 15:57claiming that they were being dismissed.
- 16:00They employed A licensed therapist as the mediator for
- 16:04this meeting. Not making this up, folks.
- 16:07The immediate attack was the therapist was characterized as
- 16:10an unsafe agent of the state. Oh, she's a mandated reporter.
- 16:15We're all batshit crazy. So she's going to report us and
- 16:18the state's going to come and take us away.
- 16:22They asked participants to quote, step away from
- 16:25righteousness. And of course, as soon as the
- 16:29mediator said that she was accused of being a white
- 16:33mediator and centering her white feelings, they wanted to let the
- 16:40mediators wanted to let the bar owner explain, hey, what?
- 16:42This is what's going on? And instead of saying, oh, my
- 16:45God, we didn't realize we were taking advantage of you.
- 16:49Her weeping was condemned as, quote, racist emotional
- 16:53manipulation. And when they invited the most
- 16:59vocal critic to have another meeting, that critic then
- 17:02described that invitation as, quote, a racist demand for
- 17:07unpaid labor. The apology, The initial, Then
- 17:12they issued another apology. The apology, It accomplished
- 17:16nothing. The owner says she's been living
- 17:19in her car for six months, working 4 jobs, ruining her
- 17:22credit and carrying responsibility for a $50,000
- 17:25business loan on this bar. And her hardship wasn't just
- 17:29merely dismissed by these people, it became evidence
- 17:32against her. Wipe them they tears, they said.
- 17:38I don't even know what that means.
- 17:39It's not even grammatically correct.
- 17:40Wipe they them tears. Centering her own feelings.
- 17:44This is about you, not us. You're, you're running a bar for
- 17:47us. And Oh my God, the central, the
- 17:54central contradiction in intersectional politics across
- 17:57the board, folks, the rhetoric promises universal compassion,
- 18:01but compassion is distributed according to an ideological
- 18:04hierarchy. Personal suffering may be
- 18:07acknowledged, dismissed, or weaponized depending on where
- 18:11the sufferer quote UN quote is placed within that hierarchy.
- 18:16The owner is permitted by these people to sacrifice for the
- 18:19community, but not permitted to invoke that sacrifice for her
- 18:23own defense. The bar was fundamentally
- 18:28problematic to begin with. Too few paying customers,
- 18:32patrons admitted without paying a cover charge workers without
- 18:36pay thousands of dollars in overdue rent and large
- 18:39outstanding and a an owner who was working her butt off to to
- 18:42try and make this impossible thing work.
- 18:48But it's because they began with that extremely narrow identity
- 18:51based mission and then narrowed it even further through strict
- 18:56masking, political exceptions and and expectations and
- 19:01judgements about which public figures are are acceptable or
- 19:04not. Even as the bar faces financial
- 19:07collapse, they continue to identify reasons to eject, to
- 19:11reject ideas, customers, entertainers, and even potential
- 19:15sources of revenue. It's the alligator theory,
- 19:18folks. If you encounter an alligator
- 19:20and feed it, hoping that the alligator will leave you alone,
- 19:24it won't. The alligator does not see the
- 19:27food as a peace offering. It sees that, oh, there's food
- 19:30there. And the same dynamic applies
- 19:33here. In this dynamic, they made an
- 19:35accusation, the the accused apologized and granted A
- 19:39concession. Oh my God, you're right.
- 19:41I'm so sorry for what we did. The concession confirms the
- 19:45accusers authority and a new demand follows.
- 19:48It's never enough when you're dealing with crazy people, it's
- 19:52never enough. The more you try to accommodate,
- 19:57the more you try to please them, the more whatever you want to
- 20:00do, the further in the hole you go.
- 20:06They could have said, hey, we understand some of you are
- 20:08concerned about COVID. I don't know why but you are.
- 20:12And you may prefer mass gatherings Saturday evenings
- 20:16have to be mask optional because we can't remain financially
- 20:19viable under this policy. But instead, no, they made this
- 20:23ideological self indictment apology and said, oh, we
- 20:28surrender to you. The bar devoted itself to to
- 20:32serving a community divine by increasingly elaborate
- 20:35categories of identity, vulnerability and exclusion.
- 20:40This is the thing people forget. I don't care how much you say
- 20:42we're inclusive. You're not.
- 20:44By making these divisions, you are excluding people.
- 20:48And when those categories came into conflict, there was a
- 20:50shared Prince. There was no shared principle of
- 20:52resolving them. There was only a competition
- 20:54over who could be the most butthurt over it.
- 20:59If you feed the alligator today, it does not become your friend,
- 21:01folks. It returns tomorrow because
- 21:04you've just taught it where the food is.
- 21:07The answer is not cruelty, indifference, or refusal to help
- 21:10others. The even if that's what they
- 21:12were doing. The answer is to recognize that
- 21:14compassion must have limits. Disagreement is not violence,
- 21:18and appeasement is not peace. Don't feed the alligators,
- 21:26because if you do, they will come back to bite you right in
- 21:31the butt. cats.
- 22:04A lot of cats. They live in a junkyard and
- 22:08belong to something called the Jellicle Tribe, because
- 22:11apparently cats who hang around a dumpster at night didn't have
- 22:15sufficient theatrical dignity. Once a year, the Jellicles
- 22:20gather for the Jellicle Ball, during which their ancient
- 22:23leader, Old Deuteronomy, we will choose one lucky cat to ascend
- 22:27to the heavy side layer and be reborn into a new life.
- 22:32Why? Because TS Eliot wrote poems
- 22:36about cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber owned a piano and nobody stopped
- 22:40them. And now, for no rational reason,
- 22:42Dave is obsessed with cats. You have been warned.
- 22:51Welcome back to Zai Dave. Join the show Text machine
- 22:54209565 Dave e-mail Dave at the Dave bowmanshow.com.
- 22:58And yes, I have become obsessed both with the musical cats and
- 23:03cats in general. My wife wants a cat.
- 23:07She keeps saying this over again.
- 23:09I've been married to Cami for 17 years.
- 23:11She's always had cats. This is one of those rare
- 23:14occasions where we've got a few months without a cat.
- 23:16So she's made it clear through Henson ideas that she wants a
- 23:22cat. Apparently Andrew Lloyd Webber
- 23:26already explained the consequences of having a cat.
- 23:29It's a simple domestic request. Until you study that musical and
- 23:35you understand that this is insane.
- 23:39Like I'm not anti cat by any stretch of imagination.
- 23:42I've owned cats myself. I, I actually kind of like cats
- 23:46because they're so indifferent to me.
- 23:51I used to have a cat, you know, the dumbest cat in the world
- 23:54used to come in here. That cat has since, you know,
- 23:56crossed the Rainbow Bridge and gone on its way.
- 23:58But I don't mind cats. I don't necessarily feel one way
- 24:07or the other. What I don't like about cats,
- 24:09and I'll be honest with you, is I, I, I have a real issue with
- 24:12litter boxes, man, I really do. And I'm not doing it.
- 24:16And I've made that clear. I'll pet the cat, I'll feed the
- 24:19cat, which is sometimes not all that enjoyable either.
- 24:23But I am not cleaning up after the cat.
- 24:25That's not happening. So this is not a new desire on
- 24:30Cammy's part. This is, this is something that
- 24:32she always wants. She hasn't said this yet, but
- 24:38I'm waiting for it to say let's go to the shelter and look at
- 24:40cats because nobody ever just goes to look at cats.
- 24:44And of course, once she picks out a name for a cat at the
- 24:46shelter, it's a done deal. Soon we will be informed or I
- 24:50will be informed that we have adopted 1 and that the decision
- 24:53that she made was mutual and I agreed with it.
- 24:57Now look, my investigation into this whole thing, of course,
- 25:01begins with the musical cats, which is insane.
- 25:05OK, look, I'm a musical guy, as you know, the musical Cats is,
- 25:14it's incomprehensible. It actually is.
- 25:18The principal source, of course, for this is TS Eliot's Old
- 25:21Possum Book of Practical Cats, which if you're of my age, you
- 25:25know, not through Andrew Lloyd Webber, but through Logan's Run.
- 25:29Because when Logan and Jessica 5 reach the old capital, they meet
- 25:33the old man there, played by Peter Ustinov, who is
- 25:37completely, by the way, I don't know if you knew this or not,
- 25:39completely making up his dialogue.
- 25:40They, they had written no real dialogue for him.
- 25:42He was just making stuff up. And so he starts quoting TS
- 25:47Eliot's book, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
- 25:52He starts talking about cats. And of course, Jessica and Logan
- 25:55have never seen Cats before, so they don't know what this whole
- 25:58thing is. And Andrew Lloyd Webber read
- 26:00this book and decided, hey, I need to make a musical of this.
- 26:03It's a dancing, elaborate costumes, no conventional plot
- 26:09that anyone can explain without sounding delirious.
- 26:12Follow me here. In case you haven't seen it,
- 26:14here is the basic plot of the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd
- 26:18Webber. Group of cats called the
- 26:20Jellica. Cats gather for their annual
- 26:23Jellicle Ball. Each cat then introduces itself
- 26:28at considerable length. Now, this isn't just an
- 26:32introduction. This is.
- 26:33This is right up there with the old TV show Queen for a Day.
- 26:36Yeah. I don't know if any of you
- 26:37remember that. I've only seen it in reruns.
- 26:40The idea of Queen for a Day was you would get 3 women who had
- 26:43pathetic lives and you would put them on television to tell their
- 26:46story about why their life was so pathetic.
- 26:48The first woman would come out and go, you know, my, my husband
- 26:51lost his fingers in the accident, the mill, and we
- 26:53haven't been able to eat since then and blah, blah, blah.
- 26:55And everybody would go, oh, they'd applaud.
- 26:58Yeah, her life is pathetic. And then they bring out the next
- 27:00person. Then the next person would talk
- 27:02about how, you know, her, her children were radioactively
- 27:06contaminated by the accident of the uranium mine.
- 27:09And, you know, now they've mutated and they have flippers
- 27:12and fins and everybody go, oh, that's even, that's even better,
- 27:16meaning worse. Her life is even more pathetic.
- 27:19And then you'd get to the third person who would have some story
- 27:21about how she used to be queen of Spain or something.
- 27:24And, you know, there was a revolt and she lost.
- 27:27It was, it was pathetic television.
- 27:29It really was. But the same thing kind of
- 27:32happens here. Each cat gets up and and
- 27:34introduces themselves as, as Lloyd Webber puts it, what
- 27:38they're really doing is they're telling their their story to Old
- 27:41Deuteronomy, who has to choose one of them.
- 27:43Only one gets to go up to heaven and become get reincarnated and
- 27:49have a new life as a cat. And so he's trying to pick the
- 27:52most deserving, which is really the most pathetic cat.
- 27:55And these cats sing these songs for far too long and Old
- 28:02Deuteronomy listens to their case and, and eventually he's
- 28:05going to choose one. That cat receives a new life and
- 28:11we never get an explanation. We never.
- 28:14The play never explains why the cats want to be re reincarnated.
- 28:21It's a 3 hour homeowners association meeting conducted in
- 28:24a landfill. That's what it is.
- 28:26It has no discernible plot beyond that, whatever you want
- 28:31to do with it. And of course, the bigger
- 28:33problem is that it's even the people who were producing it
- 28:38when Lloyd Rebel was writing it was were baffled by it because
- 28:42they kept asking, So is this about British politics?
- 28:45Is this is that cat? Does Rayleigh, is that cat
- 28:48Margaret Thatcher? And he's like, no, they're just,
- 28:50they're just cats, man. They're just cats.
- 28:56There is so much about this musical that is, you know,
- 28:59problematic, but it also teaches us a lot about cat ownership.
- 29:04Cats possess multiple names and they will only pick one of those
- 29:08names to acknowledge. So even all these cats have have
- 29:11different names. They, they only answer to one
- 29:15That's true of your cat. You can call your cat whatever
- 29:17you want. I used to call my cat the
- 29:18dumbest cat in the world, but he would only answer to Pollocks.
- 29:22They expect to be fed on schedule.
- 29:26They conduct unexplained ceremonies at midnight.
- 29:29They're they'll run around and they love to knock over your
- 29:34your stuff. Oh my God, Pollocks would get up
- 29:38here on my desk while I was recording and just start pushing
- 29:40stuff off the desk. And it was like, dude, stop.
- 29:44They they disappear. And then they up here, you could
- 29:49be in a locker room. I've been in this room.
- 29:51The door closed. And all of a sudden I look over
- 29:53there on the chair behind me, and all of a sudden there's a
- 29:55cat. It's my child's cat.
- 29:57But all of a sudden it's just there.
- 30:00How did you get in here? They demand affection on
- 30:03occasion and then punish whoever provides it.
- 30:06They'll bite you. They regard furniture as a
- 30:08scratching post. We had to get rid of a couch
- 30:09because it'd been destroyed. And again, you don't train a
- 30:13cat. The cat eventually restructures
- 30:16your household. A dog would join your family.
- 30:19A cat is a hostile takeover and permits you to remain on as its
- 30:23support staff. Cammy, of course, wants a cat
- 30:28because cats can be very affectionate companions.
- 30:30We've had cats that were very much so.
- 30:32We had her last cat, which was actually Ben's cat, which was
- 30:36named Ravali. I have no idea because
- 30:38apparently it comes from the the Zelda games.
- 30:43That cat we got is a little kitten.
- 30:45And occasionally I sleep on my stomach and I and I raise my my
- 30:49head up. It's hard to explain, but my
- 30:52back is so I sleep flat on my stomach, but then I raise my
- 30:56head and shoulders up and then I put a pillow under my forehead.
- 30:59And so there's this gap underneath and Ravalli love to
- 31:01get into that gap and sleep there.
- 31:04They can be very affectionate. They're certainly more
- 31:07independent than dogs. You don't have to, you know,
- 31:09take them out. They don't have to.
- 31:11You don't have to take it out for a walk in the Washington
- 31:13rain. And it's already starting.
- 31:15They can be very entertaining. They can be very calming.
- 31:18There's nothing calm or more calming than when a cat jumps on
- 31:21your lap and just starts purring.
- 31:22It's it's they they say that that's actually a healing
- 31:26frequency, that it actually provides healing.
- 31:29I don't know. And you could get an adult
- 31:33shelter cap, that cap that it's already supposedly litter
- 31:36trained, may already have its established temperament doesn't
- 31:40want to necessarily give me that.
- 31:42And of course, adopting a shelter cat is a genuinely good
- 31:46act, which would please the bone bar owners at the last ditch
- 31:49bars. My reservations remain, of
- 31:54course, litter boxes. I'm not all that worried about
- 31:57hair on clothing, but I don't like the way they chew on things
- 32:01and scratch on things. And you know, I got thousands of
- 32:04dollars worth of equipment in here.
- 32:06There's veterinary expenses. Good God, the veterinary
- 32:09expenses. Oh my God, we are going to be
- 32:13paying for 100 years on, on dealing with Ravalli's illness
- 32:17before he passed on course. They you can buy him a
- 32:20scratching post, but they'd rather have the couch.
- 32:23And I don't need a cat walking across my, my board here when
- 32:26I'm trying to record some of these buttons and stuff, flash
- 32:31move and stuff. And you know, that might attract
- 32:33a cat. And of course, there's a near
- 32:36certainty that it will prefer cami to me.
- 32:39And the only thing I'll be is just a, a feeding system for it
- 32:44and making sure that it gets fed.
- 32:47All of these things are considered, of course, but they
- 32:52work in my head and you have to understand how my brain works.
- 32:56So after spending hours thinking about this and looking at things
- 33:01and reviewing things and studying things, I said to
- 33:04myself, what I need here is a song about my wife wanting a
- 33:09cat, and I need to do it Andrew Lloyd Webber style.
- 33:13So I did, I, I wrote a song called My Wife Wants a Cat.
- 33:16It's done in a very Broadway style, and I think it's pretty
- 33:20enjoyable. It's it's, it's OK.
- 33:24And then my brain said, you know what?
- 33:28This would be even better as an Italian opera.
- 33:32And so, as Bill and Rod can tell you this morning, I have been
- 33:37working on an Italian opera about cats.
- 33:40I have AI have a plot. I have a three act outline
- 33:43already. I have all this stuff done.
- 33:45But who knows if it's ever going to come to pass?
- 33:48Because in my copious free time, I don't always get stuff done
- 33:52the way that I want to get it done.
- 33:54But you'll be happy to know that we're getting a cat.
- 33:58Cats make no sense. And I still don't recommend that
- 34:00you go see cats on stage. If you're going to see it, I
- 34:04guess watch the movie because then you could, you know, break
- 34:06it up into bearable terms. But since I've already given you
- 34:09the plot to it, you don't really need to go see it.
- 34:12But coming in the near future, I hope will be Dave's new opera
- 34:16called 9 Lives. And it all started because Cammy
- 34:22wanted a cat. Take the time right now.
- 34:25Tell the people that matter in your life, you love them very
- 34:27much. You'd miss them if they weren't
- 34:28there. So don't pass up those
- 34:29opportunities. You don't want to have that
- 34:31regret. Plausibly Live.
- 34:32I'm Dave Bowman, and we'll see you next time right here on
- 34:35Plausibly Live The Dave Bowman Show podcast.
- 36:15They sleep for 18 hours, then awaken for a snack.
- 36:18They sit upon your keyboard with their tail across your work.
- 36:21They hear you call and turn away as if your voice were merely
- 36:24static. Then at 3:00, they need your
- 36:26love and suddenly grow dramatic. They demand complete attention
- 36:29at the moment they decide