
PBS’s Car Talk is a hit. But I know a subject with three times the potential audience: Cat Talk.
There are some 200 million cars n the U.S.A., but only one in 10 car owners is eager to talk about them,. There are 82 million pet cats and three out of four cat owners consider their cats fascinating fur people and gossip-worthy family members. Cat Talk would have a potential audience of 60 million, compared to 20 million for Car Talk.
Non-cat people ask: “What’s there to talk about?”
First of all, every cat is different from every other. Cat people love to talk about their cat’s uniqueness.
✼ My cat opens doors by turning the doorknob ( Photo
left, Woogie, opening Door, by Alfred Gescheidt.)
✼ My cat bats at the cuff of the pants or slacks of anyone who sits in a certain chair.
✼ My cat will only eat fresh bluefish.
✼ My cat only eats Fancy Feast salmon.
✼ My cats eat raw chicken livers and broiled chicken breasts.
✼ My cat caught a mouse in our new 18th floor condo.
✼ We live in the country and my cat caught an ermine.
✼ My cat is a talker. When I say “Good Morning,” he always answers.
✼ Our cat sits in my wife’s lap, but never in mine.
✼ A video of a piano-playing cat went viral on YouTube.
✼ TS Eliot inspired a hit musical called CATS. I’m a dog lover too, but were a musical titled DOGS looking for backers, count me out.
✼ A contented cat walks with its tail pointed straight up.

✼ In the 1940s, musicians and music fans called each other “Cats.”
✼ After a decent meal, a cat will spend an hour or so licking and grooming, nose to the tip of its tail, as soothing to watch as a tank of tropical fish.
✼ Cat people and dog people differ, but that’s no reason they can’t be friends.
✼ People who are afraid of cats need psychiatric help.
✼ People who de-claw cats should be forcibly tattooed: “Cat Abuser.”
People with cats often have dogs, but there’s no competition between the species. A dog considers a cat phlegmatic inscrutable, and pointless. A cat considers a dog flakey, excitable, and irrelevant. But occasionally a cat/dog pair will accept one another and closely bond. It gives one hope that maybe humans will begin to accept one another too some sunny day.