In the moment of learning that Edgar Ray Killen has died, what, precisely, should I feel? To the one, a small bit of evil has just left the world. To the other, what, he was an old man of infamous name, and is it really worth the investment of feeling anything? Edgar Ray Killen is dead at age ninety-two.
And life goes on, for the living.
“If they really wanted to kill us, don’t you think it would have happened?”
Look, I know it’s (ahem!) just a cat but, really, she’s nineteen years old, and do you think maybe, just maybe there might be a better time to talk about how her age peer’s health declined shortly before death, and how awful that other cat looked right before it died, and how we’re going to change the room we’re sitting in after the cat is dead than while you’re holding the cat in your lap?
Yeah, you know, it might be one of those stupidities of capitalist press, but I really did like the suggestion that cats want us dead. There are, after all, days when we shouldn’t wonder why.
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Image note: Meow ― Detail of frame from FLCL, episode 3, “Marquis de Carabas”.
Hanson, Hilary. “No, A Study Did NOT Find That Your Cat Wants To Kill You”. The Huffington Post. 5 November 2015.
B.D.'s Last Refuge 