Monday, May 03, 2010

Cat, Cook and Candle


It is impossible to admonish, throw hints at, or guilt trip someone who is behaving rudely on purpose. A cat does not sit on your newspaper because he is confused; he sits there because he knows you are reading and wants attention. Here, Garfield fully understands that he is disrupting Jon's romantic intent, snubbing Liz, and willfully disregarding Jon's forceful hint — refuting it, even, as the man implies that any company would be a third wheel, and the cat deflects the insinuation by pretending it was addressed elsewhere.

Now, as to the Garf's motivation, it is possible that he is asserting his household dominance and demonstrating his primacy to Jon and over Liz. As the devil is a lawyer whose favorite phrase is "well, technically...," Garfield inserts himself into the conversation just in time to assign himself a spot in Jon's vague personal pronoun. If Jon wants the company of One, that should, can, and will only mean Garfield.

On the other paw, this is about the food, and if only two diners will be eating in style tonight, Garfield is determined, assumes, or knows he is taking up one of those reservations.

2 comments:

Nyperold said...

Hmm. It really is hard to tell what his primary concern is here. Certainly, he's happy enough to eat well beyond what he should, but he's also wasted food that he would otherwise have enjoyed eating just for the purpose of annoying Jon and/or Odie. (Example: He once threw the coffee out of a cup so he could use the cup as a fulcrum to help him launch something at Odie. Of course, he probably could have just thrown the object with his paw, but throwing out the coffee had the added "benefit" of annoying Jon more than the assault on Odie alone. Now, he could have drunk the coffee, but that wouldn't leave a stain to clean up.)

Alpha Skua said...

Try a neat little candle trick light them let them burn for a while blow one out take a match light the other candle and then without touching the other candles wick relight it by bringing the lit match close it will relight itself