Guest Post: The Cat’s Movie Manifesto

So as previously mentioned, I’ve been in a bit of a writing rut lately due to crazy things happening in the personal life. I wasn’t sure what to do for this week’s post and the clock was ticking. Tuesday was fast approaching, and the stuff I was working on just wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t want to disappoint my loyal audience and leave you hanging for a week, but at the same time, I didn’t want to give you sub par work just for the sake of having SOMETHING on the blog. In desperation, I agreed to do something I never thought I’d do:

I decided to let The Cat take over for the week.

Please give a warm welcome to this week’s guest blogger, The Cat.

GUEST BLOGGER BIO: The Cat is happy to make her blogging debut on Oh Fudge A Muffin. She feels cats are often misrepresented on social media and looks forward to offering her perspective. Her hobbies include running through the house at full speed at all hours of the night, drinking water from the sink/toilet/everywhere but her water dish, and singing traditional cat folk tunes.

Greetings humans. I need to speak with you about something of great importance.

Recently my mom went to the movies. I’m not entirely sure what that means. I know what a movie is. She and The Tall One watch them sometimes at home while sitting in my chair. What I don’t understand is why she feels the need to go somewhere to watch them. I’ve heard her say something about “the experience.” I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

Anyways, Mom and The Tall One went to a movie. When they came home, Mom told me that the movie made her think of me. I was eager to hear why. Maybe it had a scene with a giant sink with a magical water fountain where cats are allowed to freely drink without being shooed off the kitchen counter top. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to see anyways.

Alas, there was no such whimsical plumbing in this film. She said she thought of me because one of the characters shared my name.

I thought that was a boring reason to be reminded of me, but okay. Nice she was thinking of me, I guess. Now if only she would think of me some more and fill my food dish to overflowing. I like being able to skim my food from the top and/or off the floor.

I wasn’t really interested in hearing more about it at this point. My to do list was quite long. Next on my agenda was mercilessly slaughtering the little patch of carpet by the piano. It has been looking suspicious for far too long, and I must assert my dominance.

“Kitty, every time I heard that character’s name, I kept picturing you jumping into the scene and messing things up,” she continued.

I took a break from murdering the carpet and glared at her.

She and The Tall One started entertaining themselves by brainstorming the various ways that I (or one of my fellow felines) could appear in a movie scene and mess something up. Stuff could get knocked off a desk. My singing could ruin a dramatic moment. They were laughing hysterically thinking of more and more scenarios. Meanwhile I was deeply offended.

“How DARE you!” I shouted at them, twitching my tail and ears to show my displeasure. “Felines are already woefully underrepresented and tragically stereotyped in film as it is! That movie would only have been improved by the presence of my kind!”

Naturally, my people did not respond. At least not appropriately. Despite taking great pains to learn their language, they have not made hardly any effort to learn to speak Cat. I stormed off, running up the stairs and under the bed to do some thinking. It was there that I composed this guest post to try and sort out my feelings.

As previously stated, I think there are lots of movies that could be greatly improved by featuring appropriate representations of cats. Since humans do not seem to understand my kind, however, it’s next to impossible for them to depict us accurately.

Take this jumping on the desk scenario she mentioned earlier. Perhaps our great feline hero might jump on a desk to draw attention to something urgent. Perhaps it would cause a paper to fall off that contained the information the human character was trying to find. Perhaps, more importantly, it might remind the human to pay rent to the landlord. And by that I mean to feed the feline character. Cats live in human houses? PLEASE. We graciously allow them to take space in ours.

Consider also her complaint about me singing the song of my people. From what I understand, movie musicals are all the rage these days. And they’ve all been done to death. Hollywood keeps making the same movies over and over, and that includes musicals. And the musical market for humans dominates the scene. I mean, yeah, there are some with singing animals. I know there was one when my mom was a kid about a singing mouse who got lost on a boat to America or something. But honestly, who wants to hear about mice? And those mice were horribly prejudiced, singing gleefully about there being no cats in the new world. RUDE.

But has there ever been a great musical about my kind? No. No there has not been.

I know what you’re thinking. Don’t even try to talk to me about Andrew Lloyd Webber. His show doesn’t count. It is highly offensive to see humans dressing up as cats, singing HUMAN songs about the feline experience. No. If people truly want a musical about cats, I will give them one. I’ve already composed many songs which I sing to my humans on a regular basis. They don’t appreciate my efforts. Even after I rehearse all night and treat them to a sunrise performance outside their bedroom door.

Ingrates.

There is much more I could say on this subject, but my mom says she needs her computer back. In closing, I hope you’ll consider how much better we cats make your miserable little lives. You should consider yourselves HONORED if and when we ever show up on the big screen. Until then, I need to go work on my next musical number.