By ALAN SCHERSTUHL
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Do Cats Have ESP?
Author: Jeane Dixon
Publisher: Aaron Publishing Group
Date: 1998
Discovered at: Salvation Army, 1223 Santa Fe, Olathe
The Cover Promises: If you own this book, you own no others.
Representative Quote:
page 55, “I spoke to the cat the way one does when meeting an attractive stranger. 'Hello,' I said. 'Where did you come from? You are very beautiful. Do you understand me?' ”
For 108 pages, America's most famous psychic who is not Sylvester Stallone's mom belabors the answer to a question that deserves no more than two letters. She's up against the First Rule of Crap, which is phrased, like all the crappiest things in this world, a la Foxworthy:
Your book might be crap if ... the title poses a question that any sensible person will dismiss with “No. Of course not. Why would you ask such a thing?”
Dixon's impossible goal: to demonstrate that cats do have ESP, that they can predict the future and that they often speak to her about all of this. She even brags that second-guessing a psychic puss like her beloved “Mike the Magicat” might jack you up:
“A young boy of twelve years asked Mike to help him choose between attending school here in the states or abroad . . . Mike's answer, through me, was: 'Go to school in the United States. Europe is not advisable -- you'll have a bad accident!'The boy shrugged off Mike's warning and went to school abroad. Sure enough, he had a terrible skiing accident.”
More about "MagiCat," the rich-kid-hating toast of Pennsylvania Avenue:
The White House! Is this "plump, furry feline" one of those Washington fat cats we always hear about?
In other chapters, she alludes vaguely to the ancient Egyptians' love of cats, reports on some inconclusive (but promising!) research into “psi-bonding” and feline telepathy at Duke University's Parapsychology Institute and cuts and pastes heroic cat stories (“One of my favorite tales about a cat protecting its master comes from fifteenth-century England”).
Not on her agenda: explaining how you might get your cat to stop sniffing its own puke and work some oracular magic.
Shocking Detail:
Dixon does provide insight into the complexity of international cross-species extrasensory communication:
"I had forgotten that the cat in my lap was accustomed to hearing Japanese. As I waited expectantly for answers, the cat looked at me with similar questions written all over its face. 'Who are you? Why do you speak so strangely?' it asked."
This is miraculous: somehow, the cat asks why it doesn't understand English ... in English!
Highlight:
She pads the volume out with “Catscopes”:
“The secret the Leo cat doesn't want everyone to know is that it is shy.”
“Its ESP allows the Sagitarius to see the big picture. It knows who its friends are and is usually frank and candid with its opinions.”
BONUS CRAP!
Animal Adoption Postcards
Author: Kids whose names I'm kind enough to omit
Publisher: North Shore Animal League of Port Washington, New York
Discovered at: Maj-R Thrift, 2842 West 47th Street
This one takes little explanation. For this fundraising publication, the North Shore Animal League talked children into painting animals. You probably didn't have to be an all-seeing Magicat to know that aesthetic violations were sure to result.
Here, Kitty Moses glowers at the worshipers of Baal.
True animal lovers take the time to groom their jellyfish.
I don't know what this monkey's up to, but it probably won't help get him adopted.
Click for more exciting "Studies in Crap!"
Showing 1-12 of 12
1. Thou meow meow meow.
2. Thou shall meow meow before meow.
3. Thou shalt meow meow meow in vain.
4. Honor thy meow meow and keep it clean through careful licking.
5. Honor thy meow and thy meow.
6. Thou shalt not meow. Instead, just bat things around until they "accidently" meow.
7. Do not meow meow thy meow meow's ass.
8. Thou shalt not meow.
9. Thou shalt not committ false meows before they meow.
10. Wait, was this the meow one about the neighbor's ass? These are repetitious and all meowed up.
"One of my favorite tales about a cat protecting its master comes from fifteenth-century England"
She doesn't know crap1!! A real cat-ESP scholar would've cited 13th-century Mongol Empire legends or even, if her psychic power wasn't sputtering, some of the crazy shit that's going to come out of globally warmed and baked and depopulated Johnson County in the 24th-century.
"One of my favorite tales about a cat protecting its master comes from fifteenth-century England"
She doesn't know crap1!! A real cat-ESP scholar would've cited 13th-century Mongol Empire legends or even, if her psychic power wasn't sputtering, some of the crazy shit that's going to come out of globally warmed and baked and depopulated Johnson County in the 24th-century.
Hey!! I knew everything that was going to be said in this article, before I saw it!!!
If cats have ESP, why the hell is mine always getting caught in the door? Oh, Wait! It's Siamese! Damn, I knew I should've bought Rosetta Stone...
I have this friend who bought a ping pong ball launching crossbow at the Ren Fest to shoot at their cat. Do you think the cat used ESP to know about it or because the festival represents a time when English didn�t sound the same as it does now, and that the crossbow was probably made in China, that the language barrier(s) blocked the cat's ESP?
Oh, the cat most certainly speaks English. I think he might even be enlisted because he is either a captain or a colonel.
Some additional clarification regarding our First Rule of Crap. Like obscenity, crap is ultimately subjective, with even a test like "Is the title a senseless yes/no question?" failing to identify it with absolute accuracy. Consider the Dick Exception: while Tim LaHaye's "Are We Living in the End Times" is certainly crap, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is not.
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