Papa gave mama a bracelet once, and he told the salesperson, “That looks just like my wife’s brain!” And mama opened it and said, “That looks just like my brain!”
You know, I’ll bet there are a lot of kitty shelterers/lovers/housers who are always saying to their adorable, better-than-a-dog-any-day furry creatures, “What’s going on in that little pea brain of yours?” Or maybe they say, more politely, “What on earth are you pondering, you amazingly intellectual little prodigy?”
And the kitty hears the question and thinks, “Good question, anthro of mine. Just what AM I thinking about at this moment and how does my tiny little skull contain all of these amazing interwoven thoughts?”
That’s what kitties think, and so mama read me a question that Joyce Dyer asked her group of writers at The Twenty: A Kentucky Young Writers Advance. She asked them to describe what they knew about how their minds worked, feeling that this could help them in their creativity.
There were myriad answers, which you can read in the article, “What’s on your mind?” in the Meanwhile section of the International Herald Tribune, August 19 issue, but what interested mama most was the mention of Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake in our beloved Campo de’ Fiori in Rome for thinking “that human thought resembled the stucture of the natural world: Every thought, like every speck in nature, was connected to all other things.”
Well, mama said to me that this way of thinking was how she thinks—everything connected to everything else, even in the tiniest way or even in ways that are not so evident at the first think, but show up later.
As for my pea brain, maybe I think a little like that, too. For example, I wake up and think, “String Game”, and then I think a little about string theory, and then that hooks into physics and how the world works and how the planets are arranged and why are there planets and why is there a world and if there were not a world, then where would I be and where would mama and papa be and who would put sardines en gelee into my food dish this morning and what would the consequences of having no food be in my kitty world and what would feed my little pea brain so that I could even have these thoughts?
Well, by now I am utterly exhausted and will have to find another time to devote to this question of what’s on my mind.
But then this nice lady writer of the article talks about her garden and when I read that, everything fell into place, sort of like the garden mama has here and how she plants it and grows it and tends it, and however she doesn’t plan its planting, it’s okay by me, because the garden is where I get my best thoughts and the randomness of it helps, I think.
So I guess you might say that our minds all think in totally different and totally alike ways and it’s really impossible to pick only one way the mind works when there are really no limits to what one can think and how one can think it. Especially kitties.
In the words of a great musician, “Let your mind be free.” (Paul Simon)
I’m off to ponder things. I think. Maybe. Or just sleep…
Aaah sleep! A wonderous salve for the busy mind of a cat. Not a cure for the busy mind of an ape, because, let’s face it, ape brains are just too big for their own good, and mostly made of lard and pies.
How awful that a human was killed for thinking interesting thoughts, bet they didn’t eat him either, so wasteful.
Now, Loulou, a slight admonishment is due. Please do not refer to your superior cat brain as “pea” anything. It may be smaller than the ape brain, but it is compact, efficient and far superior to anything found in an ape head.
Once, the ape was shelling pecans and placed half a pecan next to Thomas (a cat who came before) – the ape rudely pointed out to Thomas that this was his brain and would he like to put it back where it belonged? We cannot type what he replied, it would break the internet.
Oh, boy, I hope that Thomas gave him what for!!!! And I only say ‘pea brain’ because of my inherently false modesty….haha.