Frank Zoretich was leaving the PI as I arrived. We met in passing but kept up, at first through his newsletters sent under the title, Friends of Frank, and later, as his fame grew, in a second edition, Friends of Friends of Frank. At the PI, he was known as the king of fluff, a title he wore with pride. Let others battle for the big news story, the trend, the deepish investigative foray. Zoretich is all about what others with an eye on the substantial disdain, such as, stories about cats.
Back in Seattle after stints at several newspapers in the Southwest, Frank contributed My God, the Cat! to A News Cafe, his first online only venture.
(Image, Julia Salamonik. Click to enlarge)
The problem with religion so far is that humans have chosen such
unreasonable gods to worship. Why haven’t we been smart enough to have
gods who are easy to please, who make demands we can meet without
excessive sacrifice?It’s a problem that vexed me for years – but I’ve solved it.
Although I always liked my cat, it wasn’t until I decided to embrace
theofelinity that our relationship deepened into something refreshingly
spiritual.A cat is a wonderful god. I’m not talking about the big cats like
lions or tigers or the fearsome part-feline beasts worshipped by
certain ancient civilizations. No, the perfect god is a house cat, a
god not likely to eat you alive for some minor infraction of its rules,
a god grudgingly dependent upon you for its survival, a god, in short,
very much like my cat.Scratch (that’s his name) requires only food on a regular basis, a
place to sleep that’s warm and dry, and petting sufficient to energize
his purr.Prayer to a cat is entirely optional. Despite the most fervent
pleading for divine favor, a cat will not intercede on your behalf. It
would be a waste of time to ask a cat to improve the weather, increase
the harvest, rescue you from financial difficulty, or smite your
enemies.And there is little to dread in the way of punishment for
transgressions, although Scratch did once afflict me with the
pestilence of ringworm. (Continued here)
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