The Conservative Cat

First, it is beyond ridiculous to imply that a picture of a cat is not wondrous to behold. In point of fact, our text articles average around 30 views, while the cat blogs average 70. Some of that is the doing of the Carnival of the Cats and the Friday Ark, but neither the Ark nor the Carnival would exist were it not for the fact that people like to see pictures of cats. Furthermore, cat blogs are not just pictures. They frequently involve human interest, whimsy, culture, and sometimes laugh-out-loud humor..

More important, though, is that Bruce and I have been cavorting through the blogosphere for over a year and are completely unaware of this inside joke about cats and tired websites. It seems to me that as a superior life form, I should have noticed by now.

But we must remember that this article was written by a journalist, and therefore anecdotes are allowed to substitute for legitimate research. That there was no legitimate research is revealed by one simple fact: this is a story about catblogging that doesn't mention Laurence Simon even once. I think we have to invent a whole new word to describe the idiocy required to pull that off.

In any case, I think the writer is confused about something. The blogosphere is not a newspaper or a 24-hour news channel. If I have nothing to write about, then I simply don't write! This is completely different from the environment in which journalists work, where they have to fill a certain number of pages or talk for a certain number of minutes come hell or high water. The reason this simple observation didn't occur to the Globe reporter is that his primary source is not a real blogger, but J Kelly Nestruck, blogging journalist.

That's what they call occupational myopia. You can be sure a cat would never make that kind of mistake.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat