Sunday, April 24, 2005
Sitting on the desk is a postcard from Genetic Savings and Clone. "Cat Cloning," it says. "For people with the perfect cat!" For $250 bucks they will bank a pet's DNA until it is time to clone kitty. My mind veers wildly over the prospect. My first thought was that it is a gag of some sort; then I shudder over the Ray Bradbury quality of this commercial venture ("Dog Cloning is Coming Soon....").
We acquired our cat, who will not walk on an exercise ball, in the traditional manner: we found her outside the house. I had promised my daughters that they could have a cat if they all ran straight A's for the remainder of the school year, secure in the knowledge that they had never done this. When the school year ended, and they had played me for the chump I am, there followed a plaintive mewing under our windows for several nights. You want a cat? That's how you get a cat. The other way is for a little girl with a box of kittens to ring your doorbell.
"In March of 2005, GSC will open its new 8000 square foot, state-of-the-art cloning facility in Madison, WI." I have a mental picture of a big laboratory, with gleaming stainless steel tables and sparkling flasks and Petri dishes. Technicians in white lab coats are working at the tables. Along the walls are broom closets filled with old boots and piles of newspapers where the surrogate mother cats (who are all named "Mary Beth") are constantly whelping.
Or maybe that's not how it's done at all. Maybe a order is placed for a gray alley cat and the folks at Genetic Savings and Clone, after cashing your $32,000.00 check, go out to the barns of Madison and start looking for a gray alley cat to replace your departed pet. I like that better-- but I am still troubled about being on this mailing list. What kind of chump do they think I am? It is one thing to be played for a mark by one's children-- after all, being emotionally manipulated is how I ended up with children in the first place. Once you are on board, you may as well go along for the ride, and the pets thing is part of the experience. Getting mail from some outfit that wants me to put a dead cat in my refrigerator is a little too 21st Century for my taste.
I realize that this is two posts in less than a week's time that mention cats, by the way, and I am embarrassed by this. I will refrain in the future.
We acquired our cat, who will not walk on an exercise ball, in the traditional manner: we found her outside the house. I had promised my daughters that they could have a cat if they all ran straight A's for the remainder of the school year, secure in the knowledge that they had never done this. When the school year ended, and they had played me for the chump I am, there followed a plaintive mewing under our windows for several nights. You want a cat? That's how you get a cat. The other way is for a little girl with a box of kittens to ring your doorbell.
"In March of 2005, GSC will open its new 8000 square foot, state-of-the-art cloning facility in Madison, WI." I have a mental picture of a big laboratory, with gleaming stainless steel tables and sparkling flasks and Petri dishes. Technicians in white lab coats are working at the tables. Along the walls are broom closets filled with old boots and piles of newspapers where the surrogate mother cats (who are all named "Mary Beth") are constantly whelping.
Or maybe that's not how it's done at all. Maybe a order is placed for a gray alley cat and the folks at Genetic Savings and Clone, after cashing your $32,000.00 check, go out to the barns of Madison and start looking for a gray alley cat to replace your departed pet. I like that better-- but I am still troubled about being on this mailing list. What kind of chump do they think I am? It is one thing to be played for a mark by one's children-- after all, being emotionally manipulated is how I ended up with children in the first place. Once you are on board, you may as well go along for the ride, and the pets thing is part of the experience. Getting mail from some outfit that wants me to put a dead cat in my refrigerator is a little too 21st Century for my taste.
I realize that this is two posts in less than a week's time that mention cats, by the way, and I am embarrassed by this. I will refrain in the future.
// posted by Bill @ 11:08 AM 
Post a Comment