Volume 1, number 2, February 1999 A Short Comparison of Cats: D9s and Tabbies A rule to remember: as a rock is to scissors as scissors are to paper as paper is to a rock, so a D9 is to a tabby. It is o.k. to have D9s and tabbies in mixed company but they are not genetically compatible. Those of you who are experimental breeders, keep this rule in mind. Fact: by virtue of their preordained career choice and that some lout insists upon greasing them occasionally, D9s are dirty. They cannot lick themselves (their tongue is too big). Anyone attempting to grease a tabby, on the other hand, is apt to hear LOUD comments about his ancestry. Both types of cats can climb trees, though tabbies are slower at deforestation. The fact that my Dracaena has survived both of my cats’ kittenhoods is living testimony to this lack of tree-destroying skill. D9s don’t need to be rescued from trees by fire departments—can you imagine the ladder they’d need? A purring D9 doesn’t mean that it is contented, or that it likes you, or that you petted it right. It means that your fuel dealer likes you and he’s petting your wallet. If it is purring in your ear it means that you are sleeping with your head on the exhaust stack. Get up! You’ll burn your ear! If a tabby is purring in your ear, get up! You’re sleeping on the tabby! Boy! You sleep in some strange places! It is normal for a tabby to arch its back, stretch and claw the carpet as it arises. If you can make your D9 arch its back and stretch, congratulations! You have just succeeded in making your mechanic really, really mad. If your D9 starts clawing the carpet, run! As to the usefulness of each type of cat: D9s are great. You can do all kinds of things that upset Doug Yates, a known environmentalist, or create football fields for the likes of Mark Simpson, a one-kneed soccer fanatic. Best of all, they give a supreme sense of empowerment and bragging rights. You can brag about how many mountains of rock you moved and how much money you went through as you went broke mining, and then you can sell it to Jerry Hassel, a notorious D9 collector. A useful tabby is a dubious concept indeed; in fact, they seem to view it the other way around. We are useful to them for petting (we do seem to have these handy petters on the ends of our arms), feeding, etc. Tabbies are not much for empowerment or bragging rights, either. Their only environmental aggravation is the litterbox. They are absolutely worthless as a football (too many claws to try to catch). And I doubt Jerry would buy one. Tabby cats occasionally erupt with a hairball. How useful that may be is beyond me. Hairballs from a D9 give me a supreme sense of impending doom, which doesn’t strike me as terrifically useful, either. D9s are much easier to control than tabbies—master a few pedals and levers and you’re on your way—so much easier, in fact, it seems that everybody and his brother are ace operators. Trying to control a tabby is an exercise in futility: the most useful thing you’ll get in this kind of exercise is an indignant flip of the tail. There is an up side to tabbies: you can get them in any color except green. The color of D9s, on the other hand, follows a rule very similar to a concept that Henry Ford once put forth: you can get a D9 in any color you want as long as it is yellow. Tabbies are great for entertainment: they will play with almost any thing they can get their claws/teeth into (string, trash, shins, et cetera). Tabbies can leap and scamper about in moments of sheer frolicsomeness. I have never seen a D9 leap and scamper about in a moment of sheer frolicsomeness, and I’m not sure I want to, either. All in all, I think tabbies are easy keepers. I like it when they sleep by my head. I don’t own a D9 but I do have a 550 John Deere, which is a baby version of a D9. It is not an easy keeper and I don’t like it when it sleeps by my head. | ||
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