"For Pete's sake, no it
isn't! Are you people complete idiots?! The damn cat is not
alive! Stop asking me!" There, now that I've gotten that out of
my system, there really isn't much to tell. Well, yes there
is. The origin of the photo is still a mystery, but I will even
clear that up faster than Velma can explain an episode of Scooby-Doo.
The time was April 2004. It was
a season of discontent as I toiled to make my through my student
teaching. Student defiance, chronic health issues and indolent
college advisors had made the past couple of months the bane of my
life. However, at this point in time, my student teaching was coming
to a close. There was light at the end of the tunnel. With my
supervising teacher taking control over his classes again, my portfolio
complete and my formal observations done and over with, I had time to
actually relax and enjoy my remaining days at Atherton.
That being said, I spent one morning
observing the classes of Mrs. Anderson. Her anatomy and physiology
class was dissecting felines to compare the tissue structure of the small
mammal with that of humans. A fairly standard high school science
procedure actually. I found the lecture and lab fascinating and
added to my enjoyment of the class be documenting it
photographically. When the roll was developed, I found that one shot
had come out in such a fashion that the cat appeared to by yowling in pain
as it was operated on in the absence of anesthesia.
The very misleading nature of the
photo has made it one of my favorites. The fact that it is
misleading and I have people ask me on an almost weekly basis "What
is happening to that cat?" makes me hate it at the same
time. I know now that despite my clarification here and numerous
times in person, buffoons will continue to inquire about the nature of the
photo. Therefore, I really need to simply start lying. Tell
people it was a blackmail photo I took of my friend torturing his
girlfriend's cat because he wanted her to come back to him and would stop
at nothing to make her leave her new boyfriend. That, or I took it
at in Michael Moore's kitchen during suppertime while undercover with the
New York Times. Any tripe will do. If people are gullible enough to
believe the cat in the photo is alive, they'll buy any cock and a bull
story I feed them (and quite honestly, they deserve it as well).
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