Books read in 2013 # 29 - That Darn Whale

29. Moby Dick by Herman Melville - On one of the last days of Chag I was having a meal with a family and sitting next to an 11 year old kid who REALLY loved talking about guns. I'm not saying that he was a card carrying member of the NRA (even spent quite a bit of time upbraiding another guest for being against an assault weapons ban) but he knew when each gun was made and how some of the more famous gangsters (Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, etc.) got killed. While I wasn't as fascinated with his subject matter as he was, I enjoyed the enthusiasm. I have been obsessed with subjects in the past that I needed to share with other people, regardless of their level of interest, and only by the barest of social training have I learned to mitigate that urge by boiling the subject matter down to a few soundbites and allowing the conversation to go somewhere else.

Basically, this book is like that kid - only with whales. This is the main reason why most people think that the book is boring since you need to be at least nominally interested in 19th century whaling to get through the whole thing. The first 100 pages is really where the majority of the plot takes place with Ishmael and Queequeg in a rather matrimonial relationship (as they used to say about Smallville - gay subtext without that sub part) and he goes on about how he is fascinated by Queequeg and how they lay in the same bed like a couple with their arms around each other.

Once they get on the Pequod, the material about the whales begins. There is still a plot but a lot of it is episodic. The Pequod keeps finding whales and running into other ships. Anecdotes abound concerning the whaling career - including one about how whaling ships are always well-lit because they use their whale oil - and at certain points we hear about other ships and their travails. Rather than the obsessed maniacal captain of popular legend, Captain Ahab seems more like Daenerys from the second season of Game of Thrones - "Have you seen my whale?" over and over again. I'm still not certain if a whale can even bite off a leg but the book took great pains to talk about every other aspect of whaling so I suppose that might be true.

Anyhow, this is one of those books that people are urged to stay away from because it's boring. And there are great stretches of long descriptions that don't necessarily pertain to the plot. It's not as bad as Les Miserables but it can get wearisome. I think that's probably a good thing since while this book is not nearly as boring as its reputation, it's still pretty dull in places - unless you are REALLY excited by 19th century whaling - and one should stay away until one has the patience to read a book with long stretches of whales.

Socrates - still alive for now

Mom just called to ask how Socrates is doing. I could barely get off the phone without crying. Damnit. He's actually still alive and he seems to be doing better than he was yesterday, but he's lethargic and knowing that he's never going to be anything but lethargic for the couple days that he still has really hurts. I miss his fucking meow that he would do at all hours of the night to wake me up because there was a door that he wanted to be on the other side of. I miss him running around.

This is a cat that insisted on always being near me. Whenever I came home, he would run to the door and meow at me as if I abandoned him. Oh sure, he had his own space - the closet, the carpet - but I finally just got used to taking him in the bathroom with me when I took a bath because I knew that he would be pissed if he heard me in there without him.

We accept a lot of neediness from cats that we would never want in humans.

But now he's sleeping at my pillow. I picked him up from the floor because I wanted to hold him and now he's sleeping and breathing as well as can be expected. I am running a bath right now and I don't know if I should take him in the bathroom with me - because I don't know if that will hurt him.

Maybe I should have let them euthanize him last night, but even just a few days or hours with him alive are better than not.

Like I said, this was the cat that I held when the other cats died because he was always affectionate without reservation. When he's gone, all I got is a cat that is still afraid of me.

Socrates died

Apparently so did Roger Ebert. Is it too early to make a joke about dead adorably fat things? Too bad I already made it on Facebook.

I feel ok. My friend Marisol works at the local church (still don't know what a Lutheran church is doing in Washington Heights - which is predominantly Jewish and Dominican - I suppose at one point there were Germans who weren't Jewish here) and there's a big backyard and thankfully someone else uses that backyard to bury his pets (he apparently collects pets and when they die, he keeps them in his freezer until he gets enough to bring them over in a wheel barrow).

I'm going to really miss him in the coming week. I had gotten used to him running to the door when I came home and being all needy. Gambit runs away from me when I get home.

His picture is on the wallpaper on my cell phone. I don't know if that's going to affect me.

I will also follow some rules of shiva in the next week. I know that you're not supposed to do it for pets, but I am not doing it formally. I am not going to say Kaddish in shul but I am going to wear unwashed clothes and only take showers for the next week. Of course, the shower part is important since the Socrates was a cat that needed to be in the bathroom when I was taking a bath. He was really that needy.

I may write more later. For now, I remember when my mom brought him to my apartment. I came home and my cats were pissed off and there was this little rat-kitty thing running around and driving them nuts. Toby warmed up to him eventually (Toby was gay) but Maggie never really did. Mom basically found him on the street and he was the kind of cat that just comes up to you and gets all affectionate. Basically, most cats wandering around free are scared of people. Socrates was climbing up on people's necks and doing that weird kitten nurse thing (he finally grew out of it - thank G-d - especially since Toby never did). She wanted him to be a gift to Nanda (Nanda was NOT having that) and I wanted her to make sure that there was no one looking for him. She told me later that she went back and saw a cat that looked like him and asked the little girl about the cat and the girl said "He had a brother but the brother ran off."

So basically Mom stole Socrates from a little girl.

So if you were a child in 2000 and you had an adorable white and gray kitten (who was a little obnoxious and rat-like) who went missing one day, he was fine. He's dead now, but he had a good life.