Clio and Cyclone
By Ralph Lynn
[Dr. Ralph Lynn is Professor of History Emeritus at Baylor University and is a regular contributor to Christian Ethics Today.]
Clio is the Greek Muse of history.
Cyclone is my wife`s cat.
And Cyclone is so much like people-or the other way about-that I could hardly teach history without him as a foil.
Cyclone, you understand, is something of an institution.
He has been tyrant in residence at our house for nearly fifteen years.
He has so impressed his personality upon successive generations of students that the children of visiting former students now ask for Cyclone by the time the first greetings are finished.
Cyclone is like most people in that he has no perspective.
I am morally certain that, if one were to ask him, Cyclone would argue that all cats have always eaten Puss `n` Boots out of cans.
Without doubt, he would assume that all cats have at least two grown people to wait on them hand and foot.
He would have no appreciation of the trouble his ancestors, and mine, went through to make his luxurious life possible.
And like the students who are astounded that the people of yesterday had neither anesthetics nor beauty parlors, Cyclone judges the whole world, past and present, by his own experiences.
Again, like people, Cyclone is purely selfish.
He walks over me and my wife, literally as well as figuratively, just as though we were part of the floor or the furniture.
He has not thought, I am certain, of the welfare of other cats.
Despite the fact that he was born with a silver can opener in his mouth, he would oppose any war on poverty among cats on the grounds that if he-a plain old black cat-could manage for his present affluence, then just any self-respecting, sober, industrious, one hundred percent American cat could do the same.
Like most people, Cyclone is a creature of habit.
Recently, he has had the habit of sleeping on the five inch wide sill of a high window.
Naturally he falls asleep and falls out, amid a wild flailing of feet and tail, to land dazed and incredulous on the floor.
On the floor, he sways and stares groggily for a minute before returning, by way of a footstool and the sewing machine, to his precarious perch on the window sill.
He repeats this mad maneuver with a blind, irrational obstinacy matched only by the resolute refusal of human beings to learn from experience.
In sympathy with the dumb thing, I custom built for him a large tray in his corner of the window sill. But, since it was new and unfamiliar, he lies down outside it-preferring, like human beings, to stay with his habit even though it kills him.
Again, like people, Cyclone is provincial.
If he could speak English, there is no doubt that he would make it clear that he seriously regards his small neighborhood as God`s country.
Like primitive man, stranger and enemy are synonymous terms to Cyclone. With admirable impartiality, he drives both cats and dogs from his yard.
It is a rare guest he honors with his company.
Once more, like people, Cyclone is the personally undeserving beneficiary of modern sanitary, dietary, dental, and medical care.
Like his human contemporaries, he has lived far beyond the hitherto accepted life span. And, again like many of his human contemporaries, this elderly animal still has young ideas.
Not far away, he has a lady friend to whom he pays dignified daily calls. In less dignified fashion, he still regards the bathtub as his private motordrome around which he furiously chases his tail whenever he finds the sliding doors open.
Often I tell him how worthless he really is and that I regret every penny of the hundred dollars per pound I have invested in him.
But he knows that I have long since surrendered to him and that I am only trying in vain to keep my self-respect. He is entirely undisturbed even when I tell him that I fear he is immortal.
When he turns those great black eyes up at me, I wonder uneasily how much he understands-and I wonder if the Muse of history should not be represented by a large black cat.
