I'm Matt Champagne. Watch me type things at you.
PET SYMPATHY
If I were in a gift shop and overheard someone ask the clerk: “Where’s your pet sympathy section?”, I wouldn’t immediately know what that was.
I wouldn’t think it was about sympathy for a pet. I’d think it was about sympathy your pet had for you, or trying to get your pet to have for you. Like, what if your problem was that your cat just doesn’t appreciate how you feel about stuff, and you’re trying to foster some understanding from the little guy.
“Hi, Phil from Tarzana. You’re on the air.”
“Hi, doc. So it’s, uh, it’s my cat. He just doesn’t get me, you know what I mean?”
I don’t own a cat, but I bet if I did, I’d probably turn to it many times during the day, make eye contact and say: “What about me, man? C’mon. I feel like everything around here is you, you, you. I’m not getting any feeling from you, man. I feel you. Why can’t you feel me?”
And isn’t that the core problem? “Doc, my cat. He just don’t feel me, man.”
Imagine: You sit at your desk. You wonder where the hell your life is going. You force yourself to make these to-do lists every day so you can feel some semblance of productivity. And then you finally stop, look over forty-five degrees, and see your judgmental cat staring you down. You could’ve sworn he just shook his head at you. Wait a minute! Did he just roll his eyes? Can cats do that? Oh my God. Gimme a break, cat. Cut me some slack, cat. I’m doing what I can, man. And there it is. You can see it in the slight twist of his head, the sideways glance he gives your half-naked self. You can see it. Deep in the center of his judging eyes, there it is: pity.
I remain
Champagne
