Thoughtless for the Day

"We are talking about a festival in which people come together in a community to get drunk. Not high, not socially fun, but drunk - knee-walking, absolutely passed-out drunk." - Betsy Bryan of Johns Hopkins University

One of the things I love about the human is its restless nature. Here's an example of how one thought morphs into another.

I'm fairly certain that I may have mentioned a few thousand times before that Vienna collects images of the lion headed Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. But, just in case I haven't, I will now: Vienna collects images of the lion headed Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. I also may've mentioned a few thousand times the story of how Sekhmet, charged by the other gods with the task of reducing the number of humans, took her task too seriously and nearly wiped out all of humanity another of the gods got her drunk on beer and she passed out.. But, just in case I haven't, I will now: there's a story of how Sekhmet, charged by the other gods with the task of reducing the number of humans, took her task too seriously and nearly wiped out all of humanity another of the gods got her drunk on beer and she passed out. Now, I was reading an article about a charming ancient festival based on this charming story when I started thinking about cats: or, to be more precise, cat litter.

Now, since the age of five or so, I've always had a cat in my life. The odd thing is that I'm forty-three but I'm only on my third cat. Anyway, I've probably spent thousands of dollars on cat litter over the years. Now, there had to be a point in history when cats stopped shitting outside in the barn where they were formerly employed as mice catchers, and started shitting in boxes in our homes where they'd become pets. Where does cat litter come from?

Unlike so many of the things we find around the house, (socks, string, toothpicks, pornography) we not only know exactly when and where cat litter was invented, but by whom. His name was Ed Lowe; and while he may not be as famous as Thomas Edison or Robert Jarvic, it's important to remember that neither of those men ever made any significant contributions in the world of cat shit. As the story goes, after spending three years in the Navy killing countless Japs and Nazis, Ed Lowe returned home to Michigan in 1945 to embark upon a career in the fascinating field of industrial absorbents (think of Ed the next time you're in the supermarket and hear "Clean up in aisle three" and whenever you look to the night sky). Two years later, a neighbor of Ed's asked him if he could hook her up with sand to use in her cat's litter box instead of the soot she was currently using.

OK. So what have we learned so far? 1) Ancient Egyptians used to get shit-faced and 2) people used to use soot in litter boxes: one of those ideas which seem incredibly stupid in retrospect; not unlike brushing your teeth with urine - human urine. Now back to our story:

Instead of handing the woman three pounds of sand and suggesting she go pound it, Ed provided her with granules of clay. And thus Kitty Litter (one of the few products, like Kleenex, Xerox, and the Lewinsky, in which the brand name has come to stand for product - or service, in the case of the Lewinsky - itself) was born. It's also how cats, now that they haven't been tracking sooty shit all over our homes for the last sixty years, have come to rival dogs as the most popular pet in America.

"I thought cats were only for people who are losers and live in apartments." - Homer Simpson

So why write about kitty litter on the eve of an election? Just a little reminder that, sometimes, we need to focus more on the smaller events.