Cats have hobbies, but not pastimes.
Why merely pass what can be relished?
While our minutes may crawl, the striped savants whose wrists wear no watches gallop across hours. Gourmands of seconds and seasons, cats simply love time.
So why do anything for the sole purpose of passing it?
This is why you will search in vain for a cat who simply endures.
Although he owns a tablet, Anka is not doomscrolling subreddits and Twitter feeds about butter shortages. (He is, however, emailing Gator politically incendiary articles like “American Cheese Deserves Our Respect.”)
CAT is not flipping idly between Swamp People and Property Brothers.
CAT and CAT are not fast-forwarding to the future by alphabetizing their treats.
You will never meet a cat unscandalized by the crime of killing time.
You will, however, find cats committed to cramming time with life. High-flying hobbyists, the only things they love more than hours are days.
How dare we dither away the days, CAT might ask, when the days are where the ducks live? Don’t tell CAT you don’t know the ducks. The ducks are the great quacking questions that resist tidy rows and timetables.
Questions like, who invented giblets, and is that person available for kissing?
Where do the jingle balls come from, and where do they go?
When you see the moon in the morning, like lacy Provolone, does that mean it’s going to be a good day?
Why do the long-legged lentilheads love cats so, so much?
(HA HA HA I MADE A FUNNY. No cat alive has ever asked that question. The answers are as infinite as they are obvious, e.g. awesomeness, perfection, spectacularity, panache.)
While CAT is asking questions, CAT is keeping time with time itself, canoodling it like a noodle-and-giblets casserole (hold the noodles). Hours can’t be long enough, when hours are the houses of hugs. CAT is a cat of many hobbies, but hugs are the hinge on which happiness turns. Since CAT lives at Tabby’s Place, the hall of huggage, his days have a habit of turning ever more terrific. Why would he ever wish them away?
Now at this point, someone wise in their own eyes might interject, “there is a time for impatience, is there not? Certainly the years-long minute known as 3:59pm must be passed as fast as a flaming potato. Certainly the holy hour of 4 must be hastened, the better to launch the divine dinner hour. Certainly even cats need pastimes to endure the evil times between meats.”
And this is where the distinction between hobbies and pastimes is as salty as pastrami.
Hobbies are for the hale and whole and happy — in short, the cats. Hobbies are for high-fiving time, thriving time, diving into time like a sea of liquefied salami. (I have just commanded Suite C’s attention, and, if I can procure this product, their worship and/or nomination for a Nobel Prize.)
Hobbies are CAT arranging himself upon the ramp like a river of song, the rolls of his belly rippling like rapids.
Hobbies are CAT sassing the solarium — not his neighbors, the solarium itself — with her tail-chasing, ladder-leaping, operatic athletics.
Hobbies are Grecca singing the entire score of “Funny Girl” in the Lobby, only she has retitled it “Hilarious Girl” and nominated herself for all the Emmys.
Hobbies are CAT reinventing hoopla, translating himself into the laughter of our lungs.
Hobbies are CAT all snuggly-befuddly in our arms, equal parts triumphant and (continually, constitutionally) confused.
Hobbies are you skiing on perfect powder, me writing these ridiculous blogs, your niece making potholders, your Grandpa teaching himself Gaelic.
Hobbies are how time turns turbo, how cats and children hit the magical state of “flow,” how time turns into forever, which is a very different thing indeed.
Forever is a very cat thing.
But the only way to feast on forever is to love time.
Hobbies, yes; pastimes, no; pastrami, always.