Brother, Can You Spare 75 Cents If You Won't Go for a Sunday Subscription?

Shortly after their deaths, I cradled the limp dead bodies of our brother cats Boris and Oliver, and I grieved.

In the case of Boris, that grief was almost 15 years ago when he was run over crossing the street in front of our house, and a neighbor came to tell. That was painful. I won't go into particulars of my regret because I'm afraid all this recent pet-loving is all so bourgeois -- you may be interested to know, by the way, that if you prick a bourgeoisie, do we not bleed? -- but suffice it to say that it's hard to lose a young pet with so much fun still to come for us and for the cat.

You can fill in the blanks, I think. If you've read this far, we are probably in sync.

Did the same thing with little Oliver after he died in our sleep Friday morning, holding him for a while, before he started to get stiff. That death was less painful because he had lived long and well, and we had fought so hard the last six months to keep him alive. Seeing him dead, my mind reset to images of his relative health as short a time as only a year ago, and I saw that his death was a proper end, acceptable to us and a relief to him.

All this I have said is by way of introducing a few thoughts about the delicate state of newspapers today.

(So much introduction and so few thoughts. This is the kind of thing for which I'd grade my reporting students down. Lack of proper proportion between intro and body, I cry!)

Anyway, this morning I flop-stepped outside in my sandals and my pink bathrobe. (Send me a quarter, and I'll explain that bathrobe; I've got to monetize my fan dance.)

So out I flop out to pick up our four morning papers. And I look at them there in driveway and front yard. And I think of Kitty Oliver, as I see them lying there, so thin and limp, pitiful really if you remember their muscular days.

And I think this is just like being in bed Friday morning with Oliver. I'm watching newspapers die. I look. I turn away (metaphorically).

I will turn back and they will be gone.


Addendum: And, yes, this little conceit quickly breaks down, given the fact we'll go to the pound and get a box of kittens, and happiness will reign, and my ruling analogy will curl up in a ball and go to sleep.

Though, actually, when it comes to gathering information both useful and accurate, the internet is a little bit like a box of kittens. For once I don't mean that in a nice way.