Reader Dom spotted this interesting volume on a list of weird books. It causes me huge cognitive dissonance, because it touts cats as a way of finding God. I’ll grant that only insofar as cats consider themselves gods, and that’s the end of the line.
The blurbs:
Here are a few others from the list of eleven given on mental_floss (these are real):
I, too, prefer a period of quiescence before I dork:
This may be the worst book on fashion ever written:
Egyptians believed that cats were gods.
And they were right.
You have worshipped your god(s) today, right? Several times? Yes?
b&
lol!:p
Egyptians believed that cats were gods.
And cats have never forgotten that.
Indeed…. I have first hand experience.
Liberace! I drive past the house where he grew up from time to time.
He only grew up from time to time? 🙂
lol
Some would say he never did!
Should you ever need to make a pilgrimage…
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=4905+w.+national+ave,+Milwaukee,+WI+53295&hl=en&ll=43.019706,-87.975125&spn=0.00071,0.000396&sll=43.057891,-87.96743&sspn=0.513748,0.405121&t=h&hnear=4905+W+National+Ave,+Milwaukee,+Wisconsin+53295&z=21
“Does God Ever Speak Through Cats?”
Translation: I’m religious and I like cats.
..
That Liberace book gets good reviews on Amazon
You maybe didn’t notice Jerry that it includes a dozen punch out pics of Liberace to play with!!
A fantastic alternative present for Father’s day. Dad’s DON’T need more unimaginative socks & ties ~ get ’em this instead!
My favourite line from the above:- swings his closet door open
The punch out Liberaces would be entertaining I have to say.
“Ach, meine doll-ink!”
Like Francis Collins, he was ready to embrace religious faith. As a trio of waterfalls are not usually found in back yards, he had to do with a stray cat as a ‘reason’.
“Does God Ever Speak Through Cats?”
Why, yes. Yes, god does.
And god told me — through my cat – that I and I alone know how to interpret each and every one of those meows.
It is another way of knowing.
Ailuromancy.
For adherents of Ceiling Cat, this is not an issue. Cats are as numinous as anything else.
My cat IS a God. If she is not worshiped and showered with canned animal sacrifices, she will visit much havoc to my world as most childish gods are prone to do.
That is a truly awful cover. I like how the blurb content prints over the “Copywrited Material” header (and, uh, header??) – its not just desktop publishing, but incompetent desktop publishing!!!
As for the thesis…well, my cat was looking over my shoulder at JAC’s page last night when I first saw this article, and this morning I almost stepped in a huge hairball. Definitive proof of the Almighty’s disdain for David Evans? I merely report, you decide.
The Lull Before Dorking reminds me of the old Douglas Adams and John Lloyd book ‘The Meaning of Liff’ that provided new definitions for (mainly) British place names: I can’t remember ‘Dorking’ but a favourite was ‘Ely’ (a cathedral town in East Anglia) redefined as ‘the first tiny inkling that something, somewhere, has gone terribly terribly wrong’.
Sadly, Dorking doesn’t feature in “The Meaning of Liff”. “Throcking”, however, is defined as “The action of continually pushing down the lever on a pop-up toaster in the hope that you will thereby get it to understand that you want it to toast something”. A wonderful book, from which many words have been adopted into the everyday language of my family.
I love the teach your wife to be a widow. It’s almost as good as that coffee spanking one: http://www.dragonsearchmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/mad-mad-sexist-spanking-ad1.jpg
The Lull Before Dorking is normal in older men. But if it lasts too long, consult your urologist.
lol.
Literally.
“Does God Ever Speak Through Cats?”
That’s what the mice thinks.
Of course, cats ARE gods! I will demonstrate with sophisticated theology (TM):
God is the opposite of dog: goddog
A dogs contrapuntal opposite in literature, cartoons, and in legend is the cat.
Therefore, if cat is the opposite of dog and god is the opposite of dog then cat=god.
QED
I can imagine a cat who is perfect in every way. One of of it’s perfections is that it must necessarily exist. Only god can be perfect. Therefore god exists and is necessarily a cat.
Wouldn’t that make dogs the devil?
Or is dog the biproduct of being the opposite of a god?
If there were no cats we would still need dogs.
But as to etymology, in German and Swedish, dog is hund and god is gott/gud. Therefore, the whole inverse spelling business is a neologism, or something like that. And, based on German and Swedish, I assume that it’s hund in Old Norse and Old English. Anyone know if that’s the case? Assuming it is, what is the origin of ‘dog’?
Inverse etymological question while I’m at it: if potato is batata in Spanish and potatis in Swedish, how did it wind up as kartoffel in German (and Icelandic)?
Google is a reasonably effective way of finding etymologies, if one doesn’t have the OED handy. Also, the conventional spelling on the wobsite is D-G 🙂
Wiktionary says ME docga is a pet-form diminutive of Old English *docce (“muscle”), that took over as the common name as late as the 16th Century. Other sources infer that the docga was originally a particular breed of the mastiff kind.
Maybe, even before that, it was a famous individual fighting d-g that Chaucer or somebody won big on. I haven’t seen a suggestion that every hund in the British Isles died of distemper and they restocked with imported d-ggies, but that sort of thing could happen.
God talks to me all the time. S/he says: Meow! Meow! Rowwwwer! Purrrrrrrrrrrr. Words to live by.
Translation: The walls are fucking BROWN!
lol
lol
Cats are not biblical. I don’t think the cat is mentioned even once. Those who wrote the Bible probably realized that cats were not fooled.
There are 102 mentions of cats in the “New International Version”, according to Bible Gateway.com.
…almost entirely “cattle” references, but Jesus also “catches” fish a lot, and “catches” people with their own words. Wicked people use nets to catch people in wartime. Oh… and there are a few catastrophes. So you, sir, are wrong.
“CAT. — Mention of this animal occurs only once in the Bible, namely Bar., vi, 21. The original text of Baruch being lost, we possess no indication as to what the Hebrew name of the cat may have been. Possibly there was not any; for although the cat was very familiar to the Egyptians, it seems to have been altogether unknown to the Jews, as well as to the Assyrians and Babylonians, even to the Greeks and Romans before the conquest of Egypt. These and other reasons have led some commentators to believe that the word cat, in the above cited place of Baruch, might not unlikely stand for another name now impossible to restore.”
– The Catholic Encyclopaedia
“For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the living God.
Duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance
Of the glory of God in the East
He worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body
Seven times round with elegant quickness.
For he knows that God is his saviour.
For God has bless’d him
In the variety of his movements.
For there is nothing sweeter
Than his peace when at rest.
For I am possessed of a cat,
Surpassing in beauty,
From whom I take occasion
To bless Almighty God.”
– Christopher Smart
And the response:
“For the Mouse is a creature
Of great personal valour.
For this is a true case–
Cat takes female mouse,
Male mouse will not depart,
but stands threat’ning and daring.
If you will let her go,
I will engage you,
As prodigious a creature as you are.
For the Mouse is a creature
Of great personal valour.
For the Mouse is of
An hospitable disposition.”
Britten’s setting
Thus OED 3rd edn:
dog, n.1 (dɒg)
Forms: 1 docga, 3–7 dogge, (3, 6 doggue, 6 Sc. doig), 6–8 dogg, 3– dog.
[late OE. docga (once in a gloss); previous history and origin unknown. (The generic name in OE., as in the Teutonic langs. generally, was hund: see hound.) So far as the evidence goes, the word appears first in English, as the name of a powerful breed or race of dogs, with which the name was introduced into the continental languages, usually, in early instances, with the attribute ‘English’. Thus mod.Du. dog, late 16th c. dogge (‘een dogghe, vn gros matin d’Engleterre, canis anglicus’, Plantijn Thesaur. 1573), Ger. dogge, in 16–17th c. dock, docke, dogg (‘englische Dock’, Onomast. 1582, ‘eine englische Docke’, 1653), LG. dogge, Da. dogge, Sw. dogg; F. dogue (‘le genereux dogue anglais’, Du Bellay 15‥), It., Sp., Pg. dogo, Pg. also dogue; in all the languages applied to some variety or race of dog.]
Sorry this was a reply to #16, but things went awry
So glad I didn’t quote from the OED, but also that I mentioned it in my reply (above) 4 hours later than yours, which I hadn’t seen.
I suspect my carelessness re your strictures on the proper use of the orthography ‘d_g’ explains why things went awry
‘The Lull before Dorking’ was a prequel to a rather famous early ‘alternative history’ by George Chesney ‘The Battle of Dorking 1871’ about a Prusssian invasion of Southern England (Dorking is a quiet market town in Surrey).
A favourite strange title I once catalogued was ‘Pollution as a result of fish cultural activities’
Who knew that ‘sole’ music could have such disastrous effects.
I just spotted ‘Crafting with Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat’; as you can imagine there are some very perceptive reviews on Amazon.
Apparently ‘Games you can play with your pussy . . . Includes Naming Your Pussy, How to Feed Your Pussy, Sleeping with Your Pussy, Disciplining Your Pussy, How to Handle A Hot Pussy and lots more.’ is not as useful as it sounds.