Selected Cronicas

BUYING A PIG IN A POKE

— Have you ever mistaken cat for sucking pig? I was once asked in a moment of distraction.

I replied:

— I’m forever mistaking cat for sucking-pig. Out of foolishness, distraction, ignorance. And sometimes even out of courtesy. People offer me cat and I thank them for the sucking-pig and when the cat starts miaowing, I pretend not to hear. Because I know the deception was intended to please me. But I am not quite so forgiving when I know the offer was made in bad faith.

The variations on this theme could fill an encyclopaedia. Such as, for example, when the cat imagines itself to be a sucking-pig. And because one is dealing with a cat which is obviously unhappy with its condition, then I indulge its fantasy. After all, a cat has every right to want to be a sucking-pig.

And there are even instances where the cat genuinely wants to be a cat but cochon de lait oblige, and then things really do get difficult.

Some people even refuse to admit that they enjoy eating cat meat and try to persuade us they are eating sucking-pig. And we keep up the pretence just to keep them happy.

In a treatise on the subject, an expert on melancholia would claim to have passed off many an alley cat as sucking-pig. An expert in irascibility would say something unprintable.

I feel really ashamed when I refuse sucking-pig because I suspect it might be cat. (There is a proverb which says: Better to be cheated by a friend than to mistrust him.) This is the price of mistrust.

But truly, when I mistake a cat for a sucking-pig, the one who comes off worst is the person who offered it to me. The only mistake on my part was to have been gullible.

I am enjoying writing this. A number of sucking-pigs have been miaowing on the nearby roof-tops and now I have had my chance to miaow back. For cats, too, can be rabid.