{"id":73053,"date":"2020-02-02T05:35:47","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T11:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=73053"},"modified":"2020-02-01T21:19:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T03:19:21","slug":"outwardly-respectable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/outwardly-respectable\/","title":{"rendered":"Outwardly respectable"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s February 2 today, when the students at the University of Dallas traditionally drink beer in the chilly drizzle at Forker Field (do they still do that?), and when bloggers post favorite poems if they remember to. So, here’s “Macavity, the Mystery Cat<\/a>,” which I recited to my bored and fidgety classmates at grade school #4.<\/p>\n

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw\u2014
\nFor he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
\nHe’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
\nFor when they reach the scene of crime\u2014Macavity’s not there!<\/i><\/p>\n

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
\nHe’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
\nHis powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
\nAnd when you reach the scene of crime\u2014Macavity’s not there!<\/i>
\nYou may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air\u2014
\nBut I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!<\/i><\/p>\n

Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
\nYou would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
\nHis brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
\nHis coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
\nHe sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
\nAnd when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.<\/p>\n

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
\nFor he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
\nYou may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square\u2014
\nBut when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!<\/i><\/p>\n

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
\nAnd his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
\nAnd when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
\nOr when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
\nOr the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair\u2014
\nAy, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!<\/i><\/p>\n

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
\nOr the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
\nThere may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair\u2014
\nBut it’s useless to investigate\u2014Macavity’s not there!<\/i>
\nAnd when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
\n‘It must have been Macavity!’\u2014but he’s a mile away.
\nYou’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
\nOr engaged in doing complicated long division sums.<\/p>\n

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
\nThere never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
\nHe always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
\nAt whatever time the deed took place\u2014MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
\nAnd they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
\n(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
\nAre nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
\nJust controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a comment on a recent post<\/a>, Fillyjonk<\/a> mentioned that there were plans<\/a> to give Cats<\/b><\/i> a traditionally-animated movie version, with Steven Spielberg at the helm. While I would have preferred that Lloyd Webber et al<\/em> had left Eliot’s poems alone, this probably would have been preferable to the recent movie. If nothing else, the sketches of Macavity more closely approximate my mental image of the feline Moriarty than the thug of the stage version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s February 2 today, when the students at the University of Dallas traditionally drink beer in the chilly drizzle at Forker Field (do they still do that?), and when bloggers post favorite poems if they remember to. So, here’s “Macavity, the Mystery Cat,” which I recited to my bored and fidgety classmates at grade school … Continue reading “Outwardly respectable”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-anti-culture","category-occidental-animation","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-j0h","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73053"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74161,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73053\/revisions\/74161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}