Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog is an excellent place to keep up with the thoughts of a true master of fiction-writing. But did you also know that it’s a great place to keep up with the antics of Pard, Le Guin’s black and white cat?
The Annals of Pard take up a sizable portion of Le Guin’s blog, replete with pictures of the resplendent feline getting up to all sorts of trouble. But perhaps the best posts come from Pard’s own perspective, revealing a pensive soul who prefers to reflect upon the absurdities of life:
When I first came here I was barely out of kittenhood and constantly in search of excitement. Here and there, though never in my bowl, I found what I thought was a lively kind of kibble, running around, hiding under things, even flying sometimes. I hunted them for quite a while and caught a great many, but they never did taste very good. I gave up hunting them at last, admitting that beetles are an inferior form of kibble. Still, it was fun to hunt them.
It is not fun to hunt mice. It is exciting in an intense, terrible way. If there is a mouse, I cannot think of anything else. I cannot sleep. I cannot eat kibbles. I can only smell and hear and think of mouse. I don’t understand this, and it makes me unhappy. But when the mouse comes out of hiding I have to hunt it and catch it. I always catch it. And then what? It isn’t a kibble, it isn’t to eat. It’s much bigger, and furry, who wants to eat a huge fur-coated kibble? It is a wonderful toy while it plays, but after a while it begins to run down and stops moving. So I bring it to the old queen, who is good with toys and makes them move. But if it is a mouse, she leaps up and does shouting and hurls the mouse off the bed, and there is great unpleasantness.
Pard clearly has all answers to life.
There are many exciting adventures in the Annals of Pard, including his contributions at Christmas, his photo-journal fight with the vacuum cleaner, and a helpful video instructing humans on how to drink from “the Water Hole.” While you soak in some wisdom from Le Guin, consider the additional benefit to your health of moving through life’s deeper mysteries with Pard.
