Meow!
Having devoted an earlier acrostic to dogs, we felt that we owed cats (and cat lovers) equal time. And as with the earlier offering, it proved reasonably easy to include lots of words and phrases evocative of our animal friends.
We drew the quotation at the heart of this week’s puzzle from a 2013 book by Mieschelle Nagelschneider, a “cat behaviorist” who founded the Cat Behavior Clinic in Portland, Oregon. Among other things, The Cat Whisperer debunks a number of myths about cats. As the quotation makes clear, cats – despite abundant evidence to the contrary – do not deliberately manipulate their owners or behave like Garfield.
And speaking of Garfield, we learned a fun fact in researching clues and answers for this acrostic: that the comic strip that bears his name is set in Indiana. Perhaps some of you knew that Garfield, Jon, Odie, and the rest of the cast are Hoosiers.
In addition to comic strips, of course, one can find cats in countless novels, movies, and plays. The image above from The Godfather [as in Answer C.] has a curious backstory. The cat on Marlon Brando’s lap was a stray who strolled onto the set. Brando scooped him up unscripted, as it were, and proceeded with the shooting of the scene. Apparently, the cat purred so loudly that it almost interfered with the audio track!
For this week’s video, we are compelled to ask what T.S. Eliot [see Answer Y.] – author of the book of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical [Answer V.!] Cats – would have thought of this number from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation, Cats:
Loved the clue and answer: “Products of some hacking”! Brilliant!