Yesterday The Guardian ran a piece on “goblin mode,” a lifestyle invented as an antidote to the Martha Stewart syndrome—you know, like, baking bread, reading obscure books, riding that Peloton, finding some new discipline to keep your mind and/or body busy, or at least intact, until the pandemic passed.** The goblin stays in her pajamas and sweatshirt, goes braless to the bodega, eats whole bags of chips in bed, watches profoundly stupid TV (“I Want You Back,” “Reacher,” “Billions”), and engages no creatures in person save domesticated animals. To her the world seems remote because it is: other human beings appear to her only on screen. Cette gobline, c’est moi.
The cat video featured in this piece—you have to see it, the little bastard demonstrates the goblin principle that food is for fun, not mere nourishment—reminded me of Ralph, the demon predator, one of three cats in my adult life. He played with his food as if it were a dying mouse, scooping those kibbles, flinging them into the air, hoping they’d move when they hit the floor. He was restless, angry, cruel, vengeful. He shook off affection like it was light rain, just a momentary nuisance—I never saw him in anybody’s lap, and I never herd him purr. I loved him more than Tiger and Elvis, the other stray cats who wandered into range of my voice.
One day I was sitting on the front porch of my two-bedroom house on 11th Street in DeKalb, Illinois, smoking and drinking a beer, thinking about my future. Could I finish that fucking dissertation (on the origins of the Fed), did I want to? And what if I did? Would that get me an ”academic appointment,” like a teaching job in higher education? Probably not—a PhD in History from Northern Illinois University might get me a part-time gig at a suburban community college, or in a prison (Stateville maybe, one of my fellow grad students was a product of NIU’s Pell Grant-funded degree program there), but beyond that, not a chance.
So what, exactly, was the point of my education? I couldn’t picture myself as an American Lenin, not anymore, although the dissertation was a studied parody of his Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), which proved that Russia was ready for socialism, having left behind a stage appropriate to populism. What, then?
Just then I saw a bird flying only four feet off the ground, moving slowly, erratically from my left to right. Was he hurt? And there was Ralph running just behind him, but not at full speed, now gathering himself. The cat leaped into the air, above the bird, front legs spread wide, and slammed the poor thing to the sidewalk. Ralph landed, turned and sauntered back to the dying bird, sat down to examine his kill. He looked over at me, back at the bird, gave it a nudge with his right front paw.
The bird wriggled, I said, “Jesus, Ralph, you been practicing?” He knew his name, he looked over at me again, back at the bird, still impassive, curious, thoughtful. He made no attempt to bring his prey to me as an offering, as per Tiger’s efforts with the two mice he killed in ten years of trying. (Elvis died young, cornered and killed by my neighbor’s two pit bulls.). Ralph watched that bird die, licked his paw, then stood up, shook himself, and walked away. “Where you going, little man?” He didn’t turn this time. I wrapped the bird in some newspaper, put it in the garbage can out back. “Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t see that coming.”
Ralph moved with Tiger, Alex, and me to Chicago a year later. I was working part-time at Stateville by then, learning from the remnants of the Blackstone Rangers how not to teach US history to Black residents of a maximum-security prison. Ralph and Tiger were inmates of a different kind because I wouldn’t let them out of my apartment to roam the city’s streets—too dangerous, I thought. Alex I took for walks, Tiger was happy to get all goblin, but Ralph couldn’t stand it. He darted for any open door, kept whining at the windows, and then one day he disappeared. I’d left a window open a crack, two inches max. He escaped.
I couldn’t mourn him. Ralph wasn’t built for domestication—he wasn’t made for the soft indoors, where kibble and cat litter were always available. He needed to be out there killing birds, mice, whatever. He probably wanted to kill me for confining him.
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**https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/14/slobbing-out-and-giving-up-why-are-so-many-people-going-goblin-mode?utm_term=622f435bbeb5d37648836a09d81dae75&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email