Scribbling the Cat

In 2003, I spent 6 months working in Banff. When I left in June of that year to head back to the east coast, I was given a book as a good-bye present from one the Librarians at the Banff Centre. This book by Alexandra Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, is a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa and has since become one of my favourite all time favourites. I have given it as a gift to many people and have re-read it, which I almost never do. Last year, I asked for her book Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness. This year for Christmas, I asked and received Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier. I loved this book. I always enjoy being taking on a journey I know I will never experience myself. For me, it is always fascinating to read about the journey that people’s lives take them on – especially when they are so vastly different from my own.

Two quotes from Scribbling the Cat:

It was the time of night that precedes dawn and is without perspective or reason. It was the hour when regret and fear overwhelm hope and courage and when all that that is ugly in us is magnified and when we are the most panic-stricken by what we have lost, and what we have almost lost, and what we fear we might lose.

I don’t think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don’t think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don’t think any of us can sit in judgement of another human being. We’re incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. It is possible – from the perspective of this quickly spinning earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin – to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don’t know if it is even useful to try.

Alexandra Fuller

Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier