I saw a revival of Weber's "Cats" last night. I had a few words for my cat when I got home.
I told my cat that the other cats not only talked about mice and rats - when we have mice my cat regards them as play friends - but they also sang and danced, really, really, really well.
The cat just looked at me, offered me a weak "meow" - the "feed me" meow - and went over to her dish. After being fed, she ran over to her favorite petting spot and began rolling around which is they way she communicates "pet me now!"
Definitely not one of T.S. Eliot's/Weber's cats.
My wife surprised our family with the tickets on a whim, pricey but well worth it. (My life has been made worth living because of my wife's whims; including the whim of becoming my friend and later my lover.)
We saw it at the NJ State Theater; it's a traveling tour with incredibly talented young people. The choreography, the singing and most impressively, the set design and lighting, were remarkable.
This was the resumption of a tour that was cancelled because of Covid. I really felt for those very talented actor and actresses, so early in their careers, who had a career interruption for a plague.
This is the production: Cats at the NJ State Theater.
The production was preceded by a brief talk by a professor at the New Jersey School of Arts, Mason Gross, theater department, (my oldest son is a graduate of that school's visual arts program and now works there) and two of her undergraduate students. My son went with us and brought a friend to use my other son's ticket, as he was unable to join us because of other commitments.
The brief lecture referred to the poems of T.S. Eliot and when I got home, I took the time to recall "The Hollow Men," and call it up.
Life is so beautiful, and then you die, and in the midst of all this beauty, I was reminded of how many times I reflected on Eliot's most famous lines:
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.