Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I'm grateful you're here. If you've already donated during our winter pledge drive, I'm especially grateful to you. I also want to say thanks to everybody who came out to the New York Public Library on Friday night for Get Lit With All Of It, we had such a blast with Marlon James and TygaPaw. We'll have the radio edit for you that early next week.

On today's show, A O Scott will be here in studio. He is wrapping up 23 years as film critic at The New York Times and moving to the Book Review, he'll talk about it and take your calls, and we'll speak with pioneering cartoonist, Barbara Brandon-Croft. Her nationally syndicated comic strip Where I'm From brought the everyday lives Black women to millions of readers. A collection of her work has just been published and she joins me to discuss. Nitehawk Cinema's annual short film festival begins on Wednesday. We'll speak to the programmer and two of the filmmakers. That's the plan for today, so let's get this started with Paula Poundstone.

We know that Mondays can feel Monday-ish, so we want to kick off today's show with comedian Paula Poundstone. Many will recognize her distinctive voice as a frequent guest on NPRs News Quiz, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. She's also host of the podcast called Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, and as part of her ongoing travels, she will be performing in Englewood New Jersey on March 10th. Now, public radio listeners also know that Paula knows a lot about cats. She has a lot of cats and she's a keen observer of cat behavior. Check out this clip from one of her sets about how her cats feel about bath time in the Poundstone household.

Paula Poundstone: Cats don't like water. They're fascinated by it, but they don't like it. They have an interesting relationship with it, such that when I take a shower, all 14 of my cats line up right outside my shower door. I open the door, they're like, "That was amazing. Man, it was all over you. We couldn't get in because of the glass engineer did such a good job."

Alison Stewart: Just this past weekend, she offered this wisdom on our Instagram, "Tomorrow, like every day, is a chance to love one another and to try to lift others up. It's also a day to sift for cat owners." Paula has kindly agreed to offer us some cat guidance, so we're going to try something we're calling Cat Court with Paula Poundstone. Paula is a storied cat person, so if your cat is being naughty or nice, listeners, call in to put your cat on the stand.

Maybe they've done something you're not sure what to do about, the [unintelligible 00:02:58]-- I wasn't going to get that. [unintelligible 00:03:01] Judge Paula Poundstone presiding over your cat's strangest behaviors. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Please tell our screeners what your cat's name is and what you'd like them to be put on trial for. I'll be bailiff, I'll call the defendants before Judge Paula, who will issue both a judgment, a sentence if necessary, or just some gentle guidance. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Social media is also available at all WNYC. I'll wait for calls to come in. First, I should welcome you. Hi, Paula. Welcome back.

Paula Poundstone: Hey, how are you? As I'm sitting here listening to you, I have my cat Theo right beside me and I think I might be allergic to cats.

Alison Stewart: No. [chuckles] How many do you have to be allergic to?

Paula Poundstone: Now I have 10.

Alison Stewart: Do you know all their names?

Paula Poundstone: Oh, of course. A preschool teacher has 25 and hopefully she knows all their names. She probably just calls five of them hun just in case. No, let's see. I have Theo, Hardy, [unintelligible 00:04:17] Tonks, Sham Wow, Wednesday, Mrs. Feziwig, Harrison, Lawson, and Nash.

Alison Stewart: That is the Poundstone household.

Paula Poundstone: That's the fastest that I've ever done it, by the way. Usually, I hum and I haw over one or two, but for all you know, I made them all up.

Alison Stewart: You know waht? I like them all, Sham Wow particularly. I'm familiar with Tonks.

Paula Poundstone: Sham Wow is my only long-haired cat.

Alison Stewart: Is there a reason for that?

Paula Poundstone: No, but you can slide her across the floor and she cleans in hard-to-get places.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Tell me about when you first discovered you loved cats.

Paula Poundstone: Oh, I was raised with a couple of cats. I had Siamese growing up, named King Tut. He was a great cat, full of personality. It's interesting that we're doing cat court because my cat, and we called him Tut for short, when he was alive, he used to eat shoelaces. It was literally-- Now you have to keep in mind my age. The punishments that we were given as children are largely now illegal.

In our house, it was literally a beatable offense to leave your shoes out because the cat would eat the laces, and you'd go to tie your laces and there were just these cat spitty stubs at the end. I don't know why he did that. Mostly probably just to get us in trouble, but I remember how exotic I felt it was when I would stay the night at somebody else's house and you didn't have to put your shoes behind lock and key before you went to bed.

Alison Stewart: That's an interesting context because in that case, in the family, the cats were just doing their cat thing. It was the kids who were the troublemakers because they were leaving their shoes out.

Paula Poundstone: Lousy kids. He also used to chew any round cord, so the vacuum cleaner-- The excitement that my mother expressed, it was like the portable vacuum cleaners that the cord zipped into it, the canister ones that the cord could zip inside the vacuum cleaner was such a thrill in our house because if it was just wrapped around the sticky part of the upright, the cat could get to it and he chewed those wires. Eventually, somebody was going to plug it in and get electrocuted. Amazingly, the cat never did. They're sly that way. They set up traps for humans. That's a lot of what cats are doing.

Alison Stewart: We've got calls coming-

Paula Poundstone: People always make the comment that they sleep all the time and they have this easy life. No, they are hardwired to be-- They're not sleeping, they're planning, they're designing another trap for human beings.

Alison Stewart: We got a lot of calls coming in. Let's talk to Artie calling in from Newark. Hi, Artie. What's your cat's name?

Artie: Hi, Alison? Hello.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you're on the air go.

Artie: Oh, hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Artie: Hi, Paula. I listen to you every week, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. My cat's-

Paula Poundstone: Oh, thanks, Artie.

Artie: You're welcome. My cat's name is Max. Lately, when I pet his head or I'm rubbing his stomach or whatever, he just starts shaking his head, like trying to shake off-- Imagine when you have wet hair you're shaking your head like that, that type of way. I took him to the vet to find out if it's probably his ears, but his ears are fine. Everything is fine. No infection, no wax, no nothing, but he's just been doing this all the time now. [crosstalk]

Paula Poundstone: I know what that is. I'm so glad you brought that to our attention because I'm sure a lot of cat owners are having this. Cats get a percentage from the vet financial deal. A lot of times they will fake injuries or fake ailments. I don't know how good you are on the internet, but I'll bet you if you investigate carefully you're going to find that Max has a bank account somewhere. My guess would be with Wells Fargo. It's just a guess, but they do that. They act like there's something wrong and it turns out there's nothing wrong. They do that all the time.

Alison Stewart: Paula are you saying there's feline fraud?

Paula Poundstone: There's a tremendous amount of feline fraud. Our law enforcement are already bulging at the seams just from covering our leaders. Feline fraud doesn't get attended to the way it should. Plus there are a lot of gecko owners, and so there's problems in that area as well.

Alison Stewart: Paula Poundstone is my guest. We are hosting cat court with Paula Poundstone. Call in and you can put your cat on the stand. I'm going to try it again. Pounderable Judge Paula Poundstone is presiding over your catch strange behaviors, 212-433- WNYC, 212-433-9692. Going to line one with Lisa because I have been following Lisa's saga of these two kitties on Twitter. I feel invested in this, Lisa, and in Boogie.

Lisa: I figured you might like this call.

Alison Stewart: Really I'm? All right. Tell us about what's going on.

Lisa: All right. Boogie is a five month, almost six-month-old kitten, and Badu is a rescue who is about five years old, who is a big, furry, slow cat. You may think they're going to be friends. They come in, they're getting along. Boogie's in love with Badu and Badu wants nothing to do with Boogie. She keeps punching him in the face when he gets cheeky with her little tail. I don't know what to do because it's just like he's in love and she just won't give him the time of day. They're not fighting, but my goodness, what do I do? It's cat wars. It's not cute. They're supposed to love each other.

Paula Poundstone: It's the older one that doesn't like the younger one. Is that correct?

Lisa: She's basically like, "Get out of my face," a hundred times a day, and he just does not understand. The manners are not there.

Paula Poundstone: Well, that's because the younger one, and this, again, happens a lot with cats. I'm going have to come down to the side of the older cat. A lot of times, kittens, younger cats will come to a home specifically-- it's a gold digger thing. There's really no reason why a younger cat should like an older cat. No reason at all. There should be no draw there. It is a gold digger thing. Probably, after all of-- What did you say? Badu? Is that the name of the older cat?

Alison Stewart: Is Lisa up? Can you pop up, Lisa?

Lisa: She's [unintelligible 00:11:53]

Alison Stewart: Which one?

Lisa: I'm here.

Paula Poundstone: Which one's the older cat? What's the name of the older cat?

Lisa: Badu is the older cat and Boogie is the kitten.

Paula Poundstone: That's what I thought. Badu more than likely is onto this gold digger thing. That we explain a lot. I bring in-

Lisa: Boogie goes to jail?

Alison Stewart: Boogie to the jail? Boogie's problem-maker?

Paula Poundstone: Boogie's exposed, at the very least. I think it's more the court of public opinion that Boogie is exposed. Let's face it, Boogie's not the first gold digger in the world. Some people like him. Geez, some people marry him. My hat's off to a kitten that won't give up, though. I got to say, an older cat can be boring. The idea that if it just moves its tail slightly, it's a big thrill to the kitten, that's a lot cheaper than buying balls with bells in them.

Alison Stewart: If you want to see Boogie and Badu, Lisa is an extraordinary person in the world of publishing. You can go follow her on Instagram and see more Boogie and Badu. I wish you luck with the two. I can't wait to see more of their adventures. Thanks for calling in.

Paula Poundstone: Does Lisa post the videos of them?

Alison Stewart: There are some good pictures of Boogie and Badu on Twitter. Lisa Lucas of Pantheon. She's a bigwig publisher with Kitty problems. There you go. Happens to the best of us. The best and the brightest have cat problems.

Paula Poundstone: If she wants to really profit from this, she might want to go to a gold digger magazine, which is how-to.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Rosa from Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Hi, Rosa.

Rosa: Hi. I'm so excited to be on. First time caller, longtime listener. I wanted to put my cat on trial. His name is [unintelligible 00:13:54]. He plays with this water bowl that we leave out for him. I believe it's ceramic, but he knocks that around the ground at all hours of the night and day, and it drives me crazy, amongst the other things that he does. If I was going to put him on trial, it would be for this.

Alison Stewart: Noise complaint. We've got a noise complaint.

Paula Poundstone: Is it spilling the water?

Rosa: Yes, it is. The floors are ceramic too, so it just makes so much noise and it's so loud. It's a tiny bowl too and he just plays with it.

Paula Poundstone: Does he eat dry food?

Rosa: He eats wet food and a little bit of dry food, but mostly wet food because he's very picky.

Paula Poundstone: I have cats who put the dry food into the water bowl, and I keep dumping the water bowl and putting out fresh food because it's gross, that fresh water because the dry food floating around in there. I realized one day that because they're doing that, in their minds, they're making a casserole, and they get it just how they want it and then I throw it away. I don't know what would make him move-- other than it [unintelligible 00:15:19] Does he have toys?

Alison Stewart: Does he have toys?

Rosa: Very odd behavior.

Paula Poundstone: You've got to get him a Monopoly game or something.

Rosa: They have toys. They would rather play with tiny piece of garbage, like a piece of paper, or they play with my guitar if it's just sitting there, or a nail if they find it. Anything that they find on the ground, they have much more fun with that than the toys they have. They're very spoiled. I have two cats.

Paula Poundstone: Wait a minute, why do you have a nail on the ground in your apartment?

Alison Stewart: That's a whole other story. [laughs]

Rosa: That's a whole other story of me trying to build a shelf.

Alison Stewart: Jen, thanks for calling in. Let's go to Celia in Highland Park, New Jersey. Celia, who's on trial?

Celia: Hello. Alison, you are now totally beating Brian Lehrer, and Paula, I get to talk to you again. I'm so thrilled. I talked to you about seeing you at Red Rocks the last time you were on. That was so great. My two babies, my two grays, we call them the grays. They're both gray cats, beautiful, Tuxz with a Z, T-U-X-Z, and Pearl [unintelligible 00:16:39]. All my kitties have Zs in their names. The previous three, unfortunately, have passed. They are both indoor/outdoor cats.

They do stuff like-- I go downstairs in the morning, I wake up early, go downstairs and Tuxz is at the back door waiting to go out. I open the door, I'm looking around, "Where's Pearl? Where's Pearl? Where's Pearl?" As soon as I close the door, she wants to go out. She comes up and she's like, "Okay, I'm ready now," or Tuxz will come in the front door and then head immediately to the back door to go out. They basically think that we're their doormen. It's ridiculous.

The other thing, [unintelligible 00:17:20] tell you one other thing, they're so fussy. Mommy gets them the best grain-free cat food. I open a can, Pearl comes up, sniffs at it. It's like, "I don't think so, I'm not sure," and then she goes and sits very politely on the side, like, "Okay, now what are you going to get for me?" Sometimes this works. I take a bit of the crunchies and sprinkle them on top of the food like sprinkles and then she's like, "Oh, okay, I'll eat that." What am I going to do with these two?

Paula Poundstone: Like Chocolate Jimmies. All right. Here's what I think. Pearl wants grain. I don't know why all these companies make this grain-free food when I think, largely, cats want grain.

Alison Stewart: Marketing. [crosstalk] Oh, Paula, I think-- Go for it.

Paula Poundstone: They might want their grain with fish, but they would like to have some grain. They want a side dish. They don't just want the entrée, they want a little something on the side. That's what I think.

Alison Stewart: I think they're Aristocats. Yes, I said it.

Paula Poundstone: Yes, very spoiled. Here's what I think, I think that if you're going to be their doorman, they should have to tip. That's my ruling.

Alison Stewart: Paula, you're on tour now. Yes. Tell me more about your tour. You have a show in Englewood in a few weeks, March 10th. What are you gravitating towards these days on stage? What do we hear? What are you thinking about?

Paula Poundstone: What do I talk about? I talk about, well, caring for a house full of animals. I talk about politics. Oh, you know what? I forgot to mention it about Pearl, the reason I'm not making a strong judgment on Pearl is that she has executive privilege. By the way, in the legal system, a lot of cats have executive privilege. I have two big dogs and 10 cats. I talk about that.

My favorite part of any show that I do is just plain talking to the audience. I do the time honored, "Where are you from? What do you do for a living?" In this way, little biographies of audience members emerge, and I use that from which to set my sales. By that very nature, no two shows are the same. You can't help but talk about travel because it's an enormous part of my life. I talk about current events as I understand them. I'm always in a desperate run to keep up. I actually talk about books sometimes. How about that for the movie reviewer who's becoming a book reviewer?

Alison Stewart: Well, what have you been reading lately?

Paula Poundstone: Well, right now I'm reading The January 6 Report, which is dry. I mostly read non-fiction because I'm trying to make up for all that I don't know. Every now and then, I just crave a made-up story. I'm an incredibly slow reader, I'm not saying that I'm well-read, I'm just saying that I read. One night, I went to my bookshelf and I found The Hunt for Red October, which I had bought for my son years ago and he never read. I pulled it off the shelf and there was about a quarter of an inch of yellow stain on the bottom of the book. As you can imagine, my cats had been up on the bookshelf and must have peed on that book.

What I did was-- It was dry, but you could guess what it was. I took the book off the shelf. I put a plastic bag on my stomach as I perched to read so that it wasn't getting on me. I would wrap it in the bag, bring it on an airplane and read, and every time I took the book out, the passenger beside me would get a funny look on their face.

I read the whole book, and I have to say-- You know how sometimes you read a book and it doesn't really take for you, and so you just keep reading and you think, "Well, I'm going to fall in love with it somewhere along the way"? I never fell in love with The Hunt for Red October. It just did nothing for me. I read the entire thing and then I realized that wasn't just cat pee, that was a review.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Paula Poundstone will be performing in Englewood, New Jersey on March 10th. Paula, our phone lines are still full, so we may have to have you come back.

Paula Poundstone: Oh, I would love to.

Alison Stewart: I think a lot of people want to talk to you about their cats.

Paula Poundstone: Yes. Well, everybody needs to keep in mind the executive privilege.

Alison Stewart: Privilege, remembering.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Not to mention the debate in whatever clause, I forget what it is. What is it, that slow Speech and Debate Clause, isn't it?

Alison Stewart: It's C-L-A-W-S, though. Paula?

Paula Poundstone: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling. Thanks for being with us. Thanks to all our callers.

Paula Poundstone: Thanks, Alison. Thanks, callers.

 

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