This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of catnip:
of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member, -- the alpha and
the omega; but then it is to be recollected, that I speak from the ground of a
large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific
authors who have at all treated of catnip, and even of those who have written
expressly on the materia medica, made it evident, from the horror they
express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all.
But that the reader may judge of the degree in which catnip
is likely to stupify the faculties of a Tabby Cat, I shall (by way of treating
the question illustratively, rather than argumentatively) describe the way in
which I myself often passed a catnip evening in Tokyo, during the period between 2000 and 2007.
It will be seen, that at least catnip did not move me to seek solitude, and
much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self-involution ascribed
to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy
enthusiast or visionary; but I regard that little. I must desire my reader to
bear in mind, that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all the rest
of my time; and certainly I had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as
the other felines; these, however, I allowed myself but seldom.
Thus did I find that catnip does not, of necessity, produce
inactivity or torpor; but that, on the contrary, it often led me into oxygen bars and Pachinko parlors. Yet, in candor, I will admit that oxygen bars and Pachinko parlors are not the
appropriate haunts of the catnip-snorter, when in the divinest state incident
to his enjoyment. In that state, crowds become an oppression to him; music,
even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence, as
indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are
the crown and consummation of what catnip can do for feline nature. I, whose
disease it was to meditate too much and to observe too little, and who, upon my
first entrance at Kabukicho, was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, from
brooding too much on the sufferings which I had witnessed in the back alleys of
my kittenhood, was sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to
do all I could to counteract them.
The
remedies I sought were to force myself into society, and to keep my
understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But for these
remedies, I should certainly have become hypochondriacally melancholy. In after
years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, I yielded
to my natural inclination for a solitary life. And at that time I often fell
into these reveries upon taking catnip; and more than once it has happened to
me, on a summer night, when I have been lying on my dumpster from which
I could overlook the Octopus Eatery next door and command a view of the great
neighborhood of Kabukicho, at about the same distance, that I have sat, from
sunrise to sunset, motionless, and without wishing to move.
O just, subtle, and mighty Catnip! That to the hearts of shorthairs and
longhairs alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs
that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm; -- eloquent catnip!
That with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, and, to the
guilty Tomcat, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and his paws
washed pure from blood; and, to the proud Siamese, a brief oblivion for
Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged;
that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs
of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and confoundest perjury, and dost
reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges; thou buildest upon the bosom of
darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples, beyond
the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, -- beyond the splendour of Babylon and
Hekatompylos. Thou only givest these gifts to felines; and thou hast the keys
of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty catnip!
I suppose, that as yet, at least (that is, in 2004), I am
ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which catnip has in store for
those who abuse its lenity. At the same time, I have only been a dilettante
snorter of catnip; eight years' practice, even with the single precaution of
allowing sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient
to make catnip necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a
different era.
This, then, let me repeat: I postulate that at the time I
began to take catnip daily, I could not have done otherwise. Whether, indeed,
afterwards, I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it
seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the
innumerable efforts which I did make might not have been carried much further,
and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much
more energetically, -- these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I
might make out a case of palliation; but -- shall I speak ingenuously? -- I
confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an
Eudæmonist; I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and
others; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient
firmness; and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of
any reversionary benefit.
Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle
in 2004 was what I have mentioned; and from this date the reader is to consider
me as a regular and confirmed catnip-snorter, of whom to ask whether on any
particular day he had or had not taken catnip, would be to ask whether his
lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions.
You
understand, now, reader, what I am; and you are by this time aware, that no old
veterinarian, "with a snow-white beard," will have any chance of
persuading me to surrender "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious
drug." No; I give notice to all, whether breeders or fanciers, that
whatever be their pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice,
they must not hope for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by any
savage proposition for a Lent or Ramadam of abstinence from catnip. This, then,
being all fully understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind.
Now, then, reader, from 2004 where all this time we have been sitting down and
loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now
draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character.
But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to
have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write an
email or a text message; an answer of a few words, to any that I received, was
the utmost that I could accomplish; and often that not until the email
had laid weeks, or even months, in my Inbox. I shall not afterwards allude to
this part of the case; it is one, however, which the catnip-snorter will find,
in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of
incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the
neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the
remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective
and conscientious mind. The catnip-snorter loses none of his moral
sensibilities or aspirations; he wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to
realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his
intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not
of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of
incubus and night-mare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform,
just as a feline forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a
relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some
object of his tenderest love: -- he curses the spells which chain him down from
motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is
powerless as an kitten, and cannot even attempt to rise.
For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by
deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by
words. I seemed every night to descend -- not metaphorically, but literally to
descend -- into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it
seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. This I do not dwell upon; because
the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least
to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by
words.
And I awoke in struggles, and mewed aloud -- "I will catnap
no more!"
The scariest idea in the world is reincarnation. Most believers in reincarnation seem to view it as some kind of consolation, a reassurance of continued life. 
