Whither Moocat?
I used to happily get questioned on the street, when people saw my license plate, “What’s a Moocat?” If I had time, I’d explain, “that’s a cat that’s not sure if he’s a cat or a cow.” If I didn’t have time, or if I needed to be more serious, I’d say, “Oh, it’s a character from a song.” Now I more often am asked when people first see my email address or, of course, this website.
Back in 1988 or so, one day I was feeling especially happy for some reason in my then-home of Riverdale, Maryland, and this song sprang into my mind more or less fully formed, and I sang it aloud:
The Moocat Song
folding sandwiches that made him say,
“I hope no one tries to steal my bike,
for I’ll probably get laid tonight.”
Moocat woke up in a fright that night
wond’ring who would try to kill him,
he had knowledge of what’s wrong and right,
but he sometimes acted sil-ly.
Moocat rolled around the grass and then
felt the redbugs bite his furry skin.
Moocat had to know the reason how:
“Am I a cat or a cow right now?”
Moocat was leafing through a book last night
looking for something to dispel his fright.
Please tell Moocat what to say and do,
“Tell me, shall I meow or moo?”
Moocat, meooo!
When I bought my first-ever automobile in 1991, I got a personalized license plate and named my new used 1973 VW Beetle, “MOOCAT.” I was gratified to notice that in high-strung, professionally politicized, overly serious Washington, DC, where I lived for 8 years, my MOOCAT plate made people smile.
Years later, when traveling the world and staying in Chiang-mai, Thailand, I decided to launch a Web literary magazine. This was 1996, and it was still a not-too-common endeavour. I would call it, “Moocat Unbleached.” Although it took me 5 years to finally get to it, this site is the direct descendant of that effort. I had even made some graphics for it, out in the tropical low-tech latitudes of 1996, using the most rudimentary tools (Windows 3.1 “MS Paint” applet and a DOS freeware program called, I think, “Graphics Workshop”).
In 1998, when I bought a domain name for my moocat idea, I consciously chose to buy “moocat.net” and NOT “moocat.com,” since I wanted to make it clear that my site was about literature and art and ideas, not about commerce. Several years later, after I had formed a limited liability company for myself, should I ever undertake Web development work on an independent-contractor basis, I thought to go ahead and register the “.com” version, since my company name was “Moocat Internet Consulting, LLC.” To my surprise, “moocat.com” was now taken! And so was “moocat.org”! The .org site seems to be a Web gallery for the work of photographer R. Samuel Klatchko. I have no idea how he came upon the name “moocat.”
The .com site was the site of a British drinking/social group called The Moocats (which domain is no longer in use but still unavailable).” So, moocat.net and moocat.net only.
The moocat ASCII graphic goes back almost as far as the name “moocat.” I first discovered the Internet as a real venue in 1993 through a local BBS. Since I had made the audacious purchase of a then state-of-the-art 28.8k baud modem, I was able to easily access the BBS and was immediately consumed by the “Chat” feature, which exposed me to an entirely new form of communication. I choose the handle “moocat” and came up with the moocat graphic as part of my ASCII signature.
Meoo.
