Etcetera OG ✎ COMPLETE

; my childhood loves: 'cats'

                Dear everyone who probably still doesn't care to know any more about me than you already know, I'm about to tell you about another one of my childhood loves. The last time I did this, I mentioned that there was this string of movies that all played some huge, important role in my odd upbringing, and that is accurate. Along with Anastasia, which is the first one of those movies I told you about, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical CATS is another.

Probably of every movie on this list of childhood loves, CATS has been the most influential and possibly the one that's been there the longest. I know the word "influential" seems funny because it's legitimately a musical about cats, but hopefully by the end of this post it'll maybe make a little more sense to you.

BACK STORY

When I say this movie has been around in my life the longest, I mean that I've been watching it since even before I can remember. If I didn't have video evidence of myself watching it, I probably would have never believed my mom about the things that I used to do as a very young human whenever this musical was playing on our television. But alas, I do have video evidence (and it is embarrassing).

According to my mother, this is how I got into it: when I was really young, we had a couple cats and I loved them to death, I guess, and I also loved music. She used to rent these old VHS tapes from our public library that had these two giant mice, a blue one and a pink one, and they sang songs everywhere they went, and I used to stand in front of the TV in my diaper about two feet away (no wonder I have glasses now...) from the screen dancing and attempting to sing along. In fact, my first ever favorite song in the entire world was "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus.

(Squidward voice: "Here. Please hit me over the head as hard as you can. Don't hold back.")

Yeah, so that happened. But one day I guess I grew tired of the same old movies, and Mom had to go out and buy me something else. She thinks she was at Walmart when she saw CATS on sale. I don't know how to properly describe to you how out of it this part of Wisconsin is, but just believe me when I say that no one in my family, let alone my mom, has ever heard of this musical or Andrew Lloyd Webber or could even name another musical at all off the top of their heads. The only reason she bought it was because she figured I loved cats and I loved music, so what wouldn't I love about this?

And, uh, yeah, she was right. I became obsessed. I watched nothing else for months. In fact, originally, Mom grew to hate the film very quickly due to how often I wanted it playing. However, one day she said that I made her sit and watch it with me, and even though she didn't understand the story they were trying to tell, she finally understood what little Carissa loved so much about it, and it was the music. But I'll get into that later.

WHAT THE HECK IS IT ABOUT THEN?

So, CATS is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on T.S. Eliot's collection of poems called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Eliot apparently used to write poems for his grandchildren under the name "Old Possum" and would read the poems like little stories. Every time his grandchildren would come over (or he'd go see them), he'd bring them a new poem about a new cat. Eventually, he let the poems be gathered and published as a collection, but for a long time nobody knew he'd written them. They were, according to the first publication, written by this Old Possum.

Anyway, the musical is known as "the most famous musical of all time" and is apparently the longest running Broadway musical ever according to the back of the DVD case. I'd give you the summary from the back of the case as well, but it's too long, so here's the Wikipedia one: