Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.
The first thing I notice is the arch. GREETINGS curves over the cat’s head like a shop awning, and HUZZ sits beneath it like a doormat. Between those two words, an orange tabby stares out with the flat, unimpressed expression of a creature who has been asked to participate in a ceremony and has declined. The letters are blue-purple and dimensional, as if they had been inflated slightly and then pressed onto the shirt. The cat wears a red cap backwards. One paw holds a rainbow swirl lollipop. Behind the cat, purple lightning forks upward. The whole composition is a greeting card that has been left in the sun too long and has developed opinions.
I want to read this shirt as a piece of typography before I read it as a joke, because the typography is doing most of the work. The arch of GREETINGS is the shape of formal address — the banner over a doorway, the word on a welcome mat, the opening of a letter from an institution that wants something from you. The word HUZZ below it is the opposite: a syllable that sounds like a small explosion of approval, a word that has been passed around the internet until it has lost whatever historical dignity it might once have had and become a noise. The cat is caught between the two. It is being greeted and it is being huzzed, and it would like both of these things to stop.
This is a shirt about the gap between the language we use to address people and the language people actually want to hear. Greetings is what you say when you are performing politeness. Huzz is what you say when you are performing enthusiasm. Neither is what you say when you are standing in a doorway at seven in the morning, holding a lollipop, wearing a hat backwards, and wishing to be left alone. The cat’s deadpan expression is the third term in the equation. It is the face of someone who has been greeted and huzzed and has decided to respond with silence.
I keep thinking about the lollipop. It is a rainbow swirl, the kind that comes in a cellophane wrapper and is almost impossible to eat without getting sticky. The cat holds it in one paw like a scepter. This is not a cat who is about to enjoy a lollipop. This is a cat who has been handed a lollipop as part of a greeting ritual and is now expected to look grateful. The lollipop is the gift that makes the greeting obligatory. You cannot accept a lollipop without accepting the greetings that came with it. The cat knows this. The cat is not fooled.
The purple lightning is the detail I almost missed. It is behind the cat, not in front of it, which means it is not a special effect but a backdrop. The cat is not being struck by lightning. The cat is standing in front of lightning, as if the lightning were a wall or a curtain. This is a small but important distinction. The cat is not energized. The cat is merely located near energy. The energy is someone else’s problem.
I have been thinking about this shirt in the context of the reading life, which is the context I usually think in. The reading life is full of greetings. Every book begins with an address — a title page, a dedication, an epigraph, a first sentence that reaches out and says hello, you, yes, you. Some of these greetings are formal. Some are huzzed. Most of them are somewhere in between, trying to be friendly without being exhausting. The cat on this shirt is the reader who has opened too many books that began with a greeting and expected a huzz in return. The cat is the reader who has learned to keep a deadpan expression until the book proves it deserves something else.
I do not know where the word huzz comes from, and I am not going to pretend I do. What I can see is that it is printed here in the same blue-purple dimensional letters as greetings, which means the shirt is treating them as a pair. They are not a pair in any dictionary I own. They are a pair because someone put them on a shirt together, one above the cat and one below, and the cat is the hinge between them. The shirt is not asking me to look up huzz. The shirt is asking me to notice that greetings and huzz are doing the same job — they are both ways of saying here I am, pay attention to me — and that the cat is the one who has to decide whether to pay attention.
This is where the shirt becomes useful to me as a reader. It is a diagram of address. The top word is the formal address. The bottom word is the informal address. The cat is the addressee. The lollipop is the incentive. The lightning is the atmosphere. The backwards cap is the costume of someone who has been told to be casual and has complied in the most literal way possible. Every element is a piece of the same sentence: We are greeting you, we are huzzing you, here is a lollipop, please look pleased. The cat’s face is the punctuation at the end of that sentence. It is not an exclamation point. It is not a question mark. It is a period, and the period is flat.
I have a notebook in which I write down first sentences. I started it years ago, when I was trying to understand why some books pull me in and others leave me standing in the doorway. The notebook is not a list of favorites. It is a list of greetings. Some of them are formal: Call me Ishmael. Some of them are huzzed: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Most of them are somewhere in between. What I have learned from the notebook is that the best greetings do not ask for a huzz in return. They simply say here is the world and then step aside. The cat on this shirt would approve of that kind of greeting. The cat would not approve of a greeting that came with a lollipop and a lightning bolt and a backwards cap and an expectation of enthusiasm. The cat would like to be addressed, not performed at.
The shirt is available here, if you want to read it yourself. I am not going to tell you that it will make you funny or that it will improve your conversations. I am going to tell you that it is a small, legible diagram of a problem I think about often: how to greet someone without huzzing them, how to be addressed without being performed at, how to hold a lollipop without being expected to look grateful. The cat has not solved the problem. The cat has simply refused to pretend it is not a problem. That is a kind of reading I can respect.
I keep coming back to the arch. Greetings is arched because it is a banner, and banners are meant to be read from a distance. Huzz is flat because it is a noise, and noises are meant to be heard up close. The cat is in the middle, at the distance where a banner becomes a noise and a noise becomes a banner. That is where most of us live, I think. We are greeted from a distance and huzzed up close, and we are expected to hold a lollipop in one paw and look pleased. The cat on this shirt is not looking pleased. The cat is looking at me. The cat is waiting to see what I will do next. I think the correct response is to stop greeting and start reading.
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