Tomato
the Cat Wins
Pulitzer Award
A special announcement from
the editor of Best Friends Magazine
November,
2000
Regular readers of Tomato’s column will remember that our investigative reporter has been wondering for years why “Mrs. Pulitzer,” as he calls the Pulitzer Award Board, has never seen fit to send him one of her prestigious annual awards for investigative journalism.
 Dear Tomato, Forgive the delay in notifying you that you are the winner of a Pulitzer award in a new category: the Purr Prize for service to man’s best friends. What clinched your prize was the nominating letter of Ann Elise Wort, in which she pointed out that the Cat’s Meow made more sense than what we’ve been hearing on the presidential campaign trail. Ms. Wort has been given the prize for Commentary. I should explain what caused the delay in making this prize announcement. Two Harvard professors on the Board resisted the majority view that the four-legged are turning out better copy than journalists who wear two shoes. (That’s Harvard for you, never in the real world.) As a consequence of this confrontation, the Board meeting continued for days with Bill Safire (our most devoted member) making the ultimate sacrifice of foregoing one of his columns pointing out the flaws in the Platform of the Democratic Party. There you have it! Enthusiasm has been generated to the extent that the Board is considering making a Paws Are It award next year. Sincerely yours, Seymour Topping Administrator, Pulitzer and Purr Prizes P. S. Ignore those assertions at Harvard that there is a conflict of interest since the Toppings have six cats, no less, and two dogs, all from an animal shelter.
Seymour Topping, who wrote this letter, is the administrator of
Pulitzer Prizes. |
Then, on September 14, 2000, we received this letter, addressed to Tomato, from the Office of the Administrator of Pulitzer Prizes.
Tomato had been nominated by a member of Best Friends, Ann Elise Wort, who is research assistant to New York Times columnist William Safire, himself a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Ann and her husband had spent their honeymoon together at the sanctuary this summer, and it seems that the cats at the TLC Cat Club did a little lobbying themselves. We are assured, however, that this played no part in Ann’s decision to place Tomato’s reports in nomination.
(Nor, of course, as Pulitzer administrator Seymour Topping assures us in his letter, did the fact that he himself has eight rescued pets at home play any part in the award.)
Several people who read this letter from the Pulitzer administrator suspected, at first, that it had been fabricated as a joke by someone on Tomato’s staff. Fabricating the news on Tomato the Cat’s own page? What a scandal that would be!
Anyway, we hasten to assure you, dear readers, that the letter is, indeed, for real, and that we are all delighted and honored for Tomato, and for the cause of feline journalism everywhere.
And thank you, Seymour Topping, Ann Wort, Bill Safire, and the rest of you delightful, animal-loving, Pulitzer people!