Cadman's Cabman's Cat Hat

The man in the cat’s hat knew the man in the hat but neither knew the name of the hat the other wore. The cabman (the man in the cat’s hat drove a taxi for a living) wore a brim-side-out hat made from cheesecloth and bulbar-stitch, the man in the hat a variety of hats, fedoras, Stetsons, bowlers, boaters, straw-hats and some hats that had no name but were hats just the same. A name does not mean that something, a hat for instance, has an appellation, but simply a place in the world. Names are useless things when the world refuses to cooperate, when reality, true or false, whines and falters like a croaky engine. The cabman’s cat’s hat made him look like a Cadman, which meant he spent more time trying to convince people he was a man in a cat’s hat rather than a Cadman in a cabman’s hat. When asked by a toreador what a Cadman was he said, ‘la palabra Cadman no está en el Diccionario’ and left it at that, as he had little patience for bullfighters and swaggerers.