I recently read a column from my favorite funny guy Gene
Weingarten about those fuzzy, cuddly, sharp little fluff balls otherwise known
as cats. It's called "Here's what happened before God let cats loose upon the
world" and the basic message is this: Cats are assholes. Now you
might think that I, as one of the many cat ladies around the world, would take
offense to Weingarten's characterization of cats as a species, but I don't. In
fact, I agree. Cats are assholes, but I love them anyway. With human assholes, I at least generally understand them. I don't agree with what they say
or do - they're assholes after all - but I can at least make sense of their
actions. Cats? Not so much.
I've had cats and
dogs as pets all my life (I've buried an embarrassing number of hamsters and
fish as well), but my first real furbaby that I adopted as an adult was a stray
cat I took in during college, Duck. She was a scrawny little Oreo colored thing,
and I quickly turned her into a dry food addicted thirteen pound behemoth. I'd
like to say that when I first took Duck in (when she was probably about a year
old) that she was a perfect little cuddle ball who mewed and quietly lapped up
milk and slept with me and charmed me with her little kitten love. But that
would be a lie. She was always kind of a jerk. My friend Lauren can attest to this. We lived together for two years when I had Duck. In addition to
destroying my pet deposit by pulling the carpet off of the stairs just because
she could, she annoyed the both of us in a myriad of ways.
Any night I wasn't
around, or if I went out of town, Duck would let Lauren fall asleep and then
somewhere between midnight and 2 AM, just as Lauren was dancing off in la-la land with Channign Tatum, Duck would start to cry. She always made sure
to do it in the stairwell, where the acoustics were best. What did she want?
Nothing. She just wanted to sing Lauren her favorite version of "I Know
You're Asleep, But This Is the Song of My People."
Another of Duck's
favorite past times was hiding on the stairs and stalking your ankles. She would wait for Lauren to walk
by and then reach out and swipe at her bare ankles. You might say, "Well she's
a cat, she's just playing." No, Duck wanted blood. She never once swiped
at a pant leg. She only swiped at you when your ankle was bare, for maximum blood.
A lot of cats
enjoy waking you up a few hours before their feeding time. Duck did this of
course, but she was also very picky about how she ate. It wasn't enough to just
put the food in her dish and walk away. You had to watch her eat. If I fed her
and went back to bed, she'd cry until I got up because she wanted me to stare at her while she ate.
Why? Who the hell knows? She's a cat. She also loved people food - sort of.
Regardless of what was on my plate, Duck was convinced she needed to eat it,
and I was constantly fending off her flying leaps at my dinner plate. However,
when she finally got whatever it was, she'd stick her nose up in disdain
without so much as licking it. (Unless it was a french fry; she loved french fries.)
All cats, as a
rule, hate baths. Did this stop me from trying to give Duck a bath? Of course
not. One day, I trapped her in the shower stall and aimed the water at her because she'd gotten especially filthy in the yard. Wouldn't you know where I
found her five minutes after her bath was over? Taking a dirt bath in the middle of the road in front of the house.
On another
occasion, I was sitting on the couch and talking on the phone. Duck sat next to
me, cuddling against my leg and purring. I wasn't paying her enough attention,
apparently, so how does she tell me? She latches on with all four sets of claws
and bites me.
So basically, as
Weingarten says, Duck used violence to show me a number of things. Claws and
biting both meant, "Pet me", "I've had enough, stop petting
me", "I love you", "I'm hungry", "This food is displeasing for no apparent reason", "It's time to
wake up", "You're late", and "Hi. I missed you. Well, kind of."
You could argue
that Duck was just a bad cat who liked drawing blood, and that mostly the rest
of the cat species is a nice, cuddly group. But I've had a lot of pets and
several cats, and that just ain't the truth.
The cat I had
growing up, Bootsy, once bit my grandmother because she was sitting in Bootsy's
favorite chair. My sister's cat, Olive, just bit my other grandmother over
Christmas, for no discernible reason.
And although my
two current furbabies, Catsiopoeia (Catsy) and Soma, are not violent, they
continue to prove how frustratingly asshole-ish cats can be.
Catsy has taught
herself how my alarm clock works. She sets it off at 2 AM as a
reminder that breakfast is only three hours away. If I'm late going to bed, she
starts knocking things over, beginning with whatever is the most fragile. She's
fond of knocking the remotes off the end table because she knows the battery
compartment will break open and I'll spend the next 20 minutes under the couch
trying to find the batteries. If knocking stuff over doesn't work, her last
resort is to jump into my lap and act cuddly and affectionate. Just when my
guard is down, she turns around and farts in my face. Really.
Soma is more
direct. Not laying in the position she prefers? She bites your elbows. If that
doesn't work, she bites your nose. If that doesn't work, she sits in the middle
of the room and cries until you move. If you don't move, she doesn't stop
crying. This will go on for as long as you feel like being stubborn, sometimes
all night. When you finally do move and she curls up in your lap, she puts her
claws out to secure her position, whether that be in the fabric of your clothes
or your skin.
Since Soma and
Catsy are still fairly young, they enjoy playing a lot. I've bought them a
plethora of different toys; baubles, crinklies, catnip, battery powered mice,
and squeakies. Their favorite toys? Q-tips, ice cubes, and twisty ties. Also,
the rubber ends on all those door stoppers around the house? Missing. Every single
one of them. It's the only "toy" they fight over.
Cats are
incredibly intelligent, every bit as intelligent as dogs. However,
cats have no desire to please you, so there is no training them or teaching
them or changing them. They want what the want when they want it and it is your duty as their
human to see that they get what they want when they want it. Walked across your keyboard and deleted that ten page term paper? Should have been paying attention to me. Knocked over grandma's ashes and used them as kitty litter? I told you my litter box was dirty. What do you think all that crying at 3 a.m. was about? Turned off your alarm and you overslept? Should've fed me at four a.m. This is what happens when you don't listen.
But all of these things are also the reason I love cats. They're confident creatures. They're never afraid of me. When I get too full of myself, they bring me down to earth by reminding me that I still have to clean the litter box by peeing on the bed. Cats don't need you; they never did and they never will. Who else is this world is so confident in who they are? No human, surely. Even Daisy Fuentes is self-conscious about her big ears. Cats are demanding, more demanding than any other pet you'll ever have, and never once in their lives are they apologetic. They're secure in who they are and you can either accept them for who they are...or not. It makes no difference to them. That's what makes them assholes, albeit cute little furry, fuzzy assholes with itty bitty pink noses and itty bitty kitty feet.
I'd love to hear some of your kitty stories in the comments below!
But all of these things are also the reason I love cats. They're confident creatures. They're never afraid of me. When I get too full of myself, they bring me down to earth by reminding me that I still have to clean the litter box by peeing on the bed. Cats don't need you; they never did and they never will. Who else is this world is so confident in who they are? No human, surely. Even Daisy Fuentes is self-conscious about her big ears.
I'd love to hear some of your kitty stories in the comments below!