My cat is my role model

“The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” Leonardo da Vinci

I am a cat person. Don’t get me wrong; for pure unconditional love, the kind that has saved my sanity in the past, you can’t do better than a dog. They are ready to come at every call and lick your face or play fetch or just curl up on your feet and keep them warm. Dogs are great.

But they are also obsequious.

And sometimes I just find that annoying. They seem to have no self-respect.

Cats, on the other hand, are the epitome of self-respect. Self-respect is defined as “having the proper esteem or regard for the dignity of one’s character”. I think it should also say, “See CAT.”

Cats have such a bone-deep conviction of their worth that they have no trouble whatsoever maintaining eye contact with you. See, with dogs, eye contact has to do with dominance. If one dog wants to challenge another, he looks him in the eye. If the other dog breaks the gaze and drops his head, he loses. If he maintains eye contact a fight will usually ensue to determine which is more dominant. Dogs repeat this behaviour with humans (who are also pack animals). Either you are dominant over your dog, or he is dominant over you. Think I am kidding? Look your dog in the eye for any length of time and see what happens.

Cats don’t do that. They will look you in the eye for as long as they like. They could not care less if you keep looking back at them, or if you look away, or if you look back and forth. They don’t lose anything by looking away first; that’s usually just their way of saying you simply are too boring at that moment to hold their attention. I have a private theory that people who hate cats have low self-esteem and can’t tolerate this dismissal by (what seems to be) an obviously superior being.

With all that being said, in some ways my cats act like dogs.

They actually come when I call them. They learn their names because I use their names. I have a relationship with them. If the only time you see your cat is during the ten seconds a day it takes to dump food into his bowl, you’re not going to establish a relationship. When they come to me they know they are going to get loved and petted on until they stretch and purr, it feels so good. In my house, hands are for loving and toys are for playing. So I never flip a cat over on its back and roughly scrub my hand over its belly until its nature gets the better of it and it tries to disembowel my arm with its hind claws while holding on to my hand with its front claws and teeth. You know exactly the action I’m talking about. The one that people do, then take their cats to the vet and have them declawed because they scratch. Of course they scratch! That’s what they’re designed to do in that situation! If you do that action with a toy instead of with your hand, both you and the cat can enjoy the play and the cat can keep his toes.

So my Sassy Kitty serves as a prime example of a well-adjusted, self-respecting personality. She can show her affection without compromising herself. She can play with a shoelace dragged across the floor with the total abandon of a kitten. She has no problem standing up to the Cute Puppy that joined our lives a year ago when he misbehaves. And it boggles my mind that a creature one twentieth the size of an adult human can sit on the floor and gaze fearlessly into that human’s eyes.

So let me love, play, assert myself, and stand up to the giants in my life with all the self-respect and aplomb of my cat.

Aplomb – defined as “imperturbable self-possession, poise, or assurance”. It should also say “See CAT”.

What unusual role models do you have in your life?

Short and succinct

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.”

---- Robert Frost


“Sometimes my education fails me.”

---- My Daughter

Out of the mouths of babes

Has your son or daughter ever said something to you that resonated into your very bones? Served as a wake-up slap in the face? Broken your heart so badly you thought it would never beat again? Say something that you never thought you would hear them say?

For my daughter’s ninth birthday I went to the party store to pick up supplies. While I was there I ran into the store next door just to window shop. I saw the perfect Oriental rug for the living room and bought it on impulse. At home she helped me unroll it and get it positioned just right. As we were sitting on the couch, admiring how perfect the colors were, she said, “You make really good decisions when you’re by yourself.”

“Yes”, I thought, “she is right. I do make good decisions when her dad is not with me.”

When she was twelve and I told her we were getting a divorce she said, “It’s about time.”

“Yes”, I thought, “she understands.”

When she was sixteen she said, “I understand why you had to leave Dad, and I respect you for having the strength to do it, but I will never forgive you for breaking up our family and hurting him so badly.”

“No”, I thought, “she will never understand.”

One month before her nineteenth birthday I became engaged. On her birthday she cried all day and wouldn’t tell me why. Three months later when she was with my fiancé, Lionheart, helping him choose tuxedos for the wedding party she told him she understood why I loved him so much but she cried on her birthday because she realized I would never get back together with her dad.

“No”, I thought, “she should be over this by now.”

When she was almost twenty she decided to go ahead and marry her fiancé. She asked me for a guest list, and I gave it to her when we got together for her twentieth birthday. When she saw Lionheart’s mother and sisters on the list she said, “I’m not inviting HIS family! HE will be lucky if I even allow HIM to attend. You will walk down the aisle with my father and sit with him, the way it SHOULD be!”

“No”, I thought, “she will never get over this.”

When she was twenty-four she handed their first child, our first grandchild, to Lionheart and said, “Here, grandpa, do you want to hold him?”

“Maybe”, I thought, “there is hope after all.”


Camellia


What has your child said to you that will stay with you forever?