Cats

I've been under the paw of various cats for most of my life. The two current fur-balls have been lurking around the last half hour or so. It's amazing how expressive they can be without saying anything. They want to be fed, of course, as is usual for this time of the afternoon. If you listen to them you'd think they were about to expire any moment, that they had never been fed, and that humans are the most inconsiderate creatures on the planet.

Cats lead such simple, direct lives. They want what they want, when they want it, and will exert every scrap of control they have to get it. Sometimes that means rooting through a garbage bag, but more often it means persuading a human to activate those opposable thumbs. "In a minute" is not part of any cat's vocabulary. They seem to think that no human has anything more important to do than to tend to feline wishes. Even when you are tending to their wishes they don't understand what's taking so long.

Humans live at a particular pace. We're generally awake during the day and asleep at night, except for those poor souls on shift work. By cat standards, we're awake for a long time, then we sleep for a long time. We bustle about frantically, trying to get everything done. Few of us pay much attention to whatever we happen to be doing, and we seldom enjoy it much. Many of us are sleep deprived, and don't get anything done particularly well. When we do sleep we're right out of it, dead to the world.

Cats live at several paces. They pad about on their own business in a leisurely but inexorable way. They pay a great deal of attention to anything that attracts their interest, but without letting it dominate them. They like to placidly watch the world go by. One of my cats was thoroughly fascinated by the smell of bananas. He would sniff and sniff, much as humans do in a bakery or greenhouses, but he could be instantly distracted by the shadow of a bird outside. Then he could move incredibly fast, almost too fast for my eyes to follow. It was almost like he could squeeze more time into each second.

Yet they stop for a snooze at opportune moments. There's nothing quite so peaceful as a sleeping cat. But even then, they're more awake than we are. Their ears will track odd sounds, and sometimes one eye will open to follow an interesting movement. Nothing else moves until some threshold of interest has been passed. Meanwhile they might still be snoring.

They appear to function equally well any time of the night or day, but seen to prefer the night. They like to hunt and socialize then. At best, humans function poorly at night. We simply aren't with it, and have to have some fairly strong motivation to be awake. Our cats often want us to come play in the middle of the night. We had hoped that they would play together and leave us alone. In one way I suppose it's a compliment, but I'd just as soon be asleep.

People think of cats as aloof and sometimes, just a little weird. But they aren't. They just want things on their terms, and are willing to do without. A cat that wants out might refuse to go if they don't like the way you opened the door. They have their own personalities, and are much more individual than most animals and some humans. They are fascinating to watch as they deal with the world. Clearly, they see a different place than we do, and have much different priorities. One of the top ones is their own comfort and security. Humans want the same thing, but they go about it differently. Cats just want a warm dry place to snooze and watch the world. Humans seem to need toys, and some need the toys worse than a home.

I find it very restful to have a cat snoozing in my lap, although I'm sure they emit snore-ons. These are some sort of emanations that cause humans to want to nap, which cleverly prolongs the time the lap is available. Listening to a cat purr somehow makes me sleep better. It was recently postulated that a cat's purr has some of the same effects as ultrasound, and aids healing. Perhaps this is why cats are so generally healthy, and have such strong constitutions.

People say that cats are semi-domesticated animals. Some days when I look at our cats, I wonder who has domesticated who.