Cat People

I’ve been spending a lot of time at my best friend’s house where they have a dog, a little shih tzu called Maki. Now I have to confess that I used to detest shih tzus largely because they’re the dog of choice of every fucking sicko anthropomorphic dog owner in the country. Shih tzus are the Barbies and Baby Alives of these idiots, cossetted like children and decked out in every ridiculous gewgaw imaginable. I actually pity them slipping and sliding in their shoes and sweltering under their doggie clothes while festooned with ribbons galore. Cats would never allow themselves to be treated with such indignity. Which brings me to the subject of cats and their humans.

Cat lovers get no respect. We’re ridiculed for loving an animal that doesn’t seem to offer any pay-off—no shimmying joyously when we come home, no manic licking of our faces to show love and devotion, no coming when we call. And that’s true too. We don’t get any respect from our cats. But I submit that for cat owners, a cat’s lack of obsequiousness is precisely why we’re so powerfully drawn to it. It’s really a question of space. Cat people like their space. And so do cats. When we come home our cats are there to welcome us too, not with frantic shaking, but with a meow or three, a few dignified swishes and then they’re off doing their thing and we too, are left to do ours. And that’s true for every day of our mutually-agreed co-existence.

But I love how our cats don’t need us.  

Sure they come to us for food and shelter but it’s really because they’re opportunists with a keen sense of survival. But left to their own devices, they can hunt for food and clean themselves, which is all that matters really. If I never existed, I’m sure my cat Pepe would have survived on his own, feeding on rodents and human scraps, occasionally brawling with other feral cats for territory, maybe siring a few hairy kittens of his own. And I suspect he would have been just as happy.

That’s why I believe the time we spend with cats is more magical. When we come together to play or sit companionably near each other, it’s because we both want to. In that brief moment at least, we are connected. Nothing comforts me more profoundly after a late night at the trenches than to have Pepe sit under my chair while we both stare out into the dark, thinking our own thoughts.  No expectations, no drama, just him being him and me being me. After a while I go off to bed and he goes off to wherever he goes to each night. We can, and did, leave each other’s presence anytime with no hard feelings. It’s just what it is. And that’s why it’s a peculiar person who can love a cat. I think that cat people are more welcoming of other people’s oddities. After all, we live with a creature who would stare at dust motes for hours before suddenly tearing around the house as if possessed. We’re also happy observers. Much of the enjoyment we get from our cats is not through active play but through quiet observation. And lastly, we’re emotionally low-maintenance people. Not to say that we love less than the average person. In fact, I believe cat people love more intensely just that it’s not a needy, show-offy, bromidic kind of love.

Denys, Robert Redford’s character in Out of Africa, is perhaps the best example of what a cat person (and a cat) is like. In one scene where he’s arguing about love and freedom with Meryl Streep’s character, he sums it up thusly:

Why is your freedom more important that mine?

It isn't. And I've never interfered with your freedom.
No. I'm not allowed to need you.
Or rely on you, or expect anything from you.
I'm free to leave.
But I do need you.
You don't need me.
If I die, will you die? You don't need me.
You're confused. You've mixed up need with want. You always have.
My God. In the world that you would make, there would be no love at all.
Or the best kind. The kind we wouldn't have to prove.

In the eight years he was with me, Pepe taught me to love without expectation and has made my life all the richer for it.