A Pastel Life (Or, Ten Reasons Why I Loves Mah Kitties)

"With dogs and people, it's love in big splashy colors. When you're involved with a cat, you're dealing in pastels." - Louis A. Camuti, DVM

All my life, I've been what you would call A Dog Person. It's not that I didn't like cats; in fact, quite the opposite. Several friends' cats held, and continue to hold, a special place in my heart. But I didn't have that connection that comes with cat ownership (a term that is a sort of a paradox because, as all cat owners often ask themselves, who really owns who in this relationship?).

Enter Fergus and Claire. They were two strays that were dropped off at a local shelter: Fergus from the wild streets of Weymouth, and Claire, not even weaned, found abandoned with her siblings and mother behind a plumbing company in South Boston. This was in August of 2005. John and I had decided to get a cat, and I was adamant that I wanted just one, and he/she had to be fully-grown, even geriatric, so as not to disrupt our lives with frantic kitty energy. Well, the moment we walked into Petco Adoption Day, and saw these two feline "siblings" (they had found one another at the shelter and were inseparable, so they were to be adopted as a pair), all my well-ordered plans fell to goo.

And something telling happened when my two eyes met their four. I found myself instantly falling into what I only knew previously as my "dogspeak". You know what I mean: it's that voice we all put on when we see a dog, or a cat, or a baby. Mine consists mainly of squeals of laughter peppered with kissy-face noises. I discovered myself on the floor, eye-level with these adorable little kittens, giggling and squeaking and kissing.

Later, we took them home.

The last two and a half years of cat-daddying have been fraught with lessons, and I wanted to put some of these lessons into a coherent structure to better see the world these creatures have opened for me. Respecting my bizarre passion for lists, I compiled just ten, of probably hundreds of reasons, why I adore my feline charges.

10. Cats are neat freaks. And so am I. Speaking in terms of the poo alone, it is so much easier to handle and discard a little tootsie roll than it is a hot steaming chocolate soufflé.

9. Cat kisses, which fall somewhere between the feel of velvet and the feel of sandpaper, are a divine exfoliation treatment. God's skin care line, if you will.

8. Cats make no qualms about the fact that they like some people more than others. While Claire clearly prefers John, Fergus is a little orange man after my own heart. I wish I could be so choosy, and blunt, with the people I come in contact with.

7. Cats forgive, but they do not forget. Cats are quite capable of holding grudges. They will eventually forgive any slight, but the memory of it will remain unerasable.

6. Stroking a cat, like stroking a dog, is a tremendously meditative experience. It has been scientifically proven that petting a cat or dog prolongs the life of the petter. And the animal, ever aware of their Buddha-nature, dwells nowhere but in the moment: the supreme perfection of the interaction with the present.

5. Cats will give you your space. If you don't feel like being lovey-dovey, or they don't feel like being loved on, they are more than happy to retreat to their own places. And without an ounce of ill will. Yet on the other hand, cats are also highly intuitive. I often get in those sullen, silent states where I just don't want to be bothered. It has been more than once that Fergus has curled up on my chest, eyes locked with mine, purring with an almost jarring vibration, and single-handedly (single-pawedly?) lifting me out of my self.

4. Cats are divinely content with their own company. If you must go out of town for the weekend, a cat is fine with full bowls of food and water and a clean place to potty. When you come through the door on Sunday evening, they regard you with a casual look that seems to say, "Meh. Back so soon?" I of course envision all sorts of feline debauchery in our absence: kitty keggars, little catnip doobies, maybe even a neighborhood stray invited in for a lapdance. But in all reality, the weekend was more than likely serenely quiet and filled with hours of sleep and maybe a little swatting around of a kitty toy or two.

3. The hacking-up of a furball can be a wonderful release. Every once in a while, one of the cats will grow a bit agitated and start making "uh-oh-I'm-gonna-puke" noises. Moments later, a gooey wad of hair will plop out of his/her mouth. After that, said cat will stretch languidly, rejuvenated, and scamp around gaily, free of that cumbersome lump in the throat.

2. Cats are amazingly limber creatures. If humans could achieve some of the positions a cat can (my favorite: "Playing the Cello", as John calls it), the need for sex would become obsolete.

1. Cats are discriminating. While dogs are blissfully boundless with their love, affection, and attention, cats prescribe to no such theory. A cat demands your feelings on their terms alone. And if they find it ill-suiting, they will simply walk away. They are complex animals, I would even go so far as to call them self-actualized. We must earn the right to be in their presence. They decide who they let in. There is something quite respectable in that.