Things To Do With Your Cat
Cats are underrated as activity partners.
I learned this the hard way. I wasn’t ever planning on owning a cat, you see, and now I own two. Both were, ah, for lack of a better term, “gifts” from a crack-addled biological relation. The first she found while on a bender. She called me, out of the blue–I have no contact with my family of origin, so this was something of a treat–telling me that she’d picked it up, didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl or a kitten or not, and didn’t know what to do with it except it seemed hungry. “Feed it,” I told her. “What a good idea,” she replied earnestly.
The next morning, she called me to ask if I wanted a cat. “My husband is allergic,” I said. “I don’t know, I’ll have to ask him.” To which she replied that she was already in her car and had driven through several states; if I didn’t want the cat, she’d just dump it by the side of the road again. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll take the cat.”
You can imagine how pleased my husband was with this announcement. He came home from work, realized that he was being, in his words, “not productive,” and left again to go on a run. He came back an hour later, ready to keep right on yelling, and instead confronted two urine-drenched beings–my relative and the cat–standing in his driveway. He invited them in. My relative demurred. The cat stayed.
Luckily, my cat, a mostly-Siamese who was, in fact, still mostly a kitten at the time, took to me right away. Took to me so much, in fact, that I found it difficult to even put my new pet down for a few minutes to use the bathroom. We tried keeping him out of our room at night, on account of Mr. PJ’s allergies; he hurled his little body at the closed door so hard that we were afraid he’d hurt himself. So, he began his regular routine of sleeping on my head (or sometimes Mr. PJ’s) and eventually, in the allergist’s words, Mr. PJ “became desensitized.” He is, according to that helpful medical consultant, no longer allergic to cats.
Although I wouldn’t recommend such drastic exposure therapy!
In the years since, I’ve adapted. Since I work from home now, there’s virtually no reason, ever–at least in Wonder Cat’s mind–for Wonder Cat to not be sitting on me at all times. Inspired by those “they sit beside your bed so you’re co-sleeping but not really co-sleeping” cribs, which cost the earth, I made one of my own. For Wonder Cat. Because him actually sitting ON my arm, while I’m trying to type, significantly slows down my writing process. Whenever I get up, he waits to see if I’ve gone to use the bathroom or get another cup of thinking juice or check the mail or whatever and, if I appear to have actually gone somewhere else semi-permanently–as in, if I’m gone for longer than five minutes–he follows me.
What I’ve learned is that cats make wonderful activity partners. They enjoy doing exactly what you’re doing. They listen when you talk to them, and talk back. At least mine does. Siamese are very vocal. Our cats, at least, are great with kids; Pooh more than Wonder Cat, although Wonder Cat has adapted from necessity. I pay the bills with my cat. I color with my son with my cat. I weed the garden with my cat. I do the laundry with my cat. What he’s getting out of all this I have no idea, but at this point I’ve had him almost as long as I’ve had Mr. PJ and I have to say, there hasn’t been a single thing–as bizarre as this sounds–that I could do with the hypothetical dog we don’t have that I haven’t done with my cat.
Occasionally I suggest getting a third cat.
Mr. PJ says no.
