Prior to embarking upon a pet experience, we should take a few moments and consider how we plan to handle our pet responsibilities. We especially need to do that with cats, because they are the kind of pet relationship which should tap into deep wells of emotion. Otherwise, it’s a failure.
So often, the desire to get a cat does not consider the kind of pet they really are.
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I’m speaking as a person who gets attached. I’ve had many, many different kinds of pets: hamsters and guinea pigs, turtles and fish, parakeets and a parrot, cats and dogs, a lizard, a rabbit, and a monkey. Though, not all at the same time.
I always avoided snakes, since they need live food, and I’m someone who had to give up hamsters because I adored them and they didn’t live very long. The larger birds live a long time, but I don’t seem to have the same rapport with them as I do mammals. I was a child when I had my monkey; as an adult, I feel that these are wild animals who should be left there.
I want intelligence and communication. I like furry and huggable. I want to give, and get, attachment.
I think this is an important point to bring up because I’ve spoken to many people who get a cat for all the wrong reasons. They think of cats as the kind of low key, low input, pet they don’t have to do much with. A goldfish without the bowl, as it were.
Best case scenario, they get more than they bargained for, and they are happy about it. Worse case, we have a lonely, withdrawn, cat, and a person who perpetuates the myths about cats. Then, if they decide to “get serious” about pets, they get a dog, and ignore the cat even more.
It’s a tremendous waste of potential; human, and feline.
It’s no secret that I feel the average person does not “get” cats. Their heads are filled with a collection of myths, half-truths, and outright lies. Even people who love their cats and treat them well have written me, with astonishment, when a tip or trick I have put on the blog: has worked.
They discover their cats can be even more communicative, entertaining, and affectionate than they thought.
That’s how I’d like people to consider their potential cat relationship. Not only as a humane commitment that adults make to the small and helpless in their care. But the hope of something they might not have expected.
A deep and lasting friendship.
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There’s more to choosing a cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my CHOOSING A CAT.
Amen! In the late spring months of 1982, I added a little grey & white kitten, probably a Himalayan mix, to my household. about a year later I was very ill with a recurring bronchitis and a high fever. Roseanne was still in her kittenhood, with all the extra energy that implies. Yet each morning she jumped on the bed and felt my face with a sheathed paw, kind of like a worried grandmother, and while the fever lasted, she stayed where I was in her line of sight. I don’t know what she thought she could do about the situation, but she was obviously keeping an eye on me. When the fever broke early one morning, after she felt my face, she jumped down and I didn’t see her watching me after that. The cats I have had during the last 30 years have NOT been aloof. You’re right – commitment between cats and their persons is a two way street, with profound benefits for both sides of the relationship.
.-= Woodstock´s last blog ..Who likes quirky baseball? =-.
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