More About Cats

Dear Federal Representative or Regulatory Commission:

            Despite my repeated requests for them to stop, cats insist on leaning into my hand when I pet the side of their heads. Sometimes they lean at a full twenty-degree angle. This is potentially dangerous! Is there something that you can do about this? Would this be something for the FDA? Or, is there a Department of Cats.

            Something should be done! I am petting a cat, admiring the vertical grain of the pelt on their forehead, and the cat is pressing against the hand. From afar, it would look like I’m holding up a furry question mark. When this phenomenon occurs, I’m afraid that the cat will topple over when I quit petting it. Which would lead to hard feelings and a rift in human/feline relations until the 7 o’clock feeding.

            Are cats really that mercenary?

            Well, ‘mercenary’ is hard to quantify.

            Actually, I don’t have a cat, although I’ve had cats before. During lock-down I got to know a few cats in the neighborhood. I don’t believe that they should be let out, but I don’t hold it against them. I do hold their leaning into my hand while I pet them against them, which was the original impetus for this letter. Here, Federal Representative or Commission Head- A typical scenario would be that a cat joins me on the patio while I’m reading on a balmy spring afternoon. Then the cat is on my lap, telling me: “You’re not really interested in that book.” 

            And, there I am, yes, not very caught up in the modern history of Espera right then, but I’m petting the cat, asking the cat if it “caught any mice today”, and eventually trying to hold it up as it leans into my hand with one forefoot on the patio table and the other balanced precariously inside the book.

            Meanwhile, anyone else watching would agree that a calamity is about to happen. The cat doesn’t care that it’s leaning over so far. They’re foolhardy. They’re cats.

            I can’t understand why they would endanger themselves just through being petted. I don’t understand a myriad of things about cats, especially why they scratch at the corner of a wall to see if it goes any deeper. Of course, I do like some things about cats. For example, they’re the ones who invented ‘leisure’. Cats showed support for the five-day workweek even before we discovered that there were seven. Days in a week. And, oh! They also show consideration in choosing a low-traffic period to tidy up their litter box. From 2am to 4, at times running over. At that quiet time, it can be heard throughout a large house. First- furtive scratching, to downright excavation, and then silence, then the tiny ‘tick-tick’ of individual grains of clay on the tile. It’s music, really. Everyone knows that eccentricity is de rigueur for cats. I myself aspire to such a level of inscrutability. I am fifty-nine, and I still observe young cats like I’m a novice gazing at a mentor. Once, around twilight, I observed a dusty orange nine-month-old tabby I’d never seen before as it hopped onto a space on the lawn that I was helping to make level. The cat seemed to be chasing something. Was it a mouse or a water bug? No. Was it a leaf, then? No. The cat was chasing nothing. The kitty went ‘round and ‘round, swatting and chasing and sometimes nearly catching… air. Bravo, Tiger. Visualization through virtual pursuit. Pokemon Go for cats.

            Cats and humans are a lot alike.

            No, we’re not. What was I thinking?

            But I like cats because I’m also neurotic. There. But for all the complaints about cats in general… I have another. They park their ass on the windowsill while we pay for their shrinks. I guess we have to pick up the slack since cats were the ones who invented ‘flex time’.

            I have an idea! When a cat insists on having its noggin rubbed, a cat-stand can be used. One that sits securely beside the cat. Roughly square. It would be a kind of a base, holding a small divider that the cat would lean against as a precaution against unforeseen toppling. Heck, that might be something that I can manufacture! Sell it to pet stores. I hope the thing would only call for a design patent, though, because the application process for that is cheaper. The device would prop them up, you see, with a minimum loss of dignity! Of course, a high percentage of cats would have to show an interest in the product. Thus, public relations would be crucial. But, I don’t think that the cat stabilizer would do any harm. There’s a similar stand for people. Stars lean on them while resting between sets as they act in costume dramas so they don’t have to sit down on the afore-mentioned costumes while the lighting director has to set up whatever. I’ve even thought of an ad. With a little song:              

            “You really need a Cat Stand!

            They won’t collapse when you remove your hand!”

            (I would suggest using plucked violins in the music, but otherwise I wouldn’t micro-manage the production.)

            Well, Dear Federal Representative or Regulatory Commission, I’ve learned some things while composing this letter. I invented the “Righty Cat” cat stand for petting fun, and something else has occurred to me, and this is it. Cats lean in so we commit more. I’m afraid that there’s nothing we can do to change that.