Mistress of Sloth

At this time of year I like to post something positive in this blog. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men and all that. Unfortunately, reading the news everyday as I do does not give one much material to use in such an endeavour.

That being said, there is no doubt that at the personal level, if I look at my life and the people in it (which is what Life is all about once one is not working, and maybe even when one is), it’s pretty damn good. I am a lucky S.O.B. Thus, I give you some observations from that personal life on a subject on which I am no expert: cats.

I have never been a cat-owner, don’t know squat about them. Growing up we had dogs, as did my son when he was young. Indeed, my Dad had a distinct aversion to felines, prompted by his not unreasonable irritation over the fact that the cats in the neighbourhood in which I grew up seemed to do a lot of peeing on our front porch. That will not endear you to anyone.

Although I am not a pet-owner now, there have been a few occasions on which I have played innkeeper to my gal’s cat, who I will henceforth refer to as The Cat. It’s a she-cat, and a very interesting creature. Indeed, my time with her has me convinced that if there is reincarnation, I want to come back as a cat. They have things figured out.

Now, boarding The Cat is not an onerous task. Cats – in so far as one can generalize from The Cat – ask rather little of their humans. Keep them fed, keep the litter-box clean, and they are, so far as I can tell, content. There are things you can do that will piss them off, and I suppose those things might vary from cat to cat, but in the case of The Cat, it is definitely possible to pet her wrongly. I am not at all sure what the exact parameters of ‘wrongly’ are, but I know when I do it, because I get hissed at, or even a soft bite on the finger.

I back off, The Cat gets over it immediately, and life goes on. To me the most interesting aspect of the life of a cat is their unmatched ability to Do Nothing. There are two situations in which The Cat gets very excited and might race about and make a bit of noise. One, when she knows you are preparing her food, and two, when you entice her into attacking one of her toys or a catnip sack.

In the first case she runs madly about the kitchen mewling up a storm and standing up against the counter, which I interpret as a feline version of ‘Will you hurry up, already?’. In the second case she will wrestle the toy to the ground and beat it up with her back paws and maybe roll over on it. This I take to be an expression of her natural predatory instincts, but one must know that this second thing happens only if the mood seizes her. You can throw all kinds of things in her path and if she is not feeling it, she will ignore them without so much as a look.

Which brings me to Doing Nothing. Those periods of mad activity, by my admittedly casual reckoning (I did not keep a log during her time with me) takes up much less than one hour out of any 24. The rest of the time, The Cat Naps. She doesn’t read, and if she is doing philosophy during those snoozes she keeps it to herself – she just Naps. On a typical day I might leave the house at, say, 11am to do this and that, and as I exit The Cat is lying on a pair of pillows I put on a dining room chair for that purpose – catnapping. When I come back three hours later, there is no evidence she has moved an inch, so I take off my coat, and sit down in my Big Chair to read or write or watch a game or whatever. Quickly, The Cat is off the chair, walks slowly into the living room, stretching her legs as she goes, and in a trice is up on my lap, curled into a ball of fur, purring quietly as she….naps some more.

She will stay there on my lap happily for hours, but for the fact that her human innkeeper has to get up to do something from time to time.

When I finally head off to my own bed, The Cat sleeps. She wakes at some point in the morning to remind me about her breakfast, but if I ignore her, she goes and lays down somewhere until I am ready to feed her. Then, cue the 2 minutes of mewing at me and running about while I prepare her food.

I would not have thought the old saying that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something applied to napping, but The Cat seems to think otherwise. Practice, practice.

Moreover, if I spend even one whole day at that level of inactivity, as I do, say, when I get a bug of some kind, my muscles and joints get so achy that it can be hard to sleep. Well, I can hear you saying, of course that happens to you, Al – you’re an old geezer. You gotta keep it all moving or it will just rust.

Fair enough, but The Cat is no spring chicken either. This is a mature, 12yo cat, not a kitten. Yet she can, if the mood takes her, jump from a standing start onto a three-foot high counter. Hell, I couldn’t do the equivalent of that when I was 22. All that lying about seems to in no way reduce The Cat’s ability to undertake great feats of derring-do when she wants to. I have had to chase her off my five foot high stereo stand and even higher fireplace mantel at times. And, if you can get her chasing the red light from a laser pointer, The Cat’s speed and agility is remarkable to behold. How is this possible for a creature that does nothing more than sleep most of the time? I have never known her to ask for my tube of Voltaren or an Advil after a good bout of chase-the-red-dot.

I wonder, do physiotherapists and athletic trainers study cats?  Surely there is something to be learned about training for athletic endeavours from these creatures.

To go along with this remarkable and seemingly effortless physical prowess, cats have a knack for exuding calm. As I noted, they will hiss at you if pissed off, but it doesn’t last, and the rest of the time they are the embodiment of calm serenity. At least, The Cat is. You get her lying curled up on your lap, purring quietly, and it is very hard to get angry or upset. About anything, Well, maybe about the fact that you really really have to pee and so need to get up and disturb all that serenity.

Again, if there is re-incarnation, forget about coming back as a Captain of Industry or a Great Thinker, I want to be a cat. They got it sussed.  Peace and Goodwill towards all, indeed.