The Domestic Files: Living With Cats

The other night, for some inexplicable reason, my brother-in-law attempted to pick up and snuggle his cat.  The cat immediately launched into emergency-cat-claw-response-mode.  I will spare all the grim details of what I witnessed and simply suggest that if you are ever given the choice to either become a cat owner or, instead, jump off a cliff in one of those flying squirrel suit thingies—take the jump!  You may not even require the flying suit thingy.

I live with 40 pounds of domestic housecat.  To arrive at 40 pounds, you simply add my two 20 pound hairballs together; not that attempting to get my cats near each other is a particularly good idea in practice.  Rather than try to explain what living with cats is like in narrative form, I thought I would present you with a list of what I have learned from my time with housecats:

1. Cats have claws on all ends.

2. Cat hair has magnetic-like properties that attract it to virtually everything but the cat itself.

3. Some days cats like stuff, most days they do not.

4. Humans are stuff.

5. Sleep at night?  Ha!

6. A cat will eat the ass of a mouse, but they are not going to eat the glop you spoon from the can.

7. Cats have two responses to human touch: flop-over-and-purr response or emergency-cat-claw-response-mode.  There exists no predictive behavior to tell you which response to expect.

8. We are alive because our cats allow it.

--Mitchell Hegman