I know of a great warrior cat. He looks upon the town and watches over us at night. Mice die of fright simply when he releases a midnight yowl. And his cuddles are otherworldly.
I say to this cat “I love you buddy, I love your poofy pants!”
He responds “You’re lucky I don’t speak your language. Offend me, and you’ll die.”
I pet this cat and speak to his soul. I give him the gift of true friendship. I am convinced he loves me.
He snuggles against me.
He thinks to himself, “I’ve trained you well, slave. I’d gladly eat you if you were to, unfortunately, pass away.
Unless I find a never-ending food source, then I might just maul you out of boredom.”
I say to the cat, “Have you tried the new toy we got you?”
He casually swats “I’d be glad to bestow a killing should it be needed!”
Kitty, why are you so pretty? OW, how he jumped on top over the bed and swatted at us and just left off the other side of the bed! Now everybody is bleeding! It was brutal and then like a ninja he’s gone.
Kitty: “I’ve trained for centuries to perfect that maneuver.”
Me: “Oh your stinky litter box needs to be changed.” and “I’m going to blow on your butt just to annoy you sometimes.”
Him: I’ve been caught burying my many victims in the sandy hillside!
Me looking into his eyes.
Seeing…the inability to maintain eye contact. I have an actual literal psychopath living in my house, making us all bleed, and we think it’s so funny when his meows sound like “Hello!”
I look at him and ask “How has your day been mister PeePee? (Because of that time he peed himself)”
He says to me “I’ll have my massage now, b*tch”.
I say, “Come here kitty”. Gently and lovingly. He really likes how I tend to his needs and impulses, and I really respect his boundaries and know his communication signals. “WOW! He exclaims! You really know your way around a cat. I’ll adopt you as my primary slave! Never leave my sight. I’ll hunt you down if you try to leave me. I know where you store your blood and good meats, and I’ll happily de-face you corresponding to how evil I feel in that moment.”
He digs his claws into my thigh.
I scream like a baby and spank him to let go.
Him: “You’ll dare spank royalty? No more shall I hunt for you for the REST of the day. I’ll leave you here to die alone!”
ME: Ah I scared him away, shoot. Oh great now he’s rolling in that poop spot again. Why does he love that spot on the rug so much?
Him: The aroma indicates to me that some sort of kill has occurred here. I shall bath in the blood too, outright exhibiting my predatory nature on public display. I am not afraid of flaunting my psychopathy. Dirty am I! I am a nasty baby!”
I make sure the vacuum cleaner is handy to deal with the mess.
Him: We hunt this night. Be ready. Last night you failed the hunt. Handle yourself as an impeccable warrior.
Me: Cat, I really don’t trust you. I love you, and I think you love me, but I have to accept that you are a PREDATOR which means you are FOR YOURSELF.
Humans have this instinct within us, that is why our eyes are in the front of our head. This is what we use to strategize a goal. It’s our natural planning ability. When we get into foreseeing the future we are learning from our mammalian predator’s instinctual ability to seek and destroy.
We also have another function called the parasite, which is our sense of childhood neediness grabbing for resources constantly without us knowing how to address the issue properly.
It is important that we learn to utilize the parasite as a challenge, and we must dis-identify from the parasite in order to do so.
We are either mastered by the ways in which our parasite has mirrored the predatory instinct and used it against us, to control us, to limit our awareness through our identity.
The cat says “I think I’ll put my tail over your face while you’re sleeping.”
He really doesn’t mind sabotaging me – he doesn’t even have the ability to empathize with my experience in any way. He doesn’t give a sh*t about how I feel. Dogs are not the same.
And yet the cat does feel very grateful for me and appreciates me in his own way.
That is how that species offers love. It’s very similar to how he’s trusts and treats other cats.
Humans experience of love is much more complex but not better or worse.
We tend to avoid focusing on our most powerful aspects, our instincts deeply intimidate us and so we feel victimized if we can’t avoid the topic completely.
I feel that I spent much more intimate time with cats than I did with people growing up, and so all of my intimacy was in being raised by cats. I consider our male cat growing up as my mom’s boyfriend! lol.
Cats have a certain instinct of being cute in order to create positive bonding experiences.
It works, we like them. Their biological maneuvers hooked us and we say that “We domesticated cats” …cats domesticated us!
We see it in such a twisted way because of how it appears at face value. We have all the cats in cages at the shelter.
So we imagine their roles in our lives and we treat them according to our social structure and not nature’s natural order.
There is a lot more to learn from cats than popular culture represents.
Joshua
