Having Lost one or two cats to the toothier beasts that inhabit our forest, i’ve made it a habit to bring Princess Jane and Jim-Bob and at night. Jean came in early this evening, but Jim was hot on the trail of a moth, and he was none too happy when I scooped him up and brought him in, telling him it was for his own good.
The cats in, I ushered Thing2 to bed and went to my study to write. Jim-Bob joined me, and I thought all was forgiven. So I opened a notebook and started scribbling. Jim hopped up on my desk to play.
He sat on my page then stuck his head in my water glass, almost knocking it and the water over and onto my laptop.
Then he sat on the edge of the desk, craning his head to look at what crap could be knocked off the nearby shelf. He knocked off a book and then a stuffed animal.
Play time was looking a lot like revenge.
Then he lay down on my writing pad, “nudging “ my writing hand until it was petting exactly the way he wanted. He didn’t want revenge, he wanted servitude.
Behavioral scientists may tell us that humans can’t fully understand cats, that we anthropomorphize them. lBut I think it’s safe to say that they — at least some of them— have clearly learned how to understand and train us.
Jim-bob thinks I could be just feline-o-pomorphizing my own species.