By Janice Lindsay
Contributing Writer
As I write this, I am recovering – too slowly, in my opinion — from a bout with Covid.
Except for a brief glimpse of my dear sister as she quickly dropped off more aspirin and cough drops, it has been a week since my only direct contact with another living being has been Henry, my cat, all black, eight years old, cuddly and lovey when he’s in the mood, and a bit set in his ways.
If you want a companion animal who truly worries when something is obviously wrong with you – who exhibits empathy and compassion – and who won’t leave your side no matter what – you can’t do better than to get yourself a dog.
Cats, maybe not so much.
Cats differ in personality as much as people do, so you can’t assume anything when you get a new cat. The first cat in our marriage, Kiki, my black BFF (best furry friend), seemed to sympathize with human suffering. If I were sick in bed, or huddled under blankets on the couch or recliner, she stayed right with me. I liked to think she cared. However, I also recognized that her favorite activity was taking a nap with someone who was taking a nap.
Henry, who has been my companion since 2020, is nocturnal. At night, he eats and plays, spending his nights in the cat apartment, the finished cellar. By day, he mostly sleeps, curled up on his special blanket on one corner at the foot of my double bed.
Henry is not particularly fond of sharing the bed.
If I decide to lie down during the day, I gently wedge myself into the other half of the bed so as not to disturb his half. If he feels too mightily disturbed, he stalks off, stamping his feet.
If he happens to feel cuddly, he strolls over to me and settles himself for a nap on my chest, purring, rubbing his head against my chin. After about five minutes, he decides I’m not a comfortable sleeping place, leaps off, and might settle himself back on his blanket. Or he might stalk off.
He might accept my being on the bed with him, if I don’t make a commotion, like coughing or sneezing, activities that seem unavoidable when a person has Covid.
I’ve known a sneeze to drive him to his second-favorite sleeping spot, a cubbyhole in the wall beside the cellar stairs. He stays until he has observed, through the narrow slit of the open cellar door, that I have left the bedroom and don’t plan to return, then he goes back to the bed. He does not do empathy.
“Henry dear,” I tell him, “Technically you are my cat on my blanket on my bed in my room in my house. You are alive because I took you in when you needed a place to go and because I feed you.”
Cats do not do gratitude.
I suppose this independence is one reason why so many people like cats. Every cat is its own person. You’re free to enjoy its personality or not. It will not change just to please you. A cat’s moral standard is simple: if something is pleasant for the cat, it’s good; if something is unpleasant for the cat, it’s bad. Your own moral judgement may be more complicated, but your cat considers it irrelevant.
A cat believes that you are the lucky one, because a cat has agreed to live with you. Many of us have to agree that the cat is right.
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