I have known cats whose behavior could be interpreted that way. Although Heather, shown below...
...was status-conscious enough to give me this reproachful look because I'd photographed another cat first, she was generally a friendly cat. She would look at new foster cats the way she's looking at the camera, and if they accepted it, within a few days they'd be part of her extended family. As she grew older, I tried to encourage her to take the long naps older cats take indoors. At that time Petfinder was compatible with this web site so I could bring the computer home with, occasionally, a shelter cat photo sequence showing. Heather definitely seemed to recognize pictures of cats and other animals. Her reaction to shelter cat pictures was generally benevolent boredom--which is what Queen Cats show to new cats they're willing to tolerate. She never seemed to fall in love with another cat's picture but she did seem more tolerant of cat pictures than of dog pictures.
Then there was Viola the Cybercat, an adorable bouncy-pouncy nuisance who "helped" me write some of those posts about the Virginia legislature in this blog's early years. Viola definitely took an interest in what was on computer screens, if only as something to chase and slap.
Most animals don't seem to connect computer or TV screens with anything, although many seem to see on-screen images well enough to watch video images of the sort of thing they watch in real life. Samantha is in the majority. She snuggles only briefly and occasionally; she does like to be picked up and petted, but has never dozed on my lap. She's never shown any reaction to the laptop, in real life.
Serena is in another minority of anti-electronic animals. She won't stay where she can see a computer screen, even a dark one. She thinks the cell phone camera is for slapping and kicking about.
And Silver and Swimmer are good kittens who do as their mother tells them, so they don't compete for human attention, so they've never snuggled on my lap and looked at a picture on the laptop either. Serena has taught them to follow my rules and come when I call them, but not to snuggle. Once in a while, when I pick one of them up and Serena's not looking, I hear a purr. When Serena's looking, they give me a cat kiss (sniffing the air near my nose) and bounce down and away.
So I can't really say that the cats would like you to remember shelter cats, such as they've been spared from having to be--Samantha literally at the last minute. They would like you to remember them. They would like you to send them truckloads of the fresh and juicy kind of kibble, always the freshest batch, please, in the small packages so it will be fresh all the way through the package. They also like cans of fish; a one-pound tin is about right for one meal for four cats. But I would like those of you who live in places from which it wouldn't make sense to send cat food to me to remember the shelter cats near you.
Although Samantha hated being left alone during her first year at the Cat Sanctuary, she no longer feels alone there, so her preference is probably for the human to have to walk into town and buy premium "natural" kitten chow in one-dollar packages. "Exercise does you good," she's probably purring. Not that she's ever turned up her nose at any kind of kibble; she's not overfed, and, like most predator species including humans, she has that instinct to overeat when there's a chance.
Weather killed the Friday Market last week. I ran out of kibble over the weekend. Bad me. I was also out of cash, waiting for an e-payment to clear a bank. Bad bad bad me. I think the cats could tell that I self-punished. The cats had meals on Friday and Saturday. I had soda pop, rose hips, and chickweed. On Friday a friend treated me to coffee. I don't like drinking coffee on an empty stomach. Drinking coffee while my stomach stayed fairly empty, all weekend, was good for a very gripey weekend. I did not feel fit to be around people, including cats, and the cats seemed very solicitous. Clingy, even. As if they thought the trouble might be that I'd forgotten what friendly companions they are (even if they're too young to snuggle). Some cats whom I've loved, who I've felt loved me back--Heather, Ivy, Mogwai--would have gone off hunting, but these four stuck to me like glue.
I mention this by way of illustration of what's wrong with our high-tech economy. Between Thursday and today I had, in real life, twenty-three cents. I had paid some bills with some of the previous week's earnings, and I'd done some more work and earned some more money, but that was only online money. I had a few hundred dollars that some professional money handlers were hanging on to, to demand some profit on them, while in the real world I couldn't buy even the smallest package of kibble, much less a handful of peanuts.
If the Muslims take over the United States it'll be by upholding their teaching about this, which Moses and Jesus unfortunately failed to spell out, although it's in the Bible, too, if you look closely. The Bible does say other things like "If you take the tools of someone's trade as security on a loan, you shall surely return them to him before sundown"...but Muhammad supposedly enunciated further, "If you hire someone to work, you shall pay him on that day; you shall pay him while the sweat is on his face." Peace be upon him, indeed. The Christian countries should only uphold this kind of humanitarian law as well as the Muslims have done.
So, the payment continues to drag through cyberspace at the pace the money handlers have been allowed to demand. I continue to think grim and bitter thoughts about how we need a law that, when someone has done any kind of work for someone else, if the payment is not in the worker's hands by morning the worker automatically gets the title to the house where whoever has the payment in hand is living...
"Oh, but we need all these extra complications to have a high-tech economy!" Rubbish. If bankers were liable for rent on their homes while they were holding onto our money for fun and profit, they'd miraculously discover that they could convert e-payments to cash in minutes. It could easily be made profitable for bankers to scuttle around delivering e-payments in cash to people's homes, in the evenings, after supper, and it would be good for their bodies and their souls if we did that.
But this was supposed to be about the cats, so can we make it a cute cat post, anyway?
PK: Cats, what do you think it means when someone says "I don't want any presents" for their birthday, holiday, anniversary, or whatever other occasion of celebration? Do they really not want presents?
Serena: Humans certainly give each other some useless objects as presents. Maybe some humans have enough sense to tell each other not to send them things that aren't even very nice to sleep on. Things that smell even worse than all humans naturally smell when they've washed off all the stuff they smear and spray on themselves! Things with nasty little lights on them, that make nasty little noises! Even more outer coats, when they already have closets full! Maybe some humans say "What would I want with those objects? Keep them yourself." Ours always says "Thank you, I'll see if I can sell it in the Friday Market for you."
Samantha: Yes, and then the closet's so full of useless human objects there's no room for a person to bring up kittens in it, even though that's obviously what nature intended closets to be used for. However, humans don't always use words to mean what they seem to mean. Humans have a thing called lying, which is like the way we pretend not to be stalking something when we are, except some of them use it constantly when there is no real use for it. They have a way of saying "I don't want any presents" when they really mean "I do want presents, although I've not found a good one for you, and probably won't find one. I want you to say you're absolutely not going to buy me something just because of some commercial gift-exchange tradition invented by retail stores. Then when the occasion arrives I want you to tell me you couldn't bear not to give me anything. Then I'll say I couldn't bear not to give you something, too, and give you an old dried flower or a cheap fruitcake I didn't even bake, and then I want you to give me a new car."
Swimmer, who is now bigger and older than she was when this picture was taken: They couldn't.
Samantha: Oh yes they could. Some humans are real natural-born liars.
Swimmer: I mean, nobody could possibly want a car!
Serena: Most humans do, though. Ours are very special.
Silver, who is also more of a handful now than she appears to be in this picture: How would we know what humans think, if they don't say what they mean? You're a human. What does it mean to you?
PK: It varies very much from human to human. Part of the variation is that when humans really are young and poor, they really do want a lot of things, but they don't expect their friends to be able to give them what they really want. That's the typical young woman who tells her young man "I don't want a gift," meaning that she knows he can't afford the new car or the diamond she really wants, or at least she doesn't want to have to give him anything of comparable value.
Then there are people like my parents when they were young and reckless. They were serious Bible students who came to believe that the commercial Christmas routine is unchristian, antichristian, and they wanted to opt out of it. They had a lot of rich friends from the church that did celebrate Christmas, though, and even while they were studying all the things that are wrong with the commercial routine, they were frantically shopping for things to exchange with the rich friends who were piling up toys around the Christmas tree higher than my little head. Then, along with some but not all of their friends, they said, "We're opting out of the commercial Christmas gift exchange. We want no more presents." And at the time they meant it. But a few years later, when Mother had given up the "beauty" business where the chemicals were making her ill, and we'd moved back to the farm and put in those first few all-organic crops that barely yielded enough to feed us in the summer, and Dad had one steady odd job that paid the minimum wage for two or three days a month, the people who were still their friends could see that we children needed some presents. So they'd give us things, and our parents would take them, and try to pay their friends back with produce or odd jobs later. For people who have less money than their friends, gift-exchange rituals can be very uncomfortable.
Then there are the people who want to be able to communicate in inside jokes and "hints" and "nuances." They like to say things that aren't true and claim that "anybody" should have known from some little way they pulled their faces, which those of us who have astigmatism don't even see, that they didn't really mean what they said. I don't know about people like that. Some of them seem to like each other, but I certainly don't like that kind of behavior. As a Christian I believe that "for every idle word we speak, we shall render account." If I say something that's meant to be funny rather than true, like one of those slang phrases Google hates because they sound violent--"We went to a comedy club and the stand-up act killed us," meaning "killed the inhibitions some people used to have about laughing out loud," meaning we were screaming and slapping our knees with laughter--I'm accountable to God for making sure the people to whom I say that recognize that it's a joke, and are smiling. If there's any way they could possibly think it's true, then I have to say what I mean. (Amazon link should go to the classic song with the refrain, "Do what they say, say what they mean,'cos one thing leads to another.")
I think people who tell their friends they don't want presents probably do want presents. I also think it would be very good for those people if all their friends agreed to take what they said literally. It might break that nasty habit of saying things they don't mean, before they can mislead other people about something that might be more serious.
If someone says "I don't want a present" to you, Gentle Readers, please don't give them one. Please send the money to a worthwhile charity like ADRA or Heifer, or use it to adopt or foster a shelter animal, in that person's name. That person needs to see a "thank you card" from the charity, probably just a digital image in the e-mail, instead of a present. If the person really meant "I know you can't afford to buy me a refrigerator, which is what I'd really like, but I will be disappointed if you don't at least buy me some sort of 'thoughtful' sentimental cheap gift like a flower, book, or souvenir shirt," then that's what the person should say, next year.
For what it's worth, Gentle Readers, I honestly don't want any more small affordable objects from people who don't feel that what I've done for them is a fair exchange for something like a refrigerator, a new roof, or--I've been dreading this moment a long time, and I still dread it, but it's come--a minivan I can use to haul merchandise to markets and also pay back some of the older friends who've done so much driving for me. I have masses of shirts, jeans in every size, a closet full of dresses. I always enjoy reading new books, but I have books by the barrel and the yard, so it'd have to be a very new or rare book, or one I've lost and been trying to replace, to be really appreciated. About all I buy is food and, because of glyphosate, I'm very unadventurous and very picky-choosy about what I'm willing even to taste.
What I would like would be for youall to buy some of the mathoms I've been trying to sell in the Friday Market. Yes, they are mathoms. That's J.R.R. Tolkien's and Suzette Haden Elgin's lovely word for objects that look as if their only imaginable purpose was being circulated and recirculated in gift-giving rituals. The "six-month anniversary party" decorations for babies, the cheap model cars that aren't especially good replicas of any real car ever built...There is actually a good use for these things, if you're rich enough to take the time to itemize your taxes. You can buy them from me, ask for a receipt, then donate them to a place like Mountain Treasures, ask them for a receipt, then report that you donated X amount worth of goods for resale to a local 501(c)(3) charity.
I was in Mountain Treasures yesterday. I found some books I've not read yet, that I would have bought if I'd had any cash on me, growl gripe grumble. I also found their book and audio music collections looking pretty picked-over. Books are not mathoms, but you're free to use the books I've displayed in the Friday Market as if they were. I recognized some books I sold in the Friday Market, last summer and the summer before, being recirculated. This is good; helps people discover older writers. Buy, read, and donate liberally. That kind of "liberality" is what I want for Christmas.
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This post is long enough already, but for real-world readers let's mention: When I say "the mathoms" I include the old magazines and color calendars I offer for kids' art classes to cut up--the pretty, glossy ones--but not the Reader's Digests. Those are special. I don't know how many of the living people who remember George Peters' "marked-up" books and magazines, or even remember their parents circulating those, are still able to read Reader's Digest. Some people do. When those people have been in the market they've bought the issues I had on display. I have about two-thirds of a cubic yard more of them. The deal with these battered, scribbled-on back issues is that, for thirty or forty years, a small group of people, maybe a hundred or fewer altogether, used to pay for George Peters' comments on books, magazines, and newspapers. He was the ordained un-preacher whose insights added value to current events--the pre-Internet equivalent of one of the really great bloggers from whom people choose to get their news and "inspiration." Well, these Digests are some of the last things he "marked up" before he went blind and switched to the FacTape ministry. I've read through each one, and its comments. They're not his most insightful work; I think they were meant for family members who already knew what he was saying with some of the short comments. And his handwriting was deteriorating. And he used then-current slang and abbreviations. But for those who do remember one of Gate City's most lucid and original thinkers, they're still treasure. Even without the comments, Reader's Digest is a wonderful museum of pop culture...sort of the pre-Internet blog site. I never ask why people are buying what they are buying, but it would be a tragic mistake to think those Reader's Digests are mathoms. Nephews should be proud to claim kinship with the man who "marked up" those magazines.
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