Yesterday was the coldest day we've had so far this winter. Temperatures dropped to an official 17 degrees Fahrenheit, during the night. I was awake and verified that the thermometer at the Cat Sanctuary, which is pretty accurate, was showing an even 10 degrees Celsius. During the afternoon the sun came out and relieved the chill factor slightly, but there was still a cold north wind and it took a while for the temperature to climb back into recommended refrigerator range.
I had meant to share a video with someone in town "early this week." Mondays are good days for "early in the week," but this Monday was the sort of day that makes one think that Tuesday or Wednesday might be warmer, and if they're not, people might prefer to wait till next week to open their doors anyway. Friday wasn't bad at all and on Friday this person had felt cold.
Speaking of videos, here's a music video for a Petfinder cat day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHxr67yTIsQ .
Anyway I was glad to have stayed at home when I visited another catperson's blog, MessyMimisMeanderings, which has an almanac column of holidays and events to celebrate on any given day. In addition to being freezing cold, yesterday was also "Hello Day," a day when some benighted gaggle of extroverts were urging people to "say hello" to people who have successfully discouraged this bad habit all year.
It occurred to me that, although Serena, who is the boss around here, is very social...
(Serena wasn't even half grown when she accepted the position of Queen of the Cat Sanctuary.)
...and I think of myself as a friendly person who practices good will, both of us do have to spend a fair bit of time discouraging behavior that may be called "friendly" but is still inappropriate. It's Tuesday, so a Cat Sanctuary Interview is indicated.
PK: Serena, why don't you purr and cuddle as other cats do?
Serena: Well, for one thing there are no known ordinary cats in my ancestry. I am the seventh generation, here, of a family of extraordinary cats. Most cats aren't social animals; nearly all of us are. Most cats don't learn to understand what humans are saying, if they hear human noises at all; many of us do. Most cats don't hunt as teams or bring up their kittens in extended families; we do. Most male cats either avoid kittens or try to kill them; ours baby-sit. Most cats are sterilized, these days, because nobody wants their kittens; we are not, because there's still a waiting list of people who want to adopt our kittens, when we have any. (Most cats apparently have more kittens than we do, too. There is an evil wind that blows around here, that has something to do with this.)
But, more to the point, many cats, like my beloved foster brother Traveller...
...always want to be petted by humans because they had siblings and never felt they got enough quality time grooming and cuddling with their mothers. I was the only surviving kitten my poor little mother, Samantha Scaredycat, ever had. The first day of my life was a cold day, so Mother brought me into the office when I was just a few hours old, and if I woke up and felt lonely I needed only to squeak for you to come over and pet me. This allowed me to be a very well-nourished and well-adjusted kitten, as far as snuggling was concerned. I got all the snuggling I wanted. Unfortunately, even when Trav joined me he was never very strong. I never got enough of the rough play kittens enjoy. I soon grew too big to bite and scratch you without damaging your skin, and I have a terrible time reminding you to come out in the yard and trail a switch for me to chase. You must have had all of your siblings to play with. That would explain why you seem to want to snuggle more than to play!
PK: Possibly it does. There's also the fact that, watching you grow up in the office closet, I formed a habit of wanting to pet you every time I look at your adorable face.
Serena: Oh spare me! I am not a kitten any more. Why is that so hard for humans to get through their thick heads? I'm five years old; I'm told that that's like being thirty years old for a human. When you were thirty years old, did you want people to pick you up, pet you, and remember your early childhood? While ignoring the age you really were and the things you were doing and thinking about?
PK: Of course not. That's a very rude way for humans to behave toward one another.
Serena: It's rude to cats, too! We don't blame you for being the dumb animals most humans are, but we wish those of you who have some rudimentary sort of brain could communicate to the other humans that an adult cat is not a kitten. Neither is an adult cat a baby human, even if we are about the same size. We are adults of our kind! We make our own decisions! We have our own responsibilities!
PK: Well, you certainly have responsibilities. Many cats seem to have none.
Serena: Rearing kittens is a great big complicated responsibility, especially in ordinary cat families where the fathers are as useless as Crayola's and Pastel's father. He is good for only one thing and if I hadn't listened to you I would never have tried to rear his kittens. Fortunately we have Sommersburr.
PK: Sommersburr actually takes responsibilities that aren't his. That's why at first, until he started coming to me to be petted, I thought he was your father.
Serena: My father was killed in a traffic accident last summer. Yona thought he was Sommersburr, too, but he's not. He stopped coming to visit us when Sommersburr moved on. When they're not trying to impress some indecisive female, male social cats generally avoid each other. That's a kind of responsibility--not poaching on another cat's hunting ground. Showing one another due respect.
PK: Social cats don't seem to have much sense of a hierarchy.
Serena: Each social cat respects the others. Of course, males show special respect to females, in some ways, and females to males, in some ways. Some of us also show special respect to old age. All social cats are generally protective of kittens, even if we don't always feed or groom all of them. Some of us have particular friends, usually mates or siblings, and will try to help or protect them if they need such. A cat family always has a queen, even if there are other queen cats who can make some division of labor and treat one another as equals. I, myself, am fond of my kittens and probably let them get away with too much. But who would have thought a half-grown tomkitten would challenge the authority of a Queen Cat, as my spoiled son Burley did!
PK: Quite the spoiled brat, that Burley. I hope he's enjoying his new home.
Serena: So do I. We don't need him back here. Well, it all started when I allowed him to act like a pet. I don't encourage Crayola and Pastel to act like pets.
PK: They look alike, except that Crayola has bright orange and black patches and Pastel has light orange and grey, but they behave differently. Crayola has soft fur and likes to be cuddled. She mews for attention, and likes to sit in the path and wait to be picked up and moved aside. She responds to her name; I think she'd try to learn words if she could. She doesn't seem very intelligent but she's certainly lovable. Pastel has a thicker, coarser coat and acts as if she hates being touched. She'll join in a game if youall are playing, but although she's not afraid of humans, she's not even tame enough to be the first to chase something a human throws or trails through the grass for her to chase. It's hard to understand! Last spring she was a friendly baby kitten who had food poisoning once and spent the night clinging to my arm, and now she's a sly, sneaky-looking half-grown barn cat whose goal seems to be to get food without being touched or spoken to.
Serena: She doesn't dislike or avoid you; she avoids being petted. She is on her dignity. I've brought both of them up to know that you're my human and I'm not sharing. They will just have to find humans of their own if they want to be pets. Crayola is smaller but more stubborn. Pastel is a very well brought up kitten. She could go feral any day!
PK: I don't want her to go feral, actually.
Serena: Then leave her alone. I've trained these kittens to understand that licking or brushing or petting a cat's head is a dominance display. They bow their heads when I wash the tops of their heads. They move away if you try it.
PK: Have you always felt that way about being petted?
Serena: A bit. I've called attention to the feeling for the kittens' benefit. Stroking my head is a way of saying "You're my baby; I'm your mother." I'll let you do that every now and then, as a reward for good behavior. If anyone else tries it, let'm look out! I'll say, "No, you're my mouse and I'm a starving feral huntercat!" It's a matter of basic interpersonal respect. I don't stick my claws into people unless they ask for it. But treating me like a kitten is asking for it!
PK: Most cats don't seem to feel that way.
Serena: More of us do than humans think. Many cats don't express anger directly to their humans because they're afraid of reprisals. They might transfer their anger to other cats, or express it in indirect ways like clawing or fouling the humans' shoes. Cats who do express anger to their humans are often called mean or vicious, and bad things happen to them. That's one reason why most feral cats have no use for humans at all; as my father used to say, great nasty dumb animals who bring bad luck in hunting, Those of us who are fond of our humans usually bond with humans who have enough sense to back off when you're told you're trespassing against us. Is that because you notice other humans stepping out of their boundaries, too?
PK: Likely. Many cat people are introverts. We have a natural sense of right and wrong, so we don't have to roam around constantly looking for other people to "validate" our right to exist. We don't know how it must feel to those miserable souls who, because their brains fail to develop that sense of right and wrong, actually feel afraid of quietness. When things are quiet around us we feel a sort of connection to a Higher Power.
Serena: Like what we cats are drawing on when we purr?
PK: Probably like that, yes. So for us it feels right and natural, when we pass other humans on the road, to leave them alone and get on with our business, without interrupting whatever those other humans are doing or thinking. Whereas the poor half-souled extroverts aren't doing or thinking anything, aren't able to do or think anything, that feels more important to them than indulging their bizarre idea that if other people look at them or talk to them, that means they have a right to exit.
Extroverts' demands for chatter have nothing to do with "friendliness." They're not friendly. They are sick, desperate, sometimes dangerous. You can tell by the hostility that steams and reeks out of them even if you do indulge them in idle "greetings" that don't actually lead into conversation. In all the different ways extroverts have of screaming "Pay attention to me!" there is nothing at all similar to "I like or admire you; I understand or appreciate what you're doing; I want to be your friend." Instead there's a greedy demand for your attention, and if you give them a little attention, other greedy demands will soon follow as the extrovert tries to convince perself that person is more important or more worthy of respect than you are.
In American folklore there's a story of how a character called Br'er Rabbit annoyed some of his neighbors until they set a special trap for him. They made a sort of doll out of tar and stood it up beside the road. Rabbit yapped "Hello" at the doll, thinking it was a human child. Of course it made no response. In those days adults felt free to punish any child in the neighborhood for bad behavior, so Rabbit slapped this "Tar Baby" and yelled at it for not speaking to him. Then Rabbit was stuck in the tar and his neighbors came out to punish him.
This story teaches children about the real reason why some people "love greetings in the marketplace." They don't merely want to talk; they are demanding a position of superiority over others in a hierarchy, a right to act as if only they are adults and the others are children. That makes others want to act as if they were foxes, wolves, and bears, and these pushy, yappy extroverts were rabbits!
In the Bible there's a character called Haman. Living in a time and place where people expressed themselves in different, more direct ways than we do, Haman expected everyone to bow and kowtow when they saw him. When told that another character called Mordecai didn't kowtow because that was something his culture taught him was wrong, Haman wanted to destroy Mordecai's whole nation. He built a special gallows where he thought he was going to be able to hang Mordecai's dead body as a mark of special shame on Mordecai. Of course, his plot backfired and Haman's body was strung up on that gallows. This story teaches us that God's people are not called to indulge the sinful vanity of our fellow humans. If Haman had wanted something that was good for him, like food, Mordecai would have had to give that to him, but that indulgence of his ego was not good for Haman and Mordecai was right not to give it to him.
I sometimes think that we as a culture might try training the people who want more exchanges of "hello's" that don't lead into conversation to ask for what they want in a less harmful way. What they want is not human kindness. Interrupting a human who has a complete brain and is thinking with it, when you don't even have anything to say, is not kind; at best, it's very rude. So maybe extroverts should be trained to recognize that the attention they're whining for is a special favor they want because they have a disability. Then instead of saying "Hello! I said hello! Why don't you (or doesn't s/he) speak to me, blank-blank, bleep-bleep, what a horrid person you/s/he/they must be," their little greeting noises might sound more like, "Hello? Hello? Oh please, Sir or Madame, of your great kindness, as a favor to a sick disabled creature, please look at me and speak to me, I beg! I'm very grateful and I will not ask for anything more! I have a defective brain, but my intentions are good."
Then I might still feel burdened and annoyed by these wretches' yapping for attention, but at least, if I carelessly glanced in their direction, I wouldn't feel that I'd done something wrong. I wouldn't be encouraging them in the peculiar kind of bad behavior that tempts them.
In North America, when humans say "hello," they're opening a conversation; they've agreed to have a conversation. It can be a formal agreement, like a business meeting, or an instant nonverbal agreement, as when long-lost friends see each other and rush toward each other with open arms. When people want to ask for a conversation to which the other person has not agreed, they say things like, "Excuse me, please, do you know...?" I, personally, want to save my energy and good will for people who say "Excuse me, please." That means not wasting it on the sort of energy sinks who feel entitled to shout "Hello."
Serena: What a lot of meaning to attach to human noises that all sound alike to most reasonable lifeforms! But it does seem to be about the same thing: interpersonal respect.
PK: Ooohhh! Ooohhh! I think I'm off on a rant here. Introverts have been so badly disrespected in our culture that people don't always even know what the word means. Most adult introverts are not especially shy, and most of us do look forward to social events. You're not "becoming an extrovert" or even "in an extrovert mood" if you're thinking, this week, "It'll be nice to see the relatives at Thanksgiving." Introverts are people whose brains have developed enough to form a strong conscience that's independent of other people and of "feelings," and usually also to have one or more conspicuous talents. Extroverts are people who lack the conscince and seek validation from other people.
Now let's stop the rant and consider some cats, whom it's always a good idea to approach with respect.
Serena: Not that all cats care. I've tried to rear mine to be independent, spending the time with each kitten that it needs, but some cats, like Traveller, just can't get enough petting and attention.
PK: And sometimes, as with Traveller, that's because they didn't come into this world to stay for very long. I thought our weary wee Traveller was worth feeding because his symptoms so obviously included glyphosate reactions, and I usually manage to find the kind of kibble that's supposed to contain more meat than grain for you cats. That was not enough to give Trav much of a life.
Serena: We had him for two summers and one winter, anyway. I'm glad. I needed someone to play with and wouldn't have wanted anything else than I wanted to have a brother to grow up with.
PK: With that in mind, here are some cats who probably aren't as social or as tightly bonded as Serena and Traveller were--very few cats are--but do have recognizable friendships and family ties.
1. Zipcode 10101: Otis & Bessie from New York
This brother and sister, both sterilized, were rescued from a shelter when they were five years old. Then their human died, and they're back in the shelter. They are now seven years old. They're used to being together and not keen on meeting other animals. If you can offer them the home they've been so near and yet so far from having for so long, please visit their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/otis-and-bessie-57332716/ny/new-york/frankies-fund-for-feline-care-and-rescue-ny1043/ .
2. Zipcode 20202: Grace & Asher from Woodbridge
Gray and ash-colored indeed. According to https://www.petfinder.com/cat/asher-58802622/dc/washington/metro-ferals-md-md307/, they're two months old, which Serena thinks is far too young to be adopted. If you adopt them, please let me know whether our speculation about cats' emotional needs is accurate--do they want to snuggle all the time? When you walk around, do they look up at you, like Traveller in the snapshot above, nonverbally saying "You're going to sit down and then I'm going to be in your lap!" Kittens this young may actually inspect friendly humans and their clothes, looking for anything that might be a teat and trying to nurse on it. For their age, their foster human says they seem confident and well adjusted.
3. Zipcode 30303: Penny, Lilith, and Vera from Atlanta
This one's Penny. Though her Torbie coat is more coppery than ashy, giving her the look of a Ginger Tom, she's a spayed female just like her sisters (their coats are more gray). All three have some hereditary physical defects; their extra toes are not assets like Heather's extra thumbs, nor even just useless decoration like Tickle's extra claws, but parts of deformed feet that seem to make hunting and climbing difficult. They were feral kittens but took to begging for food at a repair shop, distracting the workers and annoying the owner, so they've been placed in this shelter. They've been given three separate web pages:
...But they come as a package deal. Lilith is the freakiest-looking, with longer fangs and shorter forelegs in proportion to her hind legs. (They're still only a year old--our Mogwai's hind legs seemed too long when she was a year old, and her legs evened out during her second year.) Vera is the shy follower, Penny the bold leader, Their foster human was charmed by their social relationship with one another, which makes them sound a bit like our social cat sisters...but their DNA definitely needs to be spayed out of the gene pool. Though wary, they seem to have realized that they weren't built to be good feral cats and accepted being house pets as an alternate lifestyle. If you would like to live with a cat trio similar to Mogwai, Grayzel, and Bisquit, or to Heather, Ivy, and Irene, consider this trio. If you want kittens, no points for guessing, the shelter also has kittens...I'd recommend seeing how it goes with the sisters first.
For those who already have a cat, or have recently lost one...These were the most photogenic group pictures at the Petfinder pages. Several other cats were more photogenic in individual pictures. And, of course, if you meet all the cats at a shelter or rescue organization, you just might fall in love with one whose digital picture came out badly, too.
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