Friday morning. I get up nice and early. The sun is out as if by accident, it seems, these days. I have coffee. No students to see today. No planning. Just writing and a notebook, a bit of editing on the computer. Utter joy. The cat jumps up on the back of the couch, which lies to the right of my desk in the living room.
We are creature of habits, so I know what’s coming. She stalks down the spine of the couch, stopping to nibble the dangling leaves of various plants who wished they were up higher. A ladybug distracts her for a moment. She crouches, her pupils go took-too-much wide as she watches the benign being flutter to the window. Our house enjoys a moderate infestation of ladybugs, who gather in tiny red and yellow clusters on the ceiling and around the windows in spring and summer. At least it’s not black widows, I tell myself. After smashing the ladybug against the window and noting the place where it’s fallen, she gets back to her stalk. In a matter of moments she’s creeping over a row of notebooks at the back of my desk, and then in between my document stand and my computer. She then peers around the back of my computer at me, daring me to invade what she has deemed as her territory. I wouldn’t dare – I like my fingers too much. Finally, she gives up her territory and steps across my keyboard adding her own comment to my essay. “dwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwdddddddddddddddfffffffffffmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,………////..”
Commentary with which I agree to some level, but find mostly derivative of her previous points. She then dances around in front of me on the desk, stepping on my tablet, my notebook, smudging recent notes; her tail is interminably flipping at my nose in a way that’s too precisely annoying to be coincidental. Soon, she stops and stands sideways on the desk in front of me. She then steps down onto my right thigh with her front legs and, as we both know I will, I lift her back legs and place them on my left thigh.
It’s a common scene in my house. The cat stands on my thighs, nose tucked in my right elbow, tail vying with my left forearm for air superiority. I write off my left shirtsleeve, which takes the brunt of things better left unsaid. She settles, finally, and we enter a state of mutual understanding (comfort in her case; resignation in mine). I am careful not to disrupt this balance of quiet and serenity as I get back to work. It is a volatile calm.
Any cat owner knows the havoc a cat can bring to a once serene scene. Pens are jabbed into misdirection, tails itch noses, plants get turned over, coffees get pushed off the desk to the ground. Moreover, once a cat does something or, more importantly, realizes that it can do something, it becomes part of permanent habit that will never be staunched. A cat owner must accept this if he or she is not going to punt the cat into the stratosphere. My cat and I have several such understandings, involving different rooms and actions, times of day that things occur, and appliances that are turned on for her mere entertainment. There are times I find myself a servant to a little master. I earn money and provide a home so that she can lord reign over the premises and her foolish humans.
And it’s been like this for about 8,000 years. This is a little after people started settling down into agricultural societies (to some degree). Cats have been chasing burrs around the Middle East and Far East since at least 8,000 years ago. They have been knocking olive jars off tables in Southwest Asia and Central Europe since about 5000 years ago.
Until then it was the dog who was man’s best friend. But this was when man was hunting and gathering and he needed dogs for protection against wild animals, scaring out prey, and fetching his slippers. Dogs endeared themselves to humans because they wanted to be closer to these weird two-legged things who had fire and cooked food over it and then discarded the bones that the dogs just adored. They toned down their aggressive nature to become cuter. This made them more appealing to humans. They wanted a share of the food the humans had, and so they played the role of cutesy best buddy to get close to them.
Not so much with cats. Cats, it seems, just sort of moved in when people settled down and had houses and farms. The houses had crops, the crops brought mice and rodents, and the rodents and mice brought cats. People didn’t kick them out because they proved incredibly useful by guarding food stores and crops in the near east and manuscripts in the far east against those mice, rats, and other rodents and bugs. Cats were considered holy in Egypt, they protected the Pharoah from venomous snakes. They saw in the dark. Hundreds and thousands of mummified cats have been found in Egyptian cemeteries. The Egyptian warrior goddess (Bastet) is a fierce lioness with the head of a cat. She protects all from snakes and diseases and she is lesser known as the goddess of pushing things off tables. She is credited as the inventor of the Egyptian morning asshole greeting and as the one who pointed out to all felines exactly where to stand to poke the bladder in the morning. Killing a cat in Egypt was punishable by death. But there was probably some minor punishment for the bladder thing.
In the middle ages and early American history, cats were thought to be “familiars” or the sidekicks and/or animal forms of witches and demons. They were implicated in the Salem Witch Trials. They were thought to bring bad luck and bad tidings. This bad rap had massive implications. Europeans killed off the cats because they thought they were responsible for the Great Plague. In fact, it wasn’t the cats as much as the rats that the cats were eating. So they killed off the cats which allowed the rats to run free. With hindsight it’s easy to piece together the mistake. But at the same time, it’s not hard to imagine a bunch of frustrated people deciding to off an entire generation of cats. If they were already on the shit list and then they started knocking things off desks and biting ankles? Forget it. I’m surprised they weren’t made extinct before that.
Though it’s no Plague, there is evidence of cats aggravating people throughout recorded history. There are paw prints on wet clay from the Harappan Period in 3000 BC. There are paw prints in Roman bricks and inky ones in a 15th century manuscript from Dubrovnik, Croatia. There’s no doubt dozens of diary entries about cats getting in the way of historical figures’ wheeling and dealing. Napoleon was evidently afraid of cats. Abraham Lincoln loved them. Maybe he’s why they rallied in America. They thrived in barns and farms and on boats. They were the bad guy in books with anthropomorphic farm and field animals. Watership Down. The Smurfs. The Master and Margarita. With the internet, cats exploded into culture and society so much so that if aliens were to arrive tomorrow they would genuinely believe that they rule the planet. They are the goddesses of memes and nonchalant activity, lasagna and hating Mondays, and has cheezburger.
When a furry little kitty is curled up, asleep, and purring on your lap, it’s hard to forget that they are like miniature tigers with cute names and a favorite pillow. I am reminded of this as my cat thinks my wrist moving to hit the space bar is one of her ancient prey going to attack a bushel of maize. She attacks. We engage briefly in battle. I curse her name. But she scoots off to go battle a spider on the wall and I give myself over to tradition. I’m just happy I don’t live in Ancient Egypt.
