There is an orange beast breathing a couple centimetres from my face when I wake from deep sleep. It licks my cheek. It sits there expectantly. “Play with me?” I try to resist waking up, but it’s hard to sleep with a claw-endowed creature breathing down your neck (literally). I roll over and check my phone. 3:11. Distressing. The range of night between 2:30 and 4:00 when it’s too late to pretend you’re just going to sleep, and too early to even anticipate morning. Minutes like hours, and so forth. After lying there for 45 minutes, hoping against hope for sleep, I give up and read my book. Jonathan Franzen’s latest iteration of the unfulfilled wife is having an extended therapy session. She is nearing a breakthrough. After three hours, she gets up to leave, “Russ and I have to go to an open house for clergy [her husband is a priest]. Doesn’t that sound fun?” she says to the therapist, putting on her coat. “I guarantee you it won’t be fun for Russ unless one of the wives is good-looking. Otherwise it’s just another occasion for his insecurity, and I’m no help with that. I’m the fat little humiliation he’s married to.”
I attempt to sleep again. My cat is still restlessly roaming. I hear birds chirping, it’s now nearing 5am and it’s late March. I open the door to the terrace on the roof. My cat is practically salivating with anticipation, her head pivoting and pointing, sniffing, tilting, trying to locate precisely where the incessant chirping is coming from. It sounds like there could even be a nest on the roof, it’s so loud. Is it too early in the year for that? I am worried to leave her out on her own because with the levels of adrenaline coursing through her kill-poised body, today could be the day she finally scales the impromptu fence I built of chicken wire and pieces of wood, and slides off the side of the roof. Not wanting to sit outside and supervise, I take her back in.
She naps for ten minutes and I become optimistic. But alas. Following a minor movement of my arm, she trots off the bed, stretches her back in perfect yoga pose, and proceeds to pounce on my head. After two pounces, I scream (sorry neighbours) and get out of bed. 5:27. A reasonable hour for coffee. Soon after, she – in predictable fashion – curls up on my lap and falls soundly asleep.
………………
It is interesting to observe cats. They seem to be intoxicated by the anticipation of pleasure, and maintain tepid interest in the object of desire itself. Take my cat and dehydrated shrimp. She trots over in glee when I open the cupboard door; the crinkle of the bag in my hands? Thrilling. She follows me to the broad windowsill, her eyes locked on the bag like it’s the meaning of life itself. But when I take out a couple of the coveted dried up shrimp and put them on the windowsill, she gives a hasty sniff and then rivets back on the bag, as if expecting more. Once the bag has been put away, she finds her way back to the shrimp and enjoys them heartily, but it’s almost as if the expectation is the prize. She loves to drink water, but particularly when it is dribbling from a tap at such a miniscule volume that to take a proper gulp would require minutes of persistent pawing and licking.
In a related passion, cats are famous for their love of the forbidden fruit. E.g. door closed: cat wants to go out; door open: cat wants to stay in. In fact, the surest way to get my cat to return to the apartment after her forays in the building’s stairwell is to close the apartment door, thus locking her out. When I open the door again ten seconds later, boom, there she is, sitting waiting to come back inside. Similarly, my cat occasionally likes milk but it seems to depend on which dish I put it in: the little plate (yum, 80% of the time) or the small bowl (nah). When does she have no hesitation and slurp away with gusto every time? When she finds milk left out on the forbidden kitchen counter!
I try to learn something from her. There are some zen lessons in all this. In fact, serious philosophical books have been written on the subject. Perhaps what gets you most of all, though, is an animal’s pure expression. No excuses, no compromise, utter and unapologetic selfishness but not out of malice, just nature. And somehow it’s very endearing (as long as they’re cuddly and harmless).
* I recognize this post probably solidifies my cat-lady status (especially when I now notice, the last post was also about a cat……..)
tararachael 