I live with two cats. They came with my wife as a package, about 14 years ago. In the last few months they’ve really begun to show their age. Without wanting to go into too much detail, I’ll just say that, even though they’re outside cats, we’ve had to accept we now have to keep a litter tray in the house. It’s in our little utility room, next to the bins. The boiler is in the utility room too, which means the room and the floor in there are normally very warm.
This morning I noticed again that the cat I like the least was sleeping in the litter tray again. Worse than shitting on your own doorstep, the cat is sleeping on its own shit. It’s comfortable and warm but really, the creature has no shame.
So anyway I tried to google, “do cats feel shame,” but I got distracted by a couple of the suggested searches. Top of the list, all you have to type is, “do cats,” and you get, “do cats fart,” and “do cats like green olives.” Other people who have to live with cats will know that they do fart, but quietly. It reminds me of primary school and, “silent but deadly.” The information I found about green olives was more useful. Green olives contain a chemical compound in them that’s very similar to nepa-tal-ac-tone, which is what’s in catnip and which gives catnip its latin name, Nepeta cataria. You may know that catnip works on lions but not tigers, and that it doesn’t work if the cat eats it. It has to be smelt. Cats will definitely eat olives, and that’s okay, but be careful giving olives to your cat for the first time. From a nutritional point of view, cats don’t need olives in their diet.
At 10:46 this morning I sent my wife some information about whether cats like green olives and she hasn’t replied yet.
I don’t sniff catnip but I do sometimes drink, and in the morning I do sometimes feel ashamed. The cat I like least, often wakes up in the litter tray, and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t feel shame at all. My emotional complexity far exceeds that of the cat, who doesn’t even have any sense of self. Sometimes the cat looks up, without raising its head, but raising its eyebrows - a bit like this - but that’s ennui, or disaffection. I checked the definition of disaffection. It’s a state or feeling of being dissatisfied, especially with people in authority, or a system of control, so that makes perfect sense. The fact is - and this is what I tell my children too - I deserve to be in control, I have a mandate, so don’t look at me like that, there’s no point.
What was I saying
The cat that I like more than the other one is more sociable, and grateful, but as a cat it’s incompetent. It falls off things. Sometimes when a cat falls off something, it starts licking itself quite aggressively, as though it’s embarrassed. But again, if you see that behaviour, don’t give it the credit. It doesn’t know the meaning of the word. The licking is a self-calming reflex, like sitting on the couch on Sunday morning staring at hip-hop music videos while you try not to think about what you said the night before to someone you really really shouldn’t have said it to.
A long time ago, for about three months, I lived in a small new-build terraced house in Whitechapel, with very thin walls. One of my housemates was my friend from uni, and the other was a man who’d left the navy, who he’d met at a warehouse party and who had travelled down to London from Preston with his cat. His name was Duggy. Not the cat, I don’t know what the cat’s name was. I remember 3 things about Duggy:
He recommended a way to peel garlic cloves without getting the garlic smell on your fingers
I lent him one of my smart shirts and he never gave it back
He told me that having a cat in the house was a bit like having a screensaver
I’ve always liked that thought.
I played the violin as a child and once had a teacher called Mr. Brulo. He was Russian and pronounced the word thumb as thub. It’s funny the things you remember. Before that, I had a violin teacher whose name I can’t remember, but he was short and quite stout, with a ginger ponytail, and he liked to say that when you see p written on sheet music it means Power. It doesn’t mean power, it means pianissimo, which is very quiet. He had a cat with three legs, called Meatloaf. I once asked him why it was called Meatloaf and he said it was because if you chopped off the other three legs, its head and its tail, it would look like a meatloaf. Shameless.
Have a good weekend.