Catterarium

Catterarium

You will need:

-1 barrier (ex: window, screen, door, etc.)

-Time

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Step 1) See a cat.

Step 2) Avoid frightening the cat. Avoid sudden movements, loud noises, or any attempt to remove the barrier separating you from the cat.

Step 3) Fail.

Step 4) Modify the environment to entice the cat. Provide food and blanket-lined cardboard boxes, and re-establish the barrier between you and your chosen cat. If the cat approaches, appear to ignore it while taking covert photos with your cell phone. If the cat observes you, appear friendly and welcoming (this will not affect the opinions of the cat)

Step 5) Set a consistent schedule, so that your chosen cat will know when to expect food. Do not think about how much you have now spent on food for a cat that is technically not your cat.

Step 6) Leave a gap in the barrier between you and the daily offering of food. See if the cat notices.

Step 7) Ah! The cat came in! The cat came in! Don’t move, don’t scare it!

Step 8) Fail.

Step 9) Re-establish the barrier between you and your chosen cat.

Step 10) Wonder if all your relationships are like this. Wonder if this whole cat situation is just an extended metaphor for the barriers you put between yourself and the people you feel affection for. Wonder if you set yourself up for exploitation by constantly giving without a return, by assuming others only value you for the resources you provide. Wonder if the only affection you receive in life is won through trickery and persistent sacrifice. Maybe this harkens back to your childhood, where you always felt like you had to earn your parents’ love, and could never earn their trust, like love itself is just a currency the world withholds from you until all your value is utterly spent. Wonder if some people are just destined to be alone.

Step 11) Continue putting out food for the cat.

Step 12) Leave a gap in the barrier and remain absolutely motionless as the cat investigates.

Step 13) Put your offering of food inside the open barrier.

Step 14) Allow the cat to become familiar with the indoors. Do not panic when it disappears behind the furniture. Do not chase or attempt to pet the cat.

Step 15) Delight as the cat naps indoors. You may now move slowly and quietly in the presence of the cat. Do not think about how much you have now spent on food for a cat that is not your cat.

Step 16) Buy a cat bed.

Step 17) Do not take offense when the cat completely ignores the cat bed.

Step 18) Think about litter boxes.

Step 19) Forget you left the barrier open, arrive home, and frighten the cat.

Step 20) Wonder if this is the metaphor; if people are in a constant game of fright and enticement. Wonder if all your past relationships failed because you are, in essence, a cat taking advantage of what someone else has left out, only to bolt as soon as they make a move to give you a friendly pat. Wonder if you are the one putting barriers between yourself and everybody else, choosing the safety of the wild outdoors rather than having to rely on someone else for your food bowl, your litter box. Wonder if intimacy will always be baffling to you, the way your ritualistic filling and scootching of the food bowl must perplex this cat. Maybe a part of you doesn’t even want a pet; after all, you never did buy that litter box.

Step 21) Put in a cat flap.

Step 22) Patiently teach the cat how the cat flap works, pushing it, awkwardly pulling it, keeping the food on the inside. Delight that the cat seems to grasp the concept, and is choosing to remain indoors.

Step 23) Sudden panic that the cat will enter your home when you are not home, and mistake your shoes for a litter box.

Step 24) Search.

Step 25) Relax.

Step 26) Go ahead and buy that litter box.

Step 27) Arrive home and immediately frighten the cat.

Step 28) Arrive home without frightening the cat. Reward the cat with food. Notice how much softer and cleaner it looks, how your food and shelter have allowed it to become languid and plump.

Step 29) Find that the cat, indoors in anticipation of your arrival, makes you more aware of the space you share, the time you have together, simply existing in polite proximity. Find that, when the cat is near, you are comfortable in stillness, in silence, in allowing time to pass without a thought to how productive you may or may not be. As the cat becomes a more and more constant presence, you feel at peace within your own walls, even eager to return home at the end of the day.

Step 30) Wonder if this is the metaphor. A cynical observer might say you are cheating yourself out of a straightforward pet-store relationship, constructing this intricate dance of incremental progress because you fear the commitment of a little life depending on you, but you reject that. You find this relationship more fulfilling because it is not guaranteed, because each breach of the barrier had to be earned, because this cat chose you instead of submitting to obligate ownership. This cat trusts you more than any other human on earth because you have proven yourself to be worthy of that trust.

Staying open and consistent, sensitive to the needs of the cat, you have earned the animal’s desire to return. Allowing yourself to be dependable, vulnerable, and patient, you have earned your own trust as a giver of feline care. Slowly, gently, you are maturing into the sort of person who has someone to come home to.

Forget all the transactional courtship, the fragile fair-weather friends, the judgmental conditions of your parents and work-obsessed abandonment of yourself. This furry friend, this beautiful beast without the ability to flatter or deceive, to guilt or beguile, has come into your life to show you, slowly, cautiously, that you are gracious. You are kind. You are, with very little effort, enough.

You have within you the capacity for love. A love without wanting, a love without demanding anything in return. You love this cat, as it slumbers behind the sofa, and you will feed it forever, even if you never get close enough to stroke it behind the ears. You know, for the first time, what it is to be content.

Step 31) …you hear kittens…