Lessons I Have Learned From My Cats

Those of you who have been my readers for a while know that I have always had my little cat friends that live in the neighborhood and hang around with me, eating the majority (it would seem) of their meals here, and being quite chummy with me. They have been good company (if a little bit of an expense sometimes).

 

Now I'm down to just the one cat, Blackie. Blackie is a tomcat so he will probably be the last of my long line of cats. Fluffy, the little female who kept me stocked with kitties for so long died last year - much to my sadness. I had her the longest of all my little friends.   

 

Blackie is outside on my deck every morning when I get up, waiting patiently for his breakfast. Until it got so hot recently, he would be on my deck in the afternoons when I got home from work. He would walk out to the truck to greet me and walk to the door with me. I would then pet and feed him. Now he waits until the worst of the day's heat is over before he comes for supper. Most nights he sleeps on the deck, waiting for me to wake up and feed him again. 

 

As I'm typing this I'm looking right outside the window where he is sleeping. Supper is over and good, healthy digestion evidently puts him the mood for a snooze. (I would take a picture, but the batteries in my camera are dead.) 

 

I love watching Blackie sleep on the flat railing of my deck. Such a sweet little face! And when he is dreaming his little paws quiver and quake. Sometimes he stretches in his sleep and almost loses his balance. But he is quick to regain it.

 

Watching him is relaxing to me. Watching my cats "chilling out" on my deck always gave me a little perspective. I might have been watching the weather and seen that storms are forecast, or maybe a winter cold front is threatening to bring really cold temperatures and perhaps some snow. But they take it in stride, even if I worry about how I may fare through these things. Cats appear to live moment to moment, and if they worry, I've never detected it.

 

About the only moods I've detected in my cats are fear when a stranger comes (or a strange and threatening dog), which causes them to bow up and their fur to stand on end, and annoyance when it is rainy. You really can see the displeasure on a cat's face when they get wet. Cats don't seem so fond of water.

 

Life is just a hoot, I suppose, if you always know where your next meal is coming from, when you have a place to live, and if you are able to go with the flow no matter what the weather is.

 

I think Blackie may have a bit of a rough time when it comes to the opposite sex. I hear him fighting sometimes. And sometimes he gets a little banged up from it. He fights with the other tomcats because the guys in the neighborhood seem to outnumber the gals. And even at that - and I don't know how many of you know this, but - cats are into rough sex.

 

My lady friend, when she lived across the street from me, would say this one particular male cat (which wasn't mine but "loved" my female cats) was a rapist. Well, that was because the male will grab the female by the nape of the neck to hold her while they copulate. And if my cats - Fluffly, in particular - wasn't in the mood for it, she was quite good at boxing. I've seen her turn on a male right after the act. Yet she would always tease the males until they fell for her.

 

But Blackie seems to be more of a sleeper than a lover, just as his master is getting to be. More and more I look for a good meal and then a comfortable place to take a nap. I told my lady friend that that nape of the neck thing looked promising, but she wasn't very impressed. 

 

Now if I could just learn to kick back like ol' Blackie and quit worrying so much about tomorrow!