I’m up! And guess what. So are you! We are up! We are playing! With that string, or that ball, or that other string. It doesn’t matter! You are playing with me now!
Oh, what? You’re sleeping? Nah. That’s not what we do. We do that in the daytime. We PLAY at night.
Here’s how this is going to work. You play at night with me and then in the daytime, I will walk in front of your screen while you try to work, and meow until you follow me into the bathroom for no reason. That’s what you signed up for and that is what you are going to get.
Living with a cat can be hard. Being a good cat parent takes a lot of time and effort. That’s why I want to challenge you to be the best cat parent you can be. And if that means, sometimes a little cat litter gets in your cereal, so be it. If that means you experience a very deep laceration to your throat while you sleep, that’s just part of the deal. Nobody said life was easy, and with a cat, it’s doubly so.
Here’s what I know. You’re mine now. There’s nothing you can do to change that. Some might call it a host-parasite relationship. I don’t know if I would go that far, but try taking me back to the shelter and see what people say. Go ahead and tell them all the stories of the things I did to you to make your life miserable. Every time I made you clean up my shit in the middle of the living room. Every time I pestered you in the middle of the night for you to fill up my food bowl, only to throw it up on your white comforter an hour later. Just see if any of that matters. All they’ll see is somebody who took a defenseless animal into their home and abandoned that animal right when stuff “got hard”.
But let’s not get mired in what-ifs right now. You are capable of taking care of me, your cat. You just have to be proactive:
- You don’t want to find vomit in your shoe? Put something in it that shoe you do want to have vomit on. That way the vomit gets on that, instead of inside your shoe.
- You don’t want to be awakened several times throughout the night by sandpaper licks to your face, surprisingly powerful cat farts, or suffocation? Change your sleep schedule so you sleep during the day.
- You don’t want hair on everything you own like clothing, furniture, electronics, or food? Don’t think about it and it’s won’t be there.
Problems solved.
The truth is that I have a lot of great things to offer you. I give you affection, snuggles, cuteness, and a sense of accomplishment. That’s a lot. All you need to do is hold up your end of the bargain, which is everything else. That seems fair to me.
Remember all the good stuff, the petting, the lap sitting, the scrubbles, the nuzzles… All the things that made you want a cat in the first place. You get to keep all of those things for as long as you live, I assume. All you have to do is do exactly what I say when I say it for as long as you live, I assume. I think that sounds like a really good deal. But it comes down to commitment. And you’ve got to have it to make this work. So let’s do this. (And don’t forget that I threw up in your shoe. You’re going to want to clean that before you put them on.)
Sincerely,
The Cat