I’m not naturally a cat person. I grew up with an 100lb Standard Poodle names Jacques who was one of the smartest dogs I’ve ever met. When he would eat something he knew he wasn’t supposed to eat, he would punish himself by lying down on the bathroom mat and staying there—in the bathroom—until we had forgiven him. When it was time for me to come home from school, he would wait at the backdoor until my mother opened it, and then run through the neighbors’ backyards to meet me at the bus stop. One of my best childhood memories is of Jacques bounding through knee-deep snow as he ran to meet me.
But in college, when I missed having a pet, the apartment in which I lived only allowed cats. I’d never spent much time with cats, but I figured I would give it a shot. Orion came first, adopted as a tiny kitten from a local shelter, then Lillith, all white and deaf, and finally Kato, named after OJ Simpson’s famous houseguest because Kato also moved in one day and never left.
And while I still miss living with a dog—their glee at spending time with you, how clearly you are their one true everything—I’ve come to appreciate the mysteries of cats. How they mostly couldn’t care if you’re around; they have their own projects, their own secrets. Some people say cats are “independent” but I think it’s more “indifferent”—they have their own lives, and while happy to connect with a human when it suits them, they mostly do their own thing.
A dog will watch you carefully, will learn from your movements and daily routine. Jacques would walk to me from across the room if I made eye contact and nodded my head. Cats are mostly too self-consumed to pay attention to a human’s goings-on. Even though I spend most of each day working in my office with Orion curled up nearby, he rarely shows any interest in actually interacting with me. If I lean down to pet him, that’s great. Otherwise, he’s content thinking his own thoughts.
Right now, our cats’ favorite thing is spending time in Narnia, which is what Zac and I now call one of our lower kitchen cabinets. Kato will stand at the closed cabinet door scratching his paws up and down and meowing incessantly until one of us lets him in. And whenever a cat is missing, it’s a good bet to check Narnia—she’s probably curled up asleep behind the potatoes and flour. Mysterious cat-things happen in Narnia, things no human could understand.
And that’s one of the best things about living with cats: learning to appreciate the mysterious around us, the mysterious inside us; that each of us, no matter how connected to another, holds vast, deep secrets no one else will ever know. Rilke describes something like this when he writes, “But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
Living with a dog taught me loyalty, joy, unashamed and overwhelming love. But living with cats has taught me boundaries, give and take. Has taught me to be my own person, even in relationship with others, to always have my own projects. That it’s okay to be a little mean sometimes, to show indifference sometimes. Living with cats has taught me the joy of spending time quietly, even if not alone; of living side-by-side; of embracing “the expanse between” myself and others; of trying to see another “before an immense sky.”
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Planet of the Blind 