It’s open season on cats. Last month the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC) floated the idea of ‘compulsory containment of cats in vulnerable areas’, and added that in some new housing developments felines could be banned altogether.
The report prompted a deluge of what I am going to call catphobia, for no other reason than that I’ve always wanted to coin a new word. There is an existing word for fear of cats (ailurophobia) but this isn’t that. What’s emerged since the SAWC report was published has, rather, been more like what I might call, if I were woke, a form of anti-cat racism. But that would be silly, and I’m not woke, so I’ll just call it cat hatred.
That cats chose to like you is an honour
Take Zoe Strimpel, in this very magazine: ‘In my view, the SAWC recommendations don’t go nearly far enough in curbing the shocking antics of these loutish and numerous creatures.’ Loutish? I have to wonder if Zoe has ever actually encountered a cat.
When cat hatred rears its head, it’s always accompanied by a paean of praise for dogs. Dogs are – I have to wheel out that tired, meaningless old cliché – man’s best friend, loyal and intelligent, while cats are selfish, cold predators. What rot.
I have lived with Louie since he was a kitten in 2016. He has seen me through a divorce, through Covid, through shielding, through cancer and through everything else that life has brought me, the good as well as the bad. And I could have asked for no more loving and affectionate a companion. Louie is a character – a beast, as the vet calls him. He is huge – over 35 inches from his nose to his bum, with a long tail on top of that – and, yes, he throws his weight around (but he isn’t overweight, unlike his owner). He makes it very clear when he wants to eat, which is pretty much all the time he is awake, and when he wants to play, which is some of the rest of time – and then when he has had enough of both of those, he will sleep.
I know I am often in his shadow. I work from home and have some regular video meetings. Louie has come to be part of them. I long ago came to realise that people on the other end of the call are waiting not for me to impart my words of wisdom but for Louie to jump on the desk and wander in front of me, in front of the camera, and wave his tail.
It’s not all plain sailing, especially when Louie decides to walk over my keyboard, as he has just done. I set my computer to save every two minutes, as he has more than once managed to delete everything on the screen. But living on my own for most of the week, I have come to regard Louie as my closest friend, at least in the sense that I see more of him than anyone else, and he is usually pleased to see me. I love it when I put the key in the door and he is sitting at the top of the stairs looking down at me. (I will never understand how cats know when their owner is about to come home, before they are actually back.) So I really won’t have this rubbish about dogs being special and cats as some ‘skulking, disobedient’ predator, as Zoe put it.
It’s been so rewarding seeing how much more affectionate Louie has become over the years. He is a British Shorthair – his formal, pedigree name is, rather gloriously, Albalou Bojangles – and they are typically even more standoffish than most cats when they are young. In the past few years, however, he has taken to following me from room to room. If I go to make a cup of coffee, he comes with. If I go to the loo, he waits outside. And when I am sitting on the sofa, he jumps up either to sit on my lap or alongside me, pushing himself as close to me as he can. Honestly, it’s wonderful. I don’t let him in my bedroom at night, not least because he starts getting frisky when he is hungry. But when my daughter stays here, Louie is in heaven: he spends all night tucked up on her bed and it hasn’t yet occurred to him that she might be able to feed him.
But when I’m not well, Louie knows, in the way all cats do. It’s that sixth sense which tells them you need a cuddle. I was looking at some silly video the other day on social media about ten things your cat does if he loves you, and the sneer was wiped clean off my face when I realised Louie did eight of them, such as sitting with his bum towards me, showing he isn’t worried I will attack him. Similarly, we have a ritual every morning when I get dressed – he leaps onto the bed and turns over, waiting for his belly to be stroked. As for his purr; there really is no more comforting, uplifting sound than a cat’s purr.
I long ago realised that it’s not just cats that are misunderstood and maligned but their owners – especially in comparison with dog owners. The received wisdom is that dogs are more intelligent and their owners more involved, whereas we cat owners have little more to do with our pet than feeding them and providing a home. But while a dog needs its owner, not least for a walk, there is something especially rewarding about being loved by a creature that doesn’t actually need you. Cats grow close to you, but they could do without you. That they chose to like you is an honour. They don’t need to please you. So when they sit with you – when they show you they want to be in your company – it feels even better.
I’ve nothing against dog owners. If it makes them happy, great. But they don’t come close to cats – or cat owners.
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