Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [40]
They parcel me out among themselves in my different times and places. At the computer I am Morgan’s, to climb on my shoulder and bite my face and stand on the keyboard. Reading the Sunday paper I am Barney’s and sometimes the little black cat’s; she’s new and still pushing herself into place. Barney also waits on my bed at night to claim those first few minutes before Corvo takes over. In my sleep I am Morgan’s from the collarbone up, Corvo’s from collarbone to waist, and Barney’s from the waist down, while the black cat freelances. My daughter is Sidney’s, and no one questions his possession. Behind this sharing there’s no grand abstract notion of fairness, only a reasonable cooperation to minimize stress.
There’s a basket here that sits on the table under a lamp, and it’s the premier cat place in the house. There’s room in it for only one of the big cats, though the two smaller ones can squeeze in and share. The basket would belong to the dominant cat if we had a dominant cat, but its occupants rotate regularly and peacefully; the cat in possession is never challenged or chivvied, and when it leaves possession passes to the first cat to notice the vacancy. Perhaps I’ve just made an accidental lucky selection of feline equals, or perhaps cat society isn’t as ambitiously human as it’s been painted. Perhaps scientific laboratory conditions are the wrong place to inspect the cat.
Cats who are friends will lick each other, with special attention to the head and ears, wrestle, stalk each other from behind the furniture, and conduct noisy games of tag up and down the stairs and through the bric-a-brac. They will play a noncompetitive form of hockey or billiards with a ball or a walnut, with a lot of strategic cat-positioning behind chair legs and a hunkering of haunches for the spring. It takes two cats to play the bag game properly. You drop an empty grocery bag on the floor so the top is open, and one cat gets into it, rustling interestingly. The second cat pounces on the bag, the first cat springs out from ambush, and both pretend to be surprised. Then the second cat gets in the bag. Repeat steps two through four. There are no winners. There are rarely winners in a cat game. When it gets too rough or one cat gets bored, the game stops by mutual consent; it’s enough to stop any game just to sit down and wash.
The sterner authorities insist that cats don’t actually play, that only humans have the concept of play and all the games of cats are merely to keep themselves in training for hunting mice, but this view is narrowly based on human experience, in which all games are merely to keep ourselves in training for business competition or war. Maybe only cats have the concept of play.
The Britannica warns us that having two young cats of the same age may make training and discipline difficult. It doesn’t say what it was trying to accomplish in the way of training, or what happened, but I have a vision of, instead of one obediently intimidated kitten, two of them, adolescent confederates, crouched giggling together in a corner while the Britannica stamped its foot and bellowed commands in a rage of impotence and fired warning shots into the ceiling. Perhaps the Britannica isn’t temperamentally cat people. And if we have no cat and want two cats, two from the same litter will already be friends and need no introduction.
There are authoritative instructions for introducing a new cat to an established cat or cats. You can set up a screen door or babygate between rooms to separate them while they get acquainted. You can keep them closed up in separate rooms, and then switch rooms, giving them a chance to get used to each other through the residual scent markers, but I’m not sure about this; it wouldn’t work with me. I’d feel much worse knowing an invisible stranger was lurking around the premises, like lying in bed listening to assassins downstairs