Living With A Cat

Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday September 5, 2023 06:00

People are also apparently too lazy to sell cats if they have any. Usually you find there’s a cat in your household and you wonder where it came from. Most of the time the cat is a great grandson to the cat that your great grandfather once owned the origins of which is not known either.

So almost every family member inherited the cat from their folks who also inherited its mother from their folks and on and on it goes. There are 2 types of cats namely a village cat and a house cat. A village cat is that rain-resitant all-weather cat that sleeps outside the house. A house cat is one that has somehow gatecrashed the family tree and sees itself a member of the family.

Apparently in some societies a long time ago cats were worshipped as Gods. Many house cats have not forgotten this. They take the best spots in the house and purr away their little motors as they descend into deep slumber on your beautiful linen that was not procured from Block 3 Chinese shops. If your partner is not a Crazy Cat Person that could strain your relationship greatly. And they also have this haughty I-own-this-place walk. The village cat is clued up in ecological balance and won’t eat up all the rats and start making some meow demands for food like the house cat. I once woke up from a deep slumber with a dull pain in my chest and difficulty breathing. With a frightening thought that I have suffered a heart attack I opened my eyes only to discover an 8kg house cat perched on my chest.

My first reaction was to smack it across the face but the person I was visiting was big on cats’ rights and so I gently nudged it off my chest. I never visited her again and a relationship that was teetering on the brink of collapse petered off. The affair had more problems than a Maths book in any case. Let me make a disclaimer here that I don’t hate cats but I hate heart attacks. When you live with a cat you must somehow learn to decode cat language. It is usually not difficult to decipher a cat’s needs when it is sitting hopefully in front of a fridge which is what a house cat would do. Interpreting a range of meows from 6 cats at 3 am takes a little more practice.

This is what village cats would typically do. When you are a kid you don’t really like the cat. Especially when it is black! Somehow when it is black it is associated with all sorts of evil such as witchcraft and it could well be accused of accompanying Judas when he sold Jesus Christ. You first try all manner of sympathetic and evil routes of chasing it away like starving it or setting the dog – which is in cahoots with you in its dislike of the cat – on the poor black cat. We were little evil agents of Satan who hated the cat merely because it was black. Cats are useful. Cats are irritating. Cats are cuddly. Cats make your skin crawl. The ambivalence-meter just keeps chugging. (For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com.