You love cats and are a long-term cat guardian/caretaker. What do you do if you discover that a person you admire, or a friend, dislikes cats to the point where he or she might hurt them if they entered his garden? Do you immediately cut them out of your circle of friends? Do you stop admiring the person that you once admired?
For my part, I have to admit that it would definitely seriously affect my friendship. I would also stop admiring anybody, for example a well-known celebrity, who declared to the world that he might hurt a cat under certain circumstances.
The trouble is that you may like every aspect of your friend except the fact that he/she hates cats. Perhaps you should compromise and still be friendly and ignore it; not possible in my case. It’s too important a subject but how many friends do you have? Can you discard friends? Should we accept our friend’s character entirely, the bits we like and dislike?
Another issue, however, is that if somebody hates cats they probably have a relationship with animals or an attitude towards animals generally which clashes with mine so that aspect of a person’s character goes wider than just the subject of the domestic cat.
You may have a friend who likes cats, like you do, but the way they treat their cat or their relationship with cats is such that you can no longer be their friend or as friendly towards them.
For example, I have a neighbour who informally lets her cats breed and then sells the kittens to make a bit of pocket money. She’s a nice woman but this behaviour is so against my principles that it has had a serious impact upon my relationship with her.
You might admire and like a television or radio presenter but then discover that their attitude towards domestic cat clashes with yours. Do you forget about it and continue as before or do you stop listening to him or stop watching him on television? The question then is, “do you stop liking somebody who dislikes cats?”
The journalist, Polly Hudson writing in the daily Mirror said that she felt betrayed and perplexed when Sean Lock on the television program Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown (never watched it), “suddenly launched a bitter tirade against cats.”
Mr Lock announced that he had invented a device which got rid of cats from his garden. Amusingly (or so he thought) he called the device a cat-apult. Perhaps he was just enjoying a play on words and didn’t actually mean what he said. But Polly Hudson questioned whether she could go on liking Sean Lock because she felt betrayed, disappointed and perplexed. She then discovered that a number of friends didn’t like cats either, after she had discussed the program with them. Disaster.
She discovered that her friends thought that cats were smug and crafty or felt superior and aloof. These are the usual criticisms by people who don’t understand the domestic cat.
Initially, Hudson decided to do away with her friendship with these people but then realise that she couldn’t do it because she needed the friendships. Would you compromise like this? How important is this facet of a person’s character to you: whether they strongly dislike cats or not?
I thought you would have similar sentiments to me. I think the values which are behind a love of cats are too important and too profound to compromise within a friendship. So you might like everything about a person except the fact that they dislike cats and that last facet of their character would be enough to break a friendship. Of course, that doesn’t mean one can’t be friendly with the person and treat them as a colleague.
I like this Irish proverb and I believe it has a ring of truth about it. I’m not sure why that is the case, however. You could almost go wider than that and say that if anybody dislikes animals then there’s something wrong with them!
It seems that you are a bit like me in that if a person tells you that they dislike cats they can no longer be a friend of yours.
I’ve dealt with now former friends who dislike cats especially my own,one who professes to be a Wiccan like myself shocked me when she told me finally why she never wanted to come into my house and after she told me she abhorred cats I called her a fake Wiccan,Wiccans I personally know all have cats and making them their familiar’s especially if they are a White Witch,after reading this piece it brought to mind the Irish Proverb ” Beware of those who dislike cats “
Years ago I was friends with a couple that I found out they we’re grabbing every cat that came into their garden. At the time, I knew that they would take the cats to the pound and then inform the owners. I was very uncomfortable with that and was fooling myself into thinking the cats will be picked up. (That is what they told me.) The friendship ended when I was leaving their home one day, walking down the path on the side of their house. On the wall between the homes was a kitty wanting attention, I walked to the end of the wall and slightly over to the neighbors yard, picked up the kitty, was petting it, and the husband came out of the house and started screaming at me to “put it down”. I just said no and he kept screaming at me and that was it. The cat ran back to his yard. They had never behaved that way before! In retrospect, i’m pretty sure I can assume that they hated cats…I’ve never seen them again. I don’t regret it at all and never have. I found out later that they were not informing the owners. I’m grateful that he screamed at me, that made it a lot easier.
No friendship is worth keeping if our values clash. For me, friendship is really about shared values. I have a friend who loves all animals, but is allergic to cat dander. So, she can’t come inside my house without having breathing difficulty. This is a different issue.
As for your neighbor who allows her cat to breed for a little extra money, I’d probably keep my distance.
I’ve never actually had a friend that disliked cats, or was cruel to any animal, but I know they would be cut off, without a second thought.
That is a very difficult decision to make. A dear friend of mine grew up with cats but doesn’t particularly care for them. She has dogs and loves them like I love cats. Her husband feels the same way towards dogs but HATES cats. He is a very nice person otherwise. On one occasion, he went into detail about a childhood encounter with one of his grandmother’s cats. It turned my stomach, but I didn’t say anything because I was visiting. It changed some of how I feel about him, but the relationship I have with his wife is special, so I will make sure that, when he comes to visit, my cats stay far away from him.