Help! My Cat is Training Me
by Michael
(London, UK)
Binnie
Yes, is it me or my cats? Am I too soft with with them? And in any event is there anything wrong with a cat training a human? Lots of philosophical questions - sort of.
I think the first question to answer is the last one. We treat cats as members of the family - or should do!
If they are members of the family they are equals. If they are equals they have equal rights to other members of the family including, of course, us, the human animal.
On that analysis, cats have a right to train us and we should accept it. Problem solved. Cats don't know that they are training you, they just do it through persistence but it does require a receptive and loving human at the other end.
And that is probably the key. A person who has a great connection with his or her cats will be susceptible to being trained and indeed might even enjoy being trained by their cat.
What do I mean by being trained by our cat? Well, I have two personal examples:
Firstly, my lady cat who is 18 years old or there abouts, knocks on the door flap to be let out or in. She will do this until I get out of bed and let her in. Being a dawn and dusk girl (as are all cats) I am usually in bed when she knocks (I go to bed early...!).
Secondly, my three legged boy cat, Charlie, has just trained me to carry him (yes, carry him!) from my bed to the kitchen to feed him. He first asks in a pretty insistent voice and when I don't stop writing another post for PoC he then takes up his meerkat position and looks at me hard and screams even harder. Who can resist that?
There are endless examples. I am making a rod for my own back? Should I hold firm? Should I train him? I am confused.
So I ask the cat expert visitors of PoC...what would you do? Are you worse or better (depending on your standpoint) than me?