LIKE CATS AND DOGS

Once she was a puppy

          Daily bread, daily dogs and cats, and daily living

    Steve and I got married shortly after we moved in to our new house, going on the theory that if we could survive building together, we could probably manage marriage.  So far, it’s working out nicely.  

    Then, of course, Steve started pining for a dog, and I chose the little black lab, daughter to Gandalf and Arwen, at Bill West’s house.  Or she chose me.  Either way, the day we brought her home, I got my first lesson in how to speak dog, for native cat speakers.  

     We hadn’t named her, because it takes time for an animal to tell you its name, so she was still just Puppy.  We brought her into our living room, put her down and let her sniff about. We watched, as she wagged her tail at pretty much everything.

     Before long, our three year old cat, Photon, entered the room. He’s one of a series of black cats who have strolled gracefully through my life.  In fact, I’ve always made room for at least one black cat in my home, because they’re often last to be chosen at the shelter, and first to be used abusively in the world, which is sad.  But right now, we really wanted him to keep a low profile.  Clearly, he had different ideas.

   “I thought you put him in the Circus room,”  Steve said nervously, using our name for the guest bedroom, decorated in homage to the circus house.

   “I did.  He got out,” I answered just as nervously. I wanted to get used to the puppy before I dealt with the cat’s reaction, because I’m a little, well, let’s call it neurotic, about protecting my cats.  But we’d done some work to prep him, bringing home doggie smells on a towel and so on. Maybe, I thought, it would be okay.  

     It wasn’t.   

    Photon padded over, made his trilling noise of greeting, then stopped and stared at the new creature in his house.  The puppy turned her eager face to him.  Photon glared. The puppy wagged her tail so hard her whole back end went into motion.  Photon started his own tail flicking back and forth.  

    They stood that way for a moment, two small black animals, both of them wagging their tails, mirror images of each other.  Only, they each meant something very different by the gesture.

     Puppy, seeing a small furry black animal whose tail waved back and forth, did her play bow, then made a puppy leap. Photon, seeing an animal that wagged its tail and leaped, pushed out the ten tiny razors he kept in his paws for just such occasions, and used them.  

    In the flying fur and yelps that followed, Steve and I frantically sorted out bodies, each of us retreating to our side of the living room with an animal in our arms. Suddenly, I felt myself burning with fury, beyond all proportion to the situation.

   “Watch your dog,” I hissed, hanging on to the cat. “She attacked my cat.” 

   “Keep your cat back, before she hurts my dog,” he growled back, holding the puppy.

   The dog licked Steve. The cat settled into a nervous purr in my arms. Steve and I examined our animals for wounds, found none, and exchanged disapproving glances.

   I sniffed. “I’ll take Photon back to the Circus Room.”

  “Close the door this time,” he called after me as I went.  

    

     I sat with Photon on the bed, and though he returned very quickly to trilling and purring, I was surprised at the emotions roiling around in me.  

    I checked in with myself, and found simmering anger, that this interloper had disturbed my cat’s equilibrium.  And how come Puppy got to take over the house, while we had to retreat?  Also, quite unexpectedly, I was afraid.  What if Photon got mad and ran away?  And Puppy would soon be really big, if her 120 pound father was any indication of her ultimate size.  What if - what if she squished the cat?  Or ate it? 

    My rational brain, my adult self, knew none of this was likely, but apparently the puppy had reached in and triggered the lock on a suitcase full of tricky old emotions.

    I shouldn’t have been surprised.  There are almost always more tricky emotions than we want to acknowledge laying in wait for us, and animals, speaking to our wilder selves, often make them visible.  Though Western thought likes to portray humans as above all that, we’re not. We relate to animals in visceral ways, not always able to articulate why we’re moved by the flight of the heron overhead, or drawn to the strange antics of squirrels in the park.  Nonhuman animals hold up a mirror to our souls, teaching us who we really are.  They’re incredibly generous that way, and we’d be wise to pay more attention to their lessons instead of texting so much.

    Cats and dogs, who live in close association with us, have also been burdened with a bunch of cultural accretions.  In our minds, they’re bound up with gender metaphors, cats standing for women and dogs for men.  

      You know what I mean. There’s that obvious reference to female anatomy associated with cats, and the way we call some men hound dogs. We also tend to privilege each along gender lines, seeing dogs as hard working, loyal and trustworthy, while cats are tricky, unpredictable, unaffectionate, or even evil.  In Europe in the middle ages, the new religion of Catholicism went through village after village, burning even more cats than women because they were associated with goddess worship, and female witches.  In fact, they burned so many cats the species almost went extinct.  But then, the rat population grew, and the plague killed more than half the human population as well.   

     Sometimes, I imagine the ghosts of those burned cats sitting and licking their paws, saying ‘you should have been nice to us.’

    Sadly, that legacy continues.  A few years ago I heard a news story about a woman whose black cat was stolen by some local boys, tied to the end of their truck and dragged down a road until it died.  She tried to prosecute them, but she lived in an area of Pennsylvania that still had a law on the books which said it was okay to kill black cats, because they were the familiar of the witch. 

Photon, considering options

      Dogs get abused, too, in horrible ways, but the prevalent metaphor we impose on each is different, and I naturally identified with cats at least partly because of that.  I’m independent, contemplative, and I like a lot of grooming. The main character in one of my novel series is a woman named Jaguar Addams, and I’ll admit she’s a little tricky.  

    Essentially, I understand cats.  Dogs were a new species, with a new language.  And suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn it.

     But that was ridiculous.  Puppies are cute and cuddly, loved by millions of people. My anger, my fear, must indicate something terribly wrong with me, and I better fix it before the Cute Police found out. As I sat with Photon in the Circus room, I delved deeper into the contents of my emotional suitcase.  

    Of course, there was my mother’s smoldering resentment of the family dog which she didn’t like but had to care for, and my father’s tendency to give it more affection than he ever showed me.  There was my own resistance to a creature that was so - so servile and dependent.  Cats rule, and dogs serve, right?   Yet, you have to take care of dogs.  Their servility becomes your responsibility.  The co-existence of human and cat was much more comfortable to me.  

     I tentatively touched old wounds and persistent attitudes, aware of how many of them were given to me rather than chosen. Digging even deeper, I found that even my disdain for dog’s servility was the legacy of my mother’s ambivalence toward dependents and dependency.  And all that, from a puppy. Could I really be that weird?   

    I hoped not.  I mean, it was embarrassing to have deep issues about dogs. I decided my best move was to ignore it, try to be normal, and move on. 

   I stood and put my smile on. I left Photon purring with contentment on the bed, and went back downstairs, closing the door firmly behind me.  

     If you want to read some of my strange adventures with birds, you’ll find Saving Eagle Mitch: One Good Deed in a Wicked World, and Feathers of Hope, on Amazon.   And here’s a sustaining recipe for those times when you face your own emotional issues.  

HAMMING IT UP

 This is an easy one.  Very few ingredients, and if it’s a cold day, it’ll warm up the house.  Of course, you can do it without the bourbon, or you can change up the brown sugar for maple syrup, because you know the rule:  PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

This pig is drunk

Ingredients

1 ham, shank or butt portion, about 10 pounds

1/2 cup bourbon

3 1/2 cups apple cider

1/2 cup brown sugar

Put the bourbon, cider, and brown sugar in a small pot and stir it up.  Turn the heat to high and let it come to a boil.  Turn it down to medium and let it simmer for about five or ten minutes, to burn off the alcohol and mellow the flavors.  Heat mellows us all,  If you’re from the Northeast, surely you know that.

Score the ham to your preference (I don’t do diamonds, just slashes) put it in a roasting pan, its primary meat side down, and pour the liquid over it.  Speaking with it courteously, tell it  you’re now putting it in an oven preheated to 450 degrees.

But as soon as it’s in, turn the heat down to 300 degrees.  The ham won’t mind. Let it cook without disturbance for two to three hours at this low temp, or until the internal temperature reaches a comfortable 140 degrees. 

Serve with mashed potatoes and corn, or baked potatoes and brussell sprouts, or just with your own good will.