A Stark View
By Tracey Stark
Cat-Man-Don't!
Whenever I talk about our cats in public, my wife cringes. “Nobody cares about Philly and Max but us,” she says. “Put the pictures away.” But I usually ignore her because I believe you can judge a lot about a person by the way they react when you show them a picture of your child (whether biped, quadruped or moped).
I’ll admit it, I gush about the cats (especially Max, but please don’t tell Philly). They make me laugh and give me unconditional love. In return I give them a bonus can of moist cat food that my wife and I have dubbed “crack” because of the way it sends them bouncing off the walls. You really should see it. See, I’m gushing and telling you things that you don’t really care about.
When I was younger, my mother’s single sister had several cats with names like Mr. Chuckles, Napolean and Lady Kitsy. She had imaginary conversations with them non-stop and became the butt of many jokes in our family – behind her back, of course. To my brother, sisters, and me it appeared she had a mental illness. Years went by and Aunt Marilyn stayed the same, only the rotating population of cats changed.
As children, we had cats. Plenty of them. My sisters and I would test their landing skills from various heights, dress them up in capes and pretend they were superheroes by carrying them around like they were flying. But even then we knew that nobody would be even the slightest bit interested in our cat games.
Then one day, many years later, tragedy struck. When my sister Amy turned 35 she began telling me stories about her cats more and more frequently over the phone. “Dexter was chasing Chairman Meow and ran full speed into the sliding glass door and just shook his head like, ‘I didn’t know that was there…” She spoke in a low, dumb-sounding voice for Dexter. It had finally happened: she had succumbed to Aunt Marilyn’s debilitating illness and had claimed the family title of “cat lady.”
The title cat lady explains why I’m not worried about catching a full-blown case of it. I would be a cat gentleman. And as far as I know, there is no such thing as a cat gentleman.
But allow me to get my train of thought back on track.
When my wife and I are out and the topic of pets comes up (and it comes up surprisingly often these days) I flip open the phone and pull up the photo album. “There’s Max sleeping on his back. Isn’t he cute?” I gush. “There’s Philly as a kitten. Isn’t she the sweetest little thing?” And on it goes. Meanwhile, my wife has taken leave of me to make another trip to the ladies’ room or the bar to privately converse with her beer.
The reactions of our friends differ, as do the levels of our friendships. Close friends who know how much I love my cats will politely take a look, nod appreciatively, and promptly change the subject, vowing to themselves never to let it return to the topic of cats ever again. The few friends of ours who actually like cats will give my pictures a perfunctory gush of their own, scroll through a few more of them and return my phone to me.
Then there are those who don’t know me very well and don’t necessarily like cats. These people are my favorite, though I’m almost certainly not theirs. These are the people who don’t want to offend me by refusing to look at my pictures, but do so in various states of distress ranging from nervously babbling about the virtues of dogs (no offense, they add) to breaking out in hives or a cold sweat.
These reactions are understandable. When confronted with a picture of an ugly baby most people are reluctant to tell the truth. We may temporarily recoil from the sight, but we invariably recover and keep our food down long enough to find something nice to say. So why should the sight of an animal you may be allergic to or who may have scarred your childhood in unspeakable ways be any different? (As a child, my cat Joey liked to spray on the head of any human female who was dumb enough to lay in the grass when he was on the prowl.)
With the knowledge of my inherited condition and the love and understanding of my wife and friends, I know I can pet this problem. I can scratch its tummy and kiss its little nose. Then I can dress it up like Superman and carry it around the room like it’s flying.
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