07 Jul 2009, Posted by jay rusovich in Jay Rusovich, Psychology, Relationships, 5 Comments

My Cats and My Sanity [Questioned]

“Sebastian”

I am being held hostage by two Persian Cats.

Other people surrender their lives to their children, but in my case, it’s cats.

They do as they please because they know I won’t place any boundaries on them. This is because I love them unconditionally; which is something most therapists will tell you is acceptable only in the context of human infants.

So I must remind myself, repeatedly, that I’m addressing an animal in order to avert homicidal rage.

Projecting human attributes onto a cat and then expecting it to respond in kind is like trying to get a hooker to love you. They love certain things about you, but the rest of it is bad for business.

But the fact that I cannot reason with them doesn’t mean I don’t try.

This morning I was pushed to the edge of one of the aforementioned episodes by my male cat, “Sebastian.”

Specifically, he assaulted a new $5000 Knoll Studio Barcelona chair.

The reason[s] for this behavior was obvious in the abstract:

He was being passive-aggressive. Somehow he wasn’t getting his emotional needs met; needs that I was unable to intuit.

So it was my fault.

Of course, I have no idea whether or not any of this is true, but how else does one communicate with a surrogate child who’s well past middle age?

So instead of sticking to my writing schedule, the two of us sat in my library discussing boundary issues and acting out as though I was having a discussion with a neighbor afflicted with extreme autism or attention deficit disorder.

The problem here is that I’m agnostic on the issue of whether or not cats get it. On some level, I think they comprehend my drift, but they use the “I’m a cat” thing to get out of any responsibility. I don’t blame them, really. I’d do the same thing if I could get away with it. I’ve tried, believe me, but unless I’m under sedation – like, in a hospital or something – it doesn’t work.

So they scratch a chair or pee on a rug and I suffer because I can’t kill them and they know it.

This is what I mean by being held hostage.

Sorry, I’ll get back to my usual writing topics in a minute. Even Howard Stern has to reserve time for therapy. Of course, he’s probably conversing with a human, which is more than I can say for myself.