Unfolding

Me with Fey sitting on my shoulder.

Sometimes I want to unfold
The beauty of the world
As if it was the most intricate
Origami flower
That had ever seen the light of day

Then I want to wait
And wait
Until the flower blooms for real
Until its velvet black blossoms
Tinged with purple edges
Grow fuzz that you can run your hand over

And I want to hand it to you
And watch you rub the fuzz
Against your cheek
Against your lips
Against your nose —
The yellow-black stamens tickle

And then fold the flower
Back into paper
And put it in my pocket
For safekeeping

I would make more of them
And write secret notes
That only some people could read

They would say things like:

“The most beautiful things
Are concealed all around you.”

“You are a flower and
This is how you become real.”

“You are unfolding
Just like this.
Don’t hurry,
Don’t wait.”

I would hide them in plain sight
And I would hide them in places
That only the curious and observant
Would bother looking

I would hide them in places
That can only be found
When doing shit work
For 22 cents an hour

I would hide them so that each person
Stood a chance of finding at least one
Just one
That told them what they needed to hear
Right now
Just then

Unfold them, they become real flowers
Fold them, they become folded paper
You can do this as many times as you need
Because they are magic flowers

And if you get good at looking and listening
With more than just your eyes and ears
You will find these creations everywhere
Left by someone
With far more magic
Than I will ever possess

You know when you find one because
Suddenly something ordinary
Becomes extraordinary
Suddenly you’ve been let in on a secret
About something you’d seen before
But never seen before

It can be anything from
A spray of mud on your pants
To a pair of decorated crutches
To a butterfly

It doesn’t have to be pretty on first sight
Many times it isn’t
Many times it seems horrible
Until that flash of inspiration
When it unfolds into a flower in full bloom

And then every texture is like suede
And every color is like the deepest blue before dawn
And every taste is like boiled collards with butter
And every smell is the fur behind a cat’s ears

I wish I had the magic necessary
To make these things myself
To fold reality into paper
And leave it everywhere for people to find

As it is, all I can say is
Someone has already done it

You can find these magic folded papers
On the inside of a zero
In the yawn of a kitten
In a feeding tube
In a wadded up rag
In a tangled old root
In a leaf that skips down the sidewalk

And all of them are flowers
And all of them are there to tell you
There is more in this world than you can ever see
There is more love
There is more light
There is more beauty

And you are part of it
Always
Even
(Especially!)
When everything seems to be
Crashing down around you

Can you accept
This magic spell
This gift
From the world
To me
To you?

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The way a cat loves.

[Written the same day as my previous post.]

I love the way a cat loves. When she takes every blank place my memory won’t fill in. And she sits at the center. In a big bold cattish way. And fills in all the blankness with layers and layers of catness. And somehow curls up in my arms, curls around my whole mind, at the same time, keeping everything in. Her love replaces blankness with catness and terror with love and sobbing with purring and I love her for all of it. And loving her back makes a circle.

That is where I post cat posts these days unless there's some reason to do it here.

It's called Cats Who Know They Are Cats. Two recent posts are Fey bathing. Also glaring and tail thumping. And Fey uses mirrors. Two of them. At once.

I figured I should announce it again in case there were people here who didn't know where all the cat posts went.

Posted with Blogsy

Mini-feline-ethics post: the power of life and death

I haven’t yet got to my third post about feline ethics, which is going to be about power. But I just found out today that an article I thought was only in a print copy of Mouth Magazine is also published online by Disability Studies Quarterly.

I had gotten the article because someone claimed in response to a feline ethics post, that everyone who loved animals would agree that euthanasia is a good thing. And AnneC pointed out that this is not in fact the case, and that she (as I do) has serious problems with the overuse of euthanasia on cats. And I remembered this article. Unique in breaking the massive taboo against questioning pet euthanasia:

Disability Culture Meets Euthanasia Culture: Lessons From My Cat

The biggest power we have over cats is the power of life and death. Whether or not we swear we would never use it we still have it. It is not a crime to take a cat to the vet and have her killed because she was scratching the furniture, or because she is homeless. We have this power and cats know we have this power. Every animal knows that a bigger, stronger animal is a potential threat to their life. And this is just talking about uses of euthanasia that have nothing at all to do with terminal illness. I won’t go into everything I think, but suffice to say that I think in a better world euthanasia would not be used for trivial reasons ever, and would not be considered the first and best option (rather than, say, treatment and palliative care) the moment a cat is diagnosed with something scary. And there would be better pet insurance than currently exists, and there would be more research into feline pain management (very different from humans), assistive technology, and modifications to the home. And only then should euthanasia even be brought up as an option, if it has to be. We have too much power, we are too frequently persuaded to use it wrongly, and that we use it out of love and guilt doesn’t make the cat any more alive in the end. (And I’m as guilty as anyone else.)

Cats can use mirrors.

Conventional wisdom goes that since, when given the classic and highly species-biased “mirror test”, cats “flunk” it, then they don’t know that their reflection is themselves, and don’t in fact know that mirrors reflect things and that they can see behind themselves using mirrors and so forth.

AnneC and I are trying to debunk a lot of similar myths about cats. The tests cats are given are often not cat-friendly and don’t reflect cats in their usual environment doing their usual things. And I’ve long known that Fey uses mirrors. In fact sometimes she uses two mirrors at once — the one over the sink and the one on the bathroom door — to make direct eye contact with people. More than one staff person who thought cats couldn’t use mirrors, have been startled, some even terrified, to see a cat looking them straight in the face using a mirror or two. One even screamed and dropped what she was carrying and just kept repeating, “Your cat looked at me in the mirror. Cats can’t use mirrors.”

Here’s a photo of her using one mirror to look at me as she hears me come up behind her with a camera:

As to why that scares people? I think it’s the same phenomenon that has terrified many people about me. They see me going about my business and stereotype me as not being what they consider a real person. Then I do anything from looking at them to typing something and they visibly startle and begin to act scared. They respond to me as if a potted plant got up and walked around. And I see people doing the same to Fey all the time.

And why that is… I’m not entirely sure. I almost expect them to cross themselves like we are demon possessed. They think of us as something unnatural, something deeply wrong that just shouldn’t happen that way. And there’s something deeply wrong with that in a whole different way than what they think of us.

Imaginary Birds and Happy Cats

None of these photos are of today. Today was far more… vigorous.

[Photo shows Fey, a grey ticked cat with a white stripe down her belly, white paws, white chin, and a white four-pointed star on her nose, with yellow-green eyes. She is lying on her side, with one paw curled over.]

Today was one of the first days it was warm enough to take Fey out again since last fall. As usual, she was not happy with the actual feel of being lifted and put into the PetPocket. But everything else about her behavior — even including loving to sleep on the PetPocket — has always seemed to show that the good part of these walks tends to outweigh the bad (although when you’re dealing with someone whose only language is Feline, it’s always possible you’re missing something major). So I took her outside.

She never likes the elevator, and she never likes traffic although she can get used to it. But generally by the time we are out of the building and away from the lines of people flanking the entrance and going “ooooooooo kiiiiittteeeeeeee”, she calms down and starts looking around.

[Photo shows me out in my powerchair with Fey peering out of her PetPocket.]

This being our first day out, she mostly wanted to duck down inside with widening pupils when we were near traffic. So we headed down a side road to get away from the noise (which frankly wasn’t my favorite thing either).

And then we heard it. Some kind of chittery bird noises up in the air. And Fey stopped worrying about traffic and poked her head up, ears pointy, whiskers out, eyes wide but
pupils normal, nose twitching like a rabbit. This is why we go on walks.

[Photo is a closeup of Fey looking around out of her PetPocket.]

We found a tree with a bird’s nest in it and Fey just stared up and whipped her head around to get all the different birds in her sights. I sat around in the parking lot and tried to maneuver the chair wherever her head was pointing. After about half an hour we went home and she curled up in bed with me for a few hours.

But it doesn’t end there. This kind of thing never does. As it started to get late, I heard a “worrreeeauwwww” (and assorted other multisyllabic cat words) coming from the living room. Usually I go out and if she wants water she goes to the kitchen, and if she wants play she goes to the living room. She went to the living room.

Usually our play is pretty predictable. Nearing 11 years old this year, she doesn’t run all over as much as she used to. She likes to sit or lie on the couch while I wave a Cat Dancer back and forth in wide sweeping motions that come near but don’t touch her head. She bats at it for awhile, sometimes more enthusiastically than others. If she catches it, I give her some fish flakes (she loves them so much she’ll eat them out of my hand) and then wait for her to finish grooming herself. Then we do it all again if she wants to. I know most cats like to act as if the toy is prey, but she has made it clear she generally prefers the slower pace of trying to hit it as it whizzed by her.

Well, this time, I got out the Cat Dancer and started to wave it back and forth. WHAP. She hit it on her first try, which is unusual.

[Photo shows Fey delivering a WHAP to the Cat Dancer.]

Then she got me to move it all over the couch while she chased and scrabbled and leapt into the air like a kitten. Her accuracy was way beyond usual and so was her interest. She stood on her back legs and whapped it again and then worked her two front paws in a rapidfire back and forth motion until she had to sit down. Then she did it again. And again. And flopped onto her back to scrabble at it from that position and just kept going.

[Photo shows Fey on her back following the Cat Dancer with her eyes while her two paws are bent into different stages of grabbing at it.]

When I offered her the second round of fish flakes she nipped me (with a “HEY don’t stop now!” sort of look about her) and went back to chasing the toy everywhere until I was finally the one who had to stop from exhaustion.

[Photo shows Fey lying on her side and attacking the Cat Dancer with her claws out.]

When I first bought the PetPocket I had figured it would be better than sitting at one particular window all the time, and that maybe it would fuel her imagination for future play. But I never expected it to be this extreme. Her play suddenly got far more complex, lively, and strategic. And I could tell she was saving up imaginary small animals in her head to hunt back home with the cat toys.

And today has made it clear things still work that way for her. She was nearly doing backflips and probably would still be playing if I weren’t worn out. She hung out in the living room for awhile hoping for more, but has come in and curled up next to my head now that she realizes I’m not going anywhere.

[Photo was taken seconds after the previous photo. Fey is lying on her side. The Cat Dancer is near her belly. She is reaching for it with both front paws, and has her mouth open to bite it with her fierce white fangs showing.]

If you want more cat blogging, AnneC has done a great post on finding out why Nikki (an 8-year-old Siamese) was doing a bunch of things that seemed to make no sense. I am already liking her new cat blog Felines Are Wonderful a lot.

Feline Ethics, Part 2: Avoiding Arrogance

This is the second in an ongoing series of posts about feline-human ethics. The first post is Dealing with cats, part 1: What is Respect? The current post is on the topic of avoiding arrogance. The post that’s currently planned as the next post will be about the power humans hold over cats.

Human arrogance towards cats frequently goes two apparently opposiite directions.

1. Cats are like miniature humans in every way. They understand every word of what we say, are motivated by exactly the things that motivate us, and if they don’t respond exactly how we expect another human to respond then they are just being stubborn, callous, cruel, manipulative, etc. Any attempt to say otherwise relegates cats to the realm of dumb animals.

2. Cats are totally unlike and inferior to humans. They do not understand a single word of what we say, cannot love, cannot reason, are not self-aware, etc. They see us as food sources and nothing more. Any claim otherwise needs to be rigorously proven in a laboratory setting, and is probably a misunderstanding of basic instinctual behavior.

The first approach is arrogant because it comes from a tendency to view the world, and especially cats, as a reflection of humanity. So it views respecting cats and seeing them as human as if these two things are synonymous. The second approach is arrogant because it views certain traits as exclusive to humans (or at least to “advanced” animals). It also, like many false ideas about cognitive disability in humans, views it as “scientific” to start from the assumption that cats lack certain abilities and demands absolute proof of the presence of those abilities before it will believe in them. Whereas for “normal” humans the preesumption is that we have those abilities.

From my standpoint those views are two sides of the same coin. The idea they both stem from is that humans are superior in certain ways. It’s just that one solves the problem of respecting cats by giving them traits identical to humans, and the other just doesn’t bother respecting cats and assumes that only humans have traits that are common among many species, cats included.

Often someone who holds one of these beliefs will assume that the other belief is the only other one possible, so that if you doubt one you must believe the other. If you doubt the first one someone will think you believe cats are nothing like humans and are overly wedded to the biases of many scientists, and if you doubt the second one someone will believe you’re engaging in overly sentimental anthropomorphism.

When most people think about cats, they see them as having a life that is simpler than our own. A little life that can be contained inside the bigger concepts that humans have. Emotions are like ours but fewer of them, thoughts are like ours but less complicated and not as many, and so forth.

This is not a useful way to look at the lives of cats. They are not miniature humans, and they are certainly not like humans but with certain aspects blunted, removed, and simplified. They are cats. They have their own complex way of relating to the world and each other. They have their own emotions which they feel according to their own values. They have things in common with us, but it’s dangerous to assume either identicalness or that they are just limited versions of us.

So when you think of cats, have some humility. Understand that there are more aspects to their way of doing things than humans can even perceive, let alone understand. This doesn’t make cats innately mysterious, it just means that we are working with different bodies, sensory organs, and brains. Even humans with the best sense of smell have nothing on cats. Our visual system is set up totally differently, not only can we not see in low light levels but our perception of motion is nothing like a cat’s. These are not little differences, they shape cats and humans into very different beings. As humans trying to understand cats, there are just flat out things we will only comprehend the vague shape of, and others we will never guess.

Be excited over these differences rather than trying to think of cats as inferior or even simpler beings. This is not to diminish what we have in common either, just an attempt to avoid making them into lesser beings just because they are different ones.

It is also important not to think of yourself as a Cat Expert. If all the stories you tell others or yourself contain phrases like “good with cats”, “a way with animals”, etc., then you are headed in the wrong direction entirely. You may have an affinity with cats — I have always found them easier to relate to than humans — but the moment your self-image depends on being right about all matters cattish, you are doing the cats a grave disservice. Because once you enter that frame of mind, you will begin to delude yourself and forget that you can make mistakes. The moment you forget that you can make mistakes, you are able to do great harm to the people you base your ego on understanding. And ‘people’ there includes cats.

Whenever someone meets Fey and begins by saying they are ‘good with cats’ or similar, I try to convey enough watchful alarm in my body language for Fey to pick up on it and get on the alert herself. (Such people never notice this body language in either one of us.) Some things I have seen such people do:

1. Grab her and find a way to hold her where she knows she can’t fight. At that point she gives up (but looks terribly uncomfortable) and they tell me, “See she likes being held after all if someone who is good with cats does it”.

(I have even seen mention of that one in a better than average book about cats. But most cat books don’t mention it or other ethical issues at all, except sometimes to reassure humans that whatever decisions they make for cats are the right ones.)

2. Try to do whatever I just told them not to do. If they succeed in doing it without provoking a major response, they assume she is okay. If they do provoke a major response (hissing, spitting, tail lashing, ears back, clawing for instance) they go “awwww what a cute playful little kitty cat” and make me want to go at them with my claws out.

For example, Fey has some kind of condition affecting a particular nerve going to her back right leg. The vet said she had never seen a cat so thoroughly indicate that the problem is a particular nerve and not others. I tend to tell people to avoid her entire back end. On good days she will initiate touch in that area, on mediocre days she will allow touch but stiffen and look uncomfortable, and on bad days she will indicate pain in every possible way and defend herself by any means necessary.

Some really egotistical people will, upon explanation of this, proceed to grab her by the exact body part that hurts in order to try and prove they are Special People Gifted With Animals who can touch her there without provoking a response. And even if she responds by mauling them, they Dont Get It. At all. No matter what happens, they especially don’t get that causing another living being intense physical pain on purpose to prove that they are a special good kind of human only proves that they are an especially terrible, insensitive, and cruel kind of human who ought not to be allowed within a mile of a cat.

(I have also seen these sorts of people at the animal shelter. Fortunately they get thrown out pretty quickly because, among other things, if an animal scratched someone they have to be put in isolation for a long time which is horrible for the animal and everyone wants to prevent it. And because the people who work there actually care about animals.)

3. Read all sorts of bizarre and obviously false things into her behavior because they just can’t possibly handle the idea of not knowing what some action on Fey’s part means. Which in turn leads to really pissing her off eventually.

4. Use their “knowledge” about her as an ego trip or power play with me or other people.

5. Do any or all of these things to me as well, because lots of people who view themselves as Good With Cats also view themselves as Good With Autistics (or sometimes Good With Nonspeaking People). And they especially love to do it in situations where I can’t do anything about it. Such as get me in a situation where I can’t respond well and then harangue someone for ‘upsetting me’ or something when nothing of the sort has even happened.

Viewing yourself as Good With an entire category of people opens you up to massively egotistical mistakes that lead you down the road to outright physical and emotional abuse. It doesn’t matter if everyone around you comments on your gift with cats, your way with cats, your being a cat whisperer, whatever. I ignore such comments if I get them. I have a close relationship with a cat. Not special powers. You should never ever let praise go to your head. No matter who you are, your ability to make grievous mistakes when trying to understand another species is an absolute given. Until you understand this, avoid cats.

And if you have either thought “This part of the post doesn’t apply with me because I am too good with cats to make serious mistakes,” or if you respond to other cat lovers admitting to serious mistakes by either thinking or uttering “I am so good with cats that I could never make that level of mistake”? That goes double for you. I have a deep and rewarding and loving two-way connection to Fey that is more detailed in our understanding of each other than any other relationship, human or cat, that I have ever had. And we both make mistakes and have misunderstandings every single day. If you think that doesn’t happen you are fooling yourself and setting yourself up to harm the cat.

The other direction arrogance can go is in assuming there is no actual harm in making massive mistakes because it’s just a cat. Or worse, that because the cat can’t tell anyone what you do, it is really okay. I have only ever got one person to admit that last one. But as someone whose ability to communicate in standard ways can come and go, I have watched what I thought were decent people transform into assholes many times the moment they thought I was either unaware or unable to tell anyone what they had done. And if it was bad for me it would be worse for cats.

I don’t really know what to say to all that. I know people who think if someone purportedly can’t understand what’s happening then cruelty isn’t wrong. I know some peopleonly care about being caught doing wrong, not about doing wrong itself, because such people have done awful things to me when I either couldn’t tell anyone or wouldn’t be believed if I did. But I know that each time people play out such attitudes on cats, the cats suffer.

Cats also suffer when treated like humans in cat suits. They end up being punished in ways that feel like a random attack from nowhere for no reason. People do things that are polite to humans but terribly rude to cats. And cats also suffer when people assume that things like love are too human for cats to fathom. Working across species is even harder than working across cultures in many respects, it’s hard to know what’s exclusively human and what we share with other animals. And there are things we may never know.

The best way to approach learning about cats is with a combination of respect and humility. Know that you’re going to mess up, but don’t focus on it so hard that you don’t even try. Be alert to signals that the cat doesn’t like what you’re doing, and don’t laugh them off with “awwww aren’t we feisty today”. Treat the cat as an individual and conscious being that you are getting to know, not as a human or a mindless automaton. Keep your ego out of the way. And above all, be aware that despite differences in species, you are dealing with someone (not something) who is capable of feeling love, physical and emotional pain, anger, joy, fear, and many other things. Treat them accordingly.

The photograph is of Fey, a grey cat with ticked fur and some white markings. She is lying curled up on a foam mattress on top of a hospital bed tilted slightly upward. Her face is at the top, in profile. You can see the dome of her eye, with a large black pupil underneath, her eyebrow whiskers pointed straight up, and a big triangular ear pointed directly at the camera. The focus becomes fuzzy towards her tail, which is curled up and around. You can also see the shiny bedrail with some notebooks behind it. The mattress she is laying on is yellow memory foam with a pale green bedsheet part on and part off it. The foam is roughly the same shade of yellow as her eye.

Kittylashes!

I’ve been wanting to get pictures like this for a long time.

Either click on the above to see the original size (very large file), or look at the closeup in the next image, to see the kittylashes:

Either click on the above to see the original size (very large file), or look at the closeup in the next image, to see the kittylashes:

I have wanted to show kittylashes for a long time, and finally got them on camera!

Cold.

I am writing this entirely submerged under a big pile of blankets. No part of me is sticking out.

A few minutes ago, I heard Fey jump onto the bed. I lifted up the blankets, wondering if she would poke her head in and then rapidly pull it out, finding some other place to be. She didn’t. She went straight under the covers. Then she went over the lowest blanket and under the rest, down near my belly. I felt her paws scrabbling around while she turned around several times. Then she finally curled up, and is still lying there, one blanket separating her from me.

I remember being the size of maybe two or three cats, and the way blankets turned into an interesting series of caves. But now I am much less maneuverable, and much taller. But it’s still nice to be burrowed under blankets with a cat on a day like this. (And I have to say she chose a better spot than the time about a year ago when she burrowed into my crotch while I was asleep and I dreamed I was giving birth.)

More Cat Photos

Still taking awhile to write the cat posts, so more cat photos are happening:

The first one is a photograph of Fey sitting on top of her PetPocket, which is on top of the couch. She sits on that thing all the time, when she’s not taking rides in it.

Here is a blurry photo of her curled up in an interesting shape on the bed:

Here the photo is in better focus, but is cut off in the middle of her eyes. Her tongue, though, is sticking out and curled up to one side, in the middle of a wash apparently:

Here you can see part of her face, and part of my face, with the mattress taking up most of the photo:

The following three photos are of her leaning her head against the mattress, from three different angles:

Here she is snuggled against me my face, seen from above. Having a shaved head again is great, because I can feel her fur with any part of my head.

Here we are again, but she has her nose tucked under her arm:

Here we are with our heads pressed together at the side, but pointing in opposite directions:

Here she is with her arm over her nose, looking at me out of the corner of her eye:

And here she is sitting on my wheelchair yet again: