My 12-year old son recently adopted a cat from the Humane Society in Boulder. It automatically put our family into a new category–pet people. Up until then, we were pet-less. Neither my husband nor I had pets growing up, other than fish. Fish don’t count as pets.  They require care without the reciprocal warm and fuzzy affection.  For the last 14 years, we’ve been focused on raising kids, with no interest in taking on responsibility for another living thing.

Having a cat has been surprising, irritating, fun, and disorienting. I never imagined that I would be a cat owner. And now that I am one, I’m learning what it means.

Having a cat means….making an addition to the family, without acting like an idiot. I attended a birthday party for my 7-year old niece. I brought a digital camera, not only for taking pictures of the birthday girl, but also for showing pictures of the cat (side view and front view). I was embarrassed when I realized that I was treating the acquisition of a stray from the local pound in the same vein as the birth of a child–proud parents showing photos at a family gathering. 

I’ve drawn the line at having the cat’s name on our Christmas cards. When I announced this to my husband and kids, they responded as if I had chosen to sell our youngest son. Names on a Christmas card signifies real people with real lives. People who have jobs and go to school and cook meals and take karate lessons.  People who eat chocolate and know the difference between Hershey’s and Godiva’s and don’t throw up on either one. People who take showers instead of licking themselves to stay clean. People who use toilets instead of litter boxes.

The cat watched the World Series with us and purred on my husband’s lap. It started snoring in the 7th inning, just when the Rockies looked like they could catch up.  My husband asked me to turn down the volume, so as not to disturb the cat. I refused.

His transformation to pet person is nearly complete, while I am still resisting. He has already declared that a wool afghan, received as a wedding gift made lovingly by one of his aunts, was now the cat’s to lay on, to keep it warm in the evenings. Lights are dimmed to accommodate the cat’s sleeping schedule.

I catch myself talking to the cat as if he’s a new baby, except this baby meows, has a yawn that shows teeth sharp enough to puncture my skin, and bounds up the stairs with a snap of his powerful legs.

Having a cat means….entering new territory. I frequent an office supply store that’s located next to a pet supply store. Both stores carry just about anything you can imagine for their target market. I used to notice the people going into the pet supply store with disdain. "I’ll never go into that store, visited by dogs on leashes, leading their owners to the treat aisle."

My first time entering the pet supply store, I felt like I was visiting a foreign land. Aisles are clearly marked by animal–cats, dogs, birds, fish. I imagine this is to help owners quickly evaluate whether they are in the right section of the store. It also gives me fair warning if I wander into territory that frightens me–mice, snakes, rodents of any kind. 

In the cat section, there are shelves of stuff. 30 kinds of cat food, 20 kinds of cat litter, 10 different brushes, 5 types of nail clippers. An enormous industry that I have been oblivious to for the last 46 years, with no regret.

Now that I am a consumer of these products, I am confused, overwhelmed, and slightly amused. Do cats really need all those catnip toys and scratching posts with their cardboard inserts?  Do the litter boxes with automatic cleaning mechanisms really work?  Could the $10 bag of cat food work just as well as something costing twice as much and touting scientific formulation with natural ingredients?  What about the hairball remedies? Wouldn’t nature have figured out something just as effective, after all these years?  How could evolution have dictated furry animals that lick themselves to be clean if it didn’t also give them the stomach to digest all that hair? 

Having a cat means…..being comfortable with what you can’t control. It’s the equivalent of having a nocturnal three-year old child who has the run of the house while everyone else sleeps. In the darkness of the late night, the cat is emboldened to do things he wouldn’t have the nerve to do during the day–jumping up on the headboard of my bed to look out the window, trolling the top of the dining room table, and pouncing on my son’s homework papers as if it were a portal to live mice. My husband, the night owl, reports these acts of sassiness to me in the morning, an amused observer to the private life of a cat.

Having a cat means….creating new habits. The other three males in the household have been trained to put the toilet seat down. Now with one more male, I have to remember to put the toilet lids down, else I’ll hear the lapping of water coming from the bathroom. 

Having a cat means….letting go of old assumptions. Litter box problems appeared three weeks into our stint as new pet owners. The cat was pooping next to the litter box instead of in the litter box. My immediate reaction was that he was doing it to spite me. (We had a stressful trip to the vet’s the previous week.) I chased him around the house, the mom in me wanting to march him to the scene of the crime to shame the offender. Instead, the cat out ran me and I retreated to my computer to research the problem.

Feeling both enlightened and guilty, I found this on a website about cat behavior:

"Never punish the cat for eliminating outside of its litterbox. Housesoiling occurs when the litterbox, its contents, or its location is offensive to the cat or when the cat is stressed by the environment. Punishment only increases the cat’s stress. HOUSESOILING IS NEVER DONE TO SPITE THE OWNER. "

Looks like I was not alone in assuming human motivations in an animal. With new kitty litter and an additional kitty litter box, the cat resumed his meticulous hygiene routine, with pee and poop buried well and regularly.

Having a cat means….seeing the world through new eyes. These are the eyes of curiosity, where a shower stall invites a closer look and a yoga mat becomes something new to sniff.  The whir of a vacuum cleaner instills fear and the rattle of chess pieces in a box startles and triggers a panic.  A stroke of a hand under the chin provides true bliss and purring that is intoxicating. 

I’m pleasantly surprised at how much my family enjoys the cat, myself included. He’s become a constant in our lives that lights us up, reminds us to relax and take naps, and makes us thankful for being together. From the cat’s perspective, life is pretty simple. And why shouldn’t it be?

P.S. I’ve gotten several inquiries on the cat’s name. The shelter gave him the name Llama, to which my son replied, "You shouldn’t name an animal after another animal."  We’ve taken to calling him Yama-Lama or just Yama for short.