What my cat taught me

For most of my life I have had cats as companions. Often dogs too, but if I had to choose, I would choose a cat. And my favorite cat of all time was Aurus, whose name was Latin for “of gold,” because he was a tabby with fur that was vaguely gold in color, and his eyes were very much gold. And he was as precious to me as the metal.

Aurus once taught me a really important lesson. He bit me — not too hard, but still — on the eyebrow. I GRRRED to let him know that that wasn’t OK, and his eyes opened wide and he carefully backed away. He got the hint.

Eventually he tried again, though, biting me again on the eyebrow. This time I thought OK, I’ll bite you in response. So I pulled up some skin around his neck and bit him — not too hard, but still. Maybe he’ll get the message this time.

Soooo … he purred. He purred a LOT. And in a flash it hit me that for him this was just a way of showing affection — I had just IMAGINED that he was being aggressive. And it was MY INTERPRETATION of what he had done that upset me, not the action itself. As soon as my interpretation changed, I liked the bite. I wanted him to do it again.

It was all in my head.

And so it is with a lot of life — it isn’t what happens that makes us angry, it’s how we interpret what happens. We feel slighted, or unappreciated, or whatever. The slight itself is not a big deal — only that somebody thought so little of us to slight us. Or so we imagine, fueling our outrage.

I miss you, Aurus.