Some cats may know love. Ours . . .
‘‘She bit my face while I was sleeping,’’ one of the house humans says.
Fleabus is furious, I’m informed, not long after I get in the door. The small black cat isn’t currently at home, which is always the first thing I enquire about when arriving myself, because forewarned is forearmed and all that.
But tonight she isn’t, which means she’ll be next door, and while that’s usually music to my ears, as it signals the humans of our household are safe, the news of her current mood is not. It’s downright terrifying, in fact.
‘‘She bit my face while I was sleeping,’’ one of the house humans says.
Last week I read an opinion piece by Buda Szerelem-Tolnay, who’s studying ‘‘the intricacies of the human-cat bond’’ and asserts that cats show attachment behaviours ‘‘strikingly similar to human infants’’.
The PhD student says those styles are displayed by anxious behaviour when their owners leave them, either temporarily or permanently, and proves that yes, cats do have the capacity to love.
‘‘It’s a scientific fact that cats love their owners,’’ I announce to the house, high on relief our cat is absent.
‘‘She bit my face while I was sleeping,’’ her victim repeats.
‘‘They didn’t say OUR cat,’’ I say.
Our cat’s current bad mood has been prompted by a switching of her food in a nod to the cost-ofliving crisis that has us all mulling what living actually is, or for.
We do a bit of that while enjoying the Fleabus-free house as her most recent victim tells me he spent $10 on 2kg of potatoes and I tell him my car still doesn’t have a warrant.
Then we tell each other how we both should really see a doctor because flu is making breathing hard. He has asthma, I’m getting old; maybe next pay day, we say.
But back to cats. If Fleabus actually does possess the capacity to love, she has a painful way of showing it.
Mulling that, we tally up the recent overtures to the poor saps who care for her: in the past three days she’s attacked house humans thrice, the dog twice, and while I’m too scared to ask the neighbours what she’s up to over there, I’m certain it isn’t pleasant.
By the way, those neighbours once donned oven gloves to return The Black Death, in case you think I’m exaggerating.
Anyhoo, regardless of what emotions motivate Fleabus, the problem with any study about love is the very definition of the term. Love is ultimately just a word and like all others, means umpteen things; we just choose from them to suit.
That’s because sometimes love means ‘‘I hurt you because you’ll forgive me’’ or ‘‘I hurt you because I’m hurting’’; other times it means ‘‘I miss you when you’re not here’’: I’m talking about cats, obviously.
According to Google, ‘‘love’’ is both a verb and a noun, and while I honestly don’t know the difference, that does sound nice.
Words only mean what you want them to after all.
Tonight I look up and see a tiny malevolent shadow at the ranch slider, its yellow eyes simultaneously sizing me up and finding me wanting.
It’s late but because there’s nothing better to do, and I’m sceptical about whether cats really do show love in their owners’ absence, I conduct an experiment of my own. I hide.
At 2am she finds me, curls up in my arms; nasty little thing that really doesn’t do anything to show or deserve love at all.
I’m talking about the cat again, of course.
‘‘Love you,’’ I say, and she bites me in the face.