What I Learn From My Cat

On occasion, I am home alone with my cat.

For those of you who have met my cat who know how she is. Friendly when you walk in the door, rubs herself against your leg and then when you go in for the pet, she runs away and hisses at you. This is my cat.

But back to being home alone with my cat. When you are the only human in contact with my cat, you can tell. She is meowing at you or around you for most of the day. When you sit down to eat, or when you lie down to watch tv, she hops up and either tries to eat your food and get you to pet her.

You can tell that she is lonely. That she wants attention.

I think humanity is like this. When we are not around people for an extended amount of time, we get lonely, desperate for attention, for a touch, for interaction.

Why do we take pictures of landscapes?

When you look at a pretty picture of a mountain on a postcard, you think nothing of it, or at least I don't. When my professor shows me pictures of a mountain in Alaska where he did research for ten years I don't really care for the picture. I'd rather see a picture of him standing there next to the mountain.

I think we take pictures of landscapes because it is an interaction between us and the sense of "this is what I saw" and "this is what I did." It's a personal reminder of the place we were. It's not just about that mountain range you saw, but about what you did to see that mountain range, who you saw that mountain range with, and the story associated with it. A story to tell other people.

It's a tool for connection. Something to give you meaning and worth.

Pictures are tools.

I acknowledge, sometimes people need time to themselves. You notice whenever rappers come out of jail they always have a brand new song? It's probably because they had time to themselves.

I don't care whether you are introverted or extroverted. Everyone gets lonely, it is all just a matter of time. If ever hear someone say that they would prefer to be alone for the rest of their life, they're lying. Call them on it.

The main reason I never want to go to jail is because of how lonely it will be.

In Blue Like Jazz it mentions how a forest ranger stumbled upon the authors campsite. He mentions how hard it seemed for the forest ranger, who had been alone for two months, to even hold a conversation with them. (If you have the book, page 152-153)

Loneliness kills.

I think the worst thing about hell won't be the furnace of fire, the heat, or the forced labor.(This is how I imagine hell, I blame Hollywood) I think the worst thing about hell will be the loneliness. Could you imagine eternity without talking to or seeing a single soul? Never getting touched? How cold that makes me feel.

My cat gets lonely.

She doesn't say it out loud because, well, she can't speak a language I understand. I can tell she is lonely though. Her non-verbals give it all away. She hops up on the couch with you, goes straight for your face and forces you to pay attention to her, to pet her, to have you recognize her. I would tell her she is high-maintenance but she can't understand me either.

As mean, nasty, and diabetic as my cat is, I feel for her, which I never thought I would, because she is a mean, nasty, diabetic cat. This is what my cat teaches me though.

That loneliness is a sickness we all can suffer from.