Everything I needed to know about Recovery (and Parenting) I learned from my CAT

My cat is a selfish little beasty. He does what he wants, when he wants and he doesn’t take any shit from no one. And I love him. So there goes that basic untruth –that no one will love you if you’re selfish. I heard that all my life. My cat did not. My cat does not give a shit if you like him or not. Just as long as you fill his bowl.

So much has been written about whether cats or dogs are superior to each other and the truth is, and always has been, that dogs are a tad bit co-dependent and cats are not. The biggest thing I hear from cat-haters (and they say this as though it’s a BAD thing) is “cats are too independent.” Really? That’s a bad thing? So someone or something should be needy for you to love them? What kind of message is that? I’ll tell you what kind –the kind I heard every stinkin’ day in my crazy, alcoholic, mentally-ill household. 

In fact, my mother was so scared my sister and I would have no use for her if we didn’t need her, she never taught us how to take care of ourselves.  The sad truth about my Mom, at least in my case, was that she was probably right. But I was trained to be a dog and although my mother beat the crap out of everyone in the house (including my father) and terrorized us with her rage, I was always too scared to break away. What if I needed her?

My mother was the one who bailed us out –financially. Long into my 30’s,  my mother was still paying the bills I couldn’t pay, helping me finance a house, throwing money at my bad marriage. She thought my last alcoholic husband was leaving me while I was pregnant because he was worried about money. So she paid his car payment and the rent and he took the money and ran.

A lot of people will read this and think what a great and loving Mom she was for helping me all this time but it isn’t true. She had her motives and they weren’t very pure. I know this because I’m a mother now and my motives are never less than murky when it comes to helping my son.

I KNOW, I mean I really, intellectually KNOW, that parenting is about making a person a strong, independent human, capable of doing whatever they want with confidence and self-esteem. That is the goal, right? We turn our dogs slowly into cats. This starts to happen around puberty –the “terrible teens”, when your loving child first refuses to take out the trash just because you asked him to. Or to fetch your glasses. We parents begin to hear things like “what’s in it for me?” and “You want me to do what?”. Also, just like a cat, they are the masters of the non-verbal. They shrug, they roll their eyes. We want to slap them. 

So why don’t I feel that way about my cat? In fact, I love his little independent ways. I love that when he’s had enough attention he lets me know with a cute ½ inch scratch across my arm. He is the master of “I want what I want when I want it and not a second after.” And I love the dickens out of his furry little ass.

But that’s what I expect from a cat. Ahhhh, that’s the key –expectations. I expect my child to love me as much as I love him. And he doesn’t. He can’t. He’s not an adult. And because he’s a boy he won’t be an adult until his 40’s at least. (a little feminazi humor for you all.) And since he can’t love me out of pure intent I will make sure he needs me. Then he’ll never leave me. Because in the end, we don’t want to be left. We don’t want to be alone. (A little side story: I once told my son who was around 14 at the time that I would step in front of a moving train to save his life. He answered “I know Mom, but I wouldn’t. You’re old and have had a life, I’m still young.” That is when I knew my Labrador had become a Siamese.)

 A dog will let you beat him and mistreat him and will still be loyal and loving but a cat shrugs and hides under the couch. Cats are out to get their needs met and if you won’t do it, he’ll saunter off and find someone who will.

Recovery helps us to stop being dogs, loyal to people who don’t deserve our loyalty. It teaches us to stop looking to get our kibble from an empty cupboard and to seek a place where the food dish is over-flowing. It teaches us to say “no, I have had enough” and bare our claws if we’re not taken seriously. Recovery teaches us that we are beautiful and desirable just as we are and we never need to please anyone to be loved.

I’ll end with this old chestnut but it is still true:

We feed and walk and love a dog and it says to itself “You must be God”.

We feed and stroke and love a cat and it says “I must be God.”

Can I get a hearty MEOW!