What is it with girls and cats?

[davywavy]

Some months ago now, I took an afternoon wandering around http://www.19princeletstreet.org.uk/ in the East End. It's an interesting building; used by successive waves of migrants - Huguenots, Jews, Irish and so on - as they've arrived in London over the centuries, who have adapted the building to their needs and then moved on once they'd gone up in the world a bit and felt that all the bloody immigrants nearby were lowering the tone of the neighbourhood. It's been preserved as a little museum about the whole migrant experience thing.

One exhibit they had was a suitcase and a stack of luggage labels where you were invited to consider the question "You have to leave home forever in fifteen minutes. What do you pack?", write down your answer and add it to the pile. The she-David wrote "Teabags and marmite" and I wrote "bullion", which indicates the difference in our thought processes better than pretty much any other example I can give.

I thought the whole "fifteen minutes to pack" question was an interesting one so I posed it on here, and some of the answer I found...erm...interesting. You see, several people - all girls - said they'd take their cats.

Now, I must admit that if I were genuinely presented with a suitcase, 15 minutes, and the imminent collapse of my entire life, cats wouldn't be the first thing which would pop into my head as an essential. For starters, how on earth would you pack them into said suitcase? Cats don't tesselate (I know, I've tried), and even if you managed to fit a few of them in there what are you going to do about feeding them? Fit a tube? You'd certainly struggle to get them back in once you let them out for some whiskas. Assuming you could carry the whiskas. It just boggled my mind.

Anyway, this all sort of reminded me of a girl I was briefly seeing some years ago who lived high up in one of those tower blocks which so besmirch the west Manchester skyline. She shared this flat with two cats who, she assured me with a perfectly straight, unblinking expression which I was later to come to recognise and dread from two hundred yards away, had no desire whatsoever go go outside or leave the flat.
"Miss Shufflebottom doesn't want to leave me", she would say as her cat alternated between piteous yowling and desperate scrabbling at the bottom of the front door. "And Mister Winkle loves me so much even if he got out he'd come back", she'd continue as her other cat prowled along the windowledge in atavistic pursuit of passing pigeons.

I just don't get the whole cat thing, so my question for the day is: What is it with girls and cats?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Did I tell you I've got a chainsaw?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Is that apropos of nothing, or in reference to girls and cats?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, if you want to get a cat in a suitcase, you might work out why a chainsaw is a good idea.

[(Anonymous)]

Most of the cat anyway. the bits that don't go on the walls and carpet.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I *do* have a cat who doesn't want to go outside much, but she demonstrates this by going out with me each morning when I go to feed the birds, staying fairly close, and coming back in with the air of a cat that has taken her distasteful but necessary exercise as recommended to her by her doctor. The big room is cold, draughty and wet. What carpet there is, is soggy and spongy underfoot.

I might want to take her with me (there are items called cat carriers, which are special suitcases you can put a cat in), because she's a living creature that I've accepted responsibility for. But really, if I don't know where I'm going, it might be less cruel to just tap her on the head on the way out.

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

I don't get it either. I love other people's cats (they're nice to stroke), but don't want any myself, they get hair all over your stuff! Bit like children, but less hair there and more, err, everything.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

My eyesight isn't good enough to see someone's expression from that far.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh go on then:

Because cats are sociopaths who consider that the World has been designed entirely for their benefit, whose empathy extends merely to a cynical understanding of the minimum they must do to ensure them an agreeable lifestyle with nice food and comfy cushions on tap; and whose erotic pleasure in the agony of baby birds and little mices under their claws is as horrifying in its sadism as their knowlege that they will be forgiven 'cos they look slinky.

And girls are, err, totally different.

D

meow

[(Anonymous)]

Because a girl who calls their cat Miss Shufflebottom or Mister Winkle has no other friends. And even the cats are just waiting for an opportunity to jump ship to a more agreeable owner, who will feed them and pamper them just as much, but give them more fitting monikers such as Satan or Gladstone.

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

http://io9.com/5883618/common-cat-parasite-could-actually-be-causing-schizophrenia-and-suicide

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/qa/parasite042607

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

perfectly straight, unblinking expression

The cat as well as the owner will do this too...but usually when taking a dump in your best flowerbed.

Does this mean the girl is um...err....never mind.