Cancer 227

I don’t like cats. They are so damned arrogant, self-centred, selfish and proud. When they want attention, they demand it, if you want their attention they ignore you. I have just had all three lying on the bed with me, wanting fuss. How lovely, they are paying attention to me. Yeah, right. They just wanted me to get up and let them out.

I wanted chickens. You can talk to chickens. You can hold a decent two way conversation with chickens. When we had chickens I would sit at the top of the garden, chicken on knee or next to me, qnd we would discuss philosophy, the meaning of life, and whether they were worried about the nearby foxes.

I also like dogs, but they are so emotionally demanding, like slightly perturbed children. Dogs understsnd human emotion and respond to it. They actively want you to like them.

The problem with my situation is that I can’t look after animals any more. I can’t clean out a chicken shed, let them out every morning, lock them up every evening, and so on. So we have cats. Easier to look after but poor conversationalists.

In reality it is great having the cats. There is something about having animals around, they are comforting for me. No, they don’t replace humans, they offer sonething additional. When I sit and fret about growing tumours or fear of pain, stroking an animal, even a cat, talking to it (not much talking with a cat) and just observing its behaviour, is – I don’t like the word therapeutic as it suggests I have a mental health condition. I don’t, this shit is real – somehow pleasant and helpful.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t gone soft or got a tumour in my amygdala, I would still happily kill the cats. When we had chickens I had no problem with the process of naming a chicken, eating its eggs, then killing and eating the chicken itself, but I won’t do so quite yet.

Though I really don’t like cats, selfish, self-centred….