When Jeremy Feist moved in with his partner, he knew he’d have to get used to living with a cat. He just didn’t realize that cats were truly this terrible.
I’ve never owned a cat before, mostly because I live a rich fulfilling life, and also because I’m allergic and cat hair turns my face into a sniffling, teary, mess. Believe me, if it weren’t for that one solitary fact, my mother would have gotten one. Every day for my entire life with her, she’d regale me with tales about her wonderful cat who would perch on her shoulder while she cooked and loved her forever. And then she would finish her drink, throw her empty glass across the room and mutter something about how she should have went through with the abortion.
My Mom loved that cat.
When I started dating Argo, something I had to learn to deal with was his cat, T’Pring. I liked him enough that putting myself on a never-ending stream of antihistamines didn’t seem like a huge sacrifice. I could learn to love the cat. And in turn, the cat would learn to wage psychological warfare on me.
Turns out, T’Pring is the name of Spock’s first wife. Which sounds all nerdy and adorable at first, until you realize that T’Pring (Spock’s Wife) hated her husband, didn’t want to fuck him, and pitted him against Captain Kirk in a fight to the death if he wanted to get all up in her goodies and not die. The cat adhered very closely to this example.
I know it’s in bad taste to compare cats to dogs, mostly because it’s a shitty comedic trope, but just to highlight my grievances with cats in general, I will use my Dog Kahlua as a template of how pets are supposed to act. In that they’re supposed to act like dogs.
Greeting me when I come home
Kahlua will run up to you, claws frantically scraping the hardwood floor, before throwing herself up at you, licking everything she can reach, nuzzling your legs and rubbing you and just generally showing that she appreciates your presence.
T’Pring will turn to look at you from wherever she’s perched, glaring at you with accusatory eyes. She knows what you’ve done. Even if you have no idea what you’ve done, she already knows. She can list the reasons why your soul will one day burn in hell, and she wants you to feed her otherwise she will pee on your coffee table.
Cuddling time
Kahlua will curl up with you on the sofa, finding a nook in your person for which she is a perfect match. She will slowly drift off to sleep, sharing her love and body warmth with you.
T’Pring will park herself on the couch next to you and meow once. This means she wants three, and exactly three, butt rubs. If you go under, she will howl at you like a banshee demon. If you give her exactly three, she will jump off the couch and sit by the window, ignoring you. If you go over, she will dig her dagger teeth in your forearm while using her claws, sharp as the shattered mirror of regret through which the laughing clown monster of your tortured memories haunts you through, and drag them through the sinew and muscle and arteries in your upper arm. When she’s done, she will meow at you again to repeat the process.
Treat time
If you give Kahlua a treat, she’ll do tricks and jumps and joyous leaps and bounds for you. She will savour the treat whole-heartedly, and thank you constantly.
If you give T’Pring cat nip, she will (AND I SHIT YOU NOT, THIS IS WHAT SHE DID) nose it into neat lines on the floor, and lick it up like Jimi Hendrix doing rails at Studio 54. She will then launch herself into a house plant and spread the filth around until it spells the phrase “THE MAW WILL CONSUME YOU.”
Bathroom time
Kahlua will either go out onto the lawn, pee, and immediately come back inside, or during a walk, she will take a poop in close proximity to a garbage can.
T’Pring shits in a box that fills the house with the stench of the decaying corpse of a lost loved, wrapped in a miasma of pestilence and hopelessness, and topped off with the dense fog that collects under the scabbed, syphilitic scrotum of Satan himself. If you don’t clean out the litter box once a day, she will leave puddles of fermenting, liquid feces on the carpet directly outside of the bathroom where her litter box is until you scoop her shit out into a plastic shopping bag.
Feeding time
Kahlua will sit by her food bowl, and will not eat until you kiss her on the top of her head. She will eat it all without complaint.
T’Pring requires a mix of wet and dry food, and she will let you know when it’s time by knocking over something fragile and expensive. The dry food keeps her living a healthy life, while the wet food costs more per ounce than a diamond shit out by Kate Winslet and is only there because she refuses to eat the dry food. In order to feed her, you must mix the dry food in with the wet food. She will take one bite, then walk away for half an hour and stare at the outside world, envisioning it engulfed in fires of her own creation. When she returns to her food, she will lick the wet food off the dry food, leaving behind the nutritious part of her diet. She will then vomit the wet food into a sleeping orphan’s mouth.
Sleeping time
Kahlua will fall asleep in bed beside you. She will protect you from nightmares and defend you from thunderstorms.
T’Pring will howl through the night like a werewolf. Neither of us know why she does. She will jump on our chests throughout the night, leaving scratch marks all over our bodies. Sometimes, she’ll fart in my face, so that the first thing we smell upon waking is hatred and disdain and resentment as funnelled through the rectum of a cat who will see you in hell.
All this to say that dogs are way better than cats. Sorry cat lovers. You back the wrong horse.
Originally appeared at JeremyFeist.com
Horrified by how little empathy you have for other living beings. They whine about wet food because the ones who only eat dry food die of kidney failure from chronic dehydration.
I love cats (and dogs), but totally loved the humour in this article! This is supposed to be funny, so all you people defending cats, laugh more as you know some of it applies.
I own both. I’m not ashamed to say I love my dog a lot more than I love my cat, though I do love both. My ex hated this fact, as she was a cat lover.
Incredible. It’s a love/hate relationship with those unappreciative little feline bastards.
It’s silly to hate an animal just because it’s evil. Quite immature, actually. (I’m guessing you’re a DC fan and not a Marvel fan.) Aren’t villains always the most interesting characters? Isn’t Satan in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ by far the most complex character of the poem?
Cats are evil, and that’s why I love them.
That cat was terrible because my cat, Boots, would meet me at the door everyday.
He was definitely comfortable cuddling up.
He was fond of knocking things over and chewing cords but he was cute so mostly I let it slide. I tried the bitter apple stuff but it had the opposite affect and I got in my mouth! Horrible.
So boo to this article!
From, a cat and dog lover
The cuddling time section was hysterical, and at the same time terribly familiar. Your Kahlua sounds like a sweetheart, though!
So you’re too filthy to clean the cats toilet and in desperation it goes on the floor, and that’s the cat’s fault? You’ve literally just unimaginatively rehashed all the old tired dog vs cat bullshit and not even written it very well. Meh. I like dogs and cats. I don’t ‘need’ the affection from a dog. And the cat probably hates you cos you treat it like shit.
Hahahahaha, this was terrific, and spot on! I particularly liked “wrapped in a miasma of pestilence and hopelessness”.
That’s why cat’s belong in the barn.
Brilliant list, love your sense of humour. With the food thing though, don’t pander to her, it’s as simple as that. My father’s cats were picky, until he just gave them the food he wanted to give them. After about a day of protest they gave up and ate the food. I’ve had the same problem with dogs, same trick works for them as well.