Dear George,
I’m Basil! Not The Great, not the Holly,
not the Italian and, definitely not the Thai basil! I’m simply …..Basil the Good Boy. My mother was rescued off the streets by
this good family when she was pregnant.
She had a litter of four and she had the
luxury to nurse us until we were about three months old. The good family kept
my mother, me and my brother and their relatives adopted the other two kittens.
We all have good homes now and good, caring people.
Actually I was born right in this room you
can see in the picture (above). The room is our human grandma’s bedroom. I
love this room so much that sometimes I don’t even want to leave it to go
eating. During the day my human grandma sits in her favorite armchair solving
puzzles and I sleep in her bed. At night we switch – I’ll take the armchair and
she’ll sleep in her bed.
But I need your advice as we have big problems with my
brother and I’m afraid he’ll get in trouble. See, his name is Aristotle which I
think our parents rush to name him so (after a dozen of other names which none
fitted him) – he is no philosopher nor is he wise. The minute he gets indoors
he jumps on our human kitten’s bed and pees right there. So, he is mostly an
outdoor cat because of this! While outdoors he gets in fights with the west end
guys over territory! My mummy can’t catch him on an empty stomach to take him to
be “fixed”. We need your advice – how do we catch him before he eats? Once
fixed I think he’ll make a really good, wise philosopher!
But…. until then?
Yours
Basil, the good boy
Dear Basil,
I don't like thinking about the snip, castration, fixing, neutering, sterilising - those are the words used by humans. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It happened to me and because I don't know what life would be like if I still had my mating tackle, I can't be sure if it was a good thing. But I certainly don't pee in the house or get into fights, roam from home looking for sex or get sexually transmitted diseases.
If Aristotle wants a good life, he will have to submit to this. Perhaps your humans could borrow a trap from the local cat shelter and get him to the vet that way. In ancient Greek literature, I think in a book by Plato, an old man is asked how he feels about no longer being interested in sex. "I feel I have escaped from a violent god," he replies.
A wise philosopher! Humans get into fights, roam round looking for sex, and end up in the STD clinics. But they don't neuter each other, do they? If it is such a good thing, why not?
I leave you with that thought.
Yours
George
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.
This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org
We hope your words left an impression pal. He needs to get the snip!!!
ReplyDeleteAmigo, you have to go through the "snip" process:-(
ReplyDeleteWe all did!
Diego
PS. the message is for Aristotle, of course!