The Honesty of Animals

*********************************************************************************

(Photograph of the culprit, Adoro, originally nicknamed 'Dora the Explorer' when we thought he/she was a girl. He is much too pretty to be anything but a girl, but his gender is somewhat fixed by some little extras that appeared only recently below his tail. He still doesn't display as much evidence of masculinity in that respect as his brothers. And we WANTED a girl so badly... perhaps that was part of the problem. Anyway, Adoro is my little hermaphrodite, my Attis. And yes, his favourite place is a washbasin!)

Animals are so much more honest and unconstrained by appearance. A cat will lift her leg to clean her private parts with consummate grace and a fine lack of concern with social niceties.

The Puttikins are 5 months old now. Beauty rejected ALL of them in a very firm manner when she knew she was pregnant again. No more nursing for them! Like most children, they were almost too eager to grow up until the option to remain children was taken from them.

I think Beauty chose the tiny cat carrier as nursery for her new litter partly in order to keep the Puttikins away.

Last night, I found all her little kittens in a row nursing happily with BIG Adoro at the end of the row! When I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck to remove him, I did so with a little pang of empathy for the poor little boy. The problem is that Beauty is too weak to support HIS needs at this point in time. The idyll is ended for him and for his siblings.

Yet, that age-old desire lives within all of us, I suspect, however we choose to ignore it or sublimate it or transfer it to some act that is more 'socially acceptable'. Every Cat I ever had would revert to childhood nursing instincts at times. The Puttikins are fascinated with the buttons on one cardigan I have and go at them with enthusiasm. I know they are pretending they are nursing again. Even Beauty, two-time Mother, has moments when she wishes to curl up next to her mother and be a kitten again. As her mother is not here, she makes do with me, nudging me to try to find a way into the interior of a jacket or cardigan. She will leap onto my back and then knead the back of my neck, where the hair is thick, questing for something that does not exist.

I keep finding the largest white kitten halfway across the floor of the room. He somehow has the energy to climb over the barricade I erected in the form of a thick blanket and then to continue, slowly but methodically to an unknown destination. Only a fortnight old... where does he think he is going and what does he intend to do once he arrives? I think at this age, although their eyes are open, their vision remains poor. Yet, he is another explorer, like Adoro.