on being a cat person and a dog person

what I've learned from learning to love cats

*Read on to the bottom of this email for information about my new poetry book Reunion Songs, including cut off dates for pre Christmas delivery, and some changes to Appetite for Living, including the option of upgrading to a paid subscription. I’ve also added a regular ‘what’s feeding my fascination’ section with music, articles and other rabbit holes I went down in researching and writing this post.

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Photo by Borna Bevanda on Unsplash

I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats. Eckhart Tolle

Dear Friends,

This week I was tested on just how well I knew my cat. Cats are notorious for keeping their poorlyness to themselves until something has well and truly taken hold. I’m so glad I was able to pick up on her early communications and I am pleased to say Pookie is now back to her lively and loving self after a bout of gnarly gastroenteritis.

I grew up in the bush surrounded by animals wild and domesticated. Our rescue cat ‘Mother Puss’ was hard core, scrawny and intolerant of fools. I loved her dearly but always from a safe distance. She had two litters of kittens and lived to a ripe old age of 21, dying peacefully in her sleep curled up on the garden path in the sun.

Until relatively recently, I always considered myself more of a dog person. Cats seemed unaffectionate and they often ignored me unless they wanted something. Let’s face it, cats clearly invented the poker face.

Dogs on the other hand, seemed much more abiding and deliberate in their communications, they always seemed pleased to be around me, regardless of what was on offer.

About 10 years ago, cats came into my life again, albeit reluctantly. At the time my husband, daughter and I were living on 100 acres in the middle of wild forest. After many months of catch and release mice ‘control’ it was clear the resident mouse population was increasing not declining.

Following a lot of hand wringing about bringing a known predator into a wild ecosystem, we decided that with some controls, the presence of a cat might make the mice, who were now wandering around the house in broad daylight, realise it was safer to stay outside. Off to the local rescue centre we went and adopted Toffee.

Ernest Hemingway was right when he said ‘one cat just leads to another’. Before long we had three; Toffee and two kittens Pookie and Pippie Long-stockings, from the neighbouring farm.

This was the beginning of my enduring love and deep respect for cats.

I watched Toffee suckle and protect two kittens not her own, and I learned to understand and admire her forthrightness with them. She taught me that even in love one can have boundaries. She kept me company when doing farm chores, walked tightly by my side through the forrest and kept me company during some of my loneliest moments.

I have learned so much from my feline family. Yes I am inspired by their courage and agility. Most of all I respect their independence and unwillingness to be subservient. They are loving and loyal in their own sovereign way. Yes they kill things. So do we.

It’s interesting that cats are often maligned for the very things women are, like having the audacity to prioritise their own needs. They come and go as they please and their assertiveness is deemed bossy. They behave in all the ways the patriarchy says women can’t and shouldn’t. Cats, and those who love them, have been labelled autistic, neurotic, mad, selfish, disobedient and emotionally detached.

Carl Jung said ‘everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves’. Preach.

Our personal and collective irritations are on display in cliches, jokes and in our default othering of what we fear, resent, feel shame about and don’t understand. One only has to mention shark, raven, vulture, snake, spider, rat and weed to know our other than human kin are not immune from our judgement.

We repress and internalise our fear of danger, death and desire and project it onto the external world. How else could we inflict so much harm and devastation on the earth, each other and ourselves.

As we have become more and more disconnected from our bodies and the body of the earth, from our wilder selves and our wilder kin, we have become quicker to categorise and judge others for the very things that make us who we are. We shame other beings for behaving in accordance with their true natures and their animal urges.

The age old question of ‘are you a dog person or a cat person?’ is a prime example.

Supremacy culture dictates that we infantilise and dominate our animal family. We hold them to unattainable human behavioural standards like being seen and not heard. They are not valued for themselves or their deep knowing. They exist to serve our pleasure and comfort.

Every day I see more clearly the ongoing effect of the systems of disconnection and domination that scaffold the culture I’ve grown up in. I still have many blind spots but leaning towards curiosity as a default position rather than judgement, feels like a good way forward. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of watching a cat watching something knows this.

So many clues to remembering our wholeness and the truth of our interconnectedness lie in front of our nose in everyday things and in our relationships. We might start by asking ourselves how to stay true to our nature in a world that demands conformity, domestication and subjugation. Start close in. Our animal kin have many of the answers.

Pookie bumps her head
hard against my thigh
squeezing herself in beside me 
legs spread and purrs -
’It’s not your job to be good, 
just be here until you’re not. 
DISMISSED.'

~ conversations with my cat

Pookie 🐈‍⬛

I’m going to leave you with some of my favourite cat quotes and this live performance of Cat People by David Bowie⚡ from his Serious Moonlight Tour. Almost 41 years ago to the day, I was a 15 year old that wagged school to get front row at this concert.

• In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they haven’t forgotten this. Terry Pratchett

• As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat. Ellen Perry Berkeley

• Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. William S. Burroughs

• Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. Sir Walter Scott

• When I am feeling low all I have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns. Charles Bukowski

• A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. Ernest Hemingway

• Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose. Garrison Keillor

• I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things to me, are expressions of love. James Herriot

• I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul. Jean Cocteau

• No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch. Leo Dworkin

Until next time, in remembering and reconnection, and with much love Amanda x

What’s feeding my fascination:

🐈‍⬛ This article for The Guardian by Lucy Jones ‘Claws out! Why pop culture clings to the crazy cat lady’ explores and challenges the ‘lonely, sexless and eccentric’ stereotype.

🐈‍⬛ I learned so much reading this retrospective review of the 1942 and 1982 Cat People movies by Lucy Beltrami for the Melbourne University Film Society Inquirer.

🐈‍⬛ The Jungian Shadow and how unsurprisingly Jung himself "left those interested in his ideas and their development some of his own shadow elements to deal with”.

🐈‍⬛ Some background on the story ‘The Cat That Walked By Himself’ from the Kipling Society.

I loved reading ‘The Cat That Walked Alone’ to my now almost adult daughter when she was little. It’s based on Rudyard Kipling’s take on domestication ‘The Cat That Walked By Himself’ and reading it now through a post feminist lens, I see the patriarchy’s fingerprints all over it. Even so, it’s a beautiful, magical story and the cat’s independence and refusal to serve man, an enduring truth.

🐈‍⬛ Always poetry!

'Mountain Lion' from 'The Radiant Lives of Animals' by Linda Hogan is such a powerful meditation on our relationship with our animal kin.

🐈‍⬛ The Egyptian feline Goddess Bastet was an absolute 👑.

🐈‍⬛ Yes, cats show copious amounts of affection and so many other questions about the inner life of cats answered HERE.

🐈‍⬛ I love Mrs McGonagall.

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Some housekeeping …

Subscription changes

Now that my book of poetry is out in the world, I’m feeling the urge to write essays again. I’ll be doing that here as well as continuing to share drafts of new poems. With the focus on quality over quantity, I’ll be sending out the free newsletter every second Sunday going forward.

I’ve also rebooted the Appetite for Living paid subscription tier. The newsletter will remain free to all subscribers, with posts paywalled after 6 weeks. Paid subscribers will have access to the full archive including past audio practice series on connecting with your creativity and everyday sacredness. I’ll also be sending out occasional paid subscriber posts looking behind the scenes of new creative projects. The next book has already started knocking and I’m working on an EP of original songs so stay tuned!

Appetite for Living bookshop

I’ve created an Appetite for Living bookshop on Substack. You can read more about my book Reunion Songs - poems for reconnection and remembering yourself home, and browse the bookshop HERE.

Pre Christmas delivery order cut off dates

✨The limited edition hardcover of Reunion Songs: poems for reconnection and remembering yourself home is available from me wherever you are in the world. If you would like to gift a copy to yourself or a loved one for Christmas, you can order your copy HERE by 15 December for delivery within Australia and 5 December rest of the world.

✨The paperback and epub are also available from online retailers worldwide including Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Dymocks and Amazon.