I’ve been idly contemplating the different ways to worship at the temple of Mror for all she has provided. (For those of you who don’t know, that alter is the ceramic and stainless steel bowls of feeding the soul-body.)

My colleague gravitates towards a southern evangelical style with much animation and vocalization, rather pentecostal really. At any time day or night she’ll cry out her alter call. She gets heaps of comfort and excitement from her worship. Of late she has felt such insecurity (from the construction, babies, visitors and dogs,) that she has taken often to the alter, bingeing alone. It’s the focus of her life, even to the point of the worshipping and celebration being more central than the good Mror Herself. **shaking head and scratching jaw with back paw** Ah well, we each make our choices from need. We are too lazy and selfish to do things that have no reward. Even the least redeeming looking behaviors have utility or they would have ceased to be.

For myself, I am more muslim in my pursuit of meaning. My quiet controlled prostrations coming at regular intervals through the day. Mror is constantly in me as surely as the ocean breathes steadily. I feel largely without blame as God is to ultimately blame, not me. I don’t run to the alter of make a great show.

Mror and Mror still

I feel another coming. My whiskers push forward and I stretch the sides of my mouth thin, feel the air coming in on my tongue. I seem to be yawning a lot today. If this were LiveJournal, I would have a content picture at the moment. Thought I’d better move around for a biut so I’ve padded a few circles, groomed the wrists and face, given myself a good high stretch. The subjects are noshing at this irregular hour, but for myself I’m not really hungry but seeing them eat gives me the idea. I’ll walkabout and check for new food.

Even on a rainy day, a ledge is heartwarm.
Sleeping undisturbed, deeply is a gift.

The logic that I must be happy with my choices because I have not left is faulty. (I attribute the less than scientific sense to feeling hairballed.)

It is natural to stay with what ideas or circumstances you have regardless of whether they are good or bad. Because one lives under a despotic alpha one is not enticed to leave. If one has set out territory and the jaw rubbings of bond to a place, one does not leave because of the presence of a threatening interloper even if the territory claimed is not particularly warm or a real mouseful. It is yours.

Being yours does not make it good not to mention optimal.

Nor does less than optimal imply that it is eveil and that there is a slave to be freed from an oppressive dog either. (Not that I have anything against dogs per se. We are one living fur, even the hairless talls.)

At the same time, is feline to have the claws come out at the absurdities and gracelessness we sometimes find ourselves in, even when the claws are of no use sharpened against ideas more slinkily shadowy than even me. We must step past it, forebearance how many litters before we birth the one kit that will be our companion that will be a lifelong companion.

More paws ahead.

Am I dependant on them for affection? I have affection from myself and my colleague. I prefer their affection. I am better off with it. I can get more affection from them than I would from non-cats in a colony semi-feral where I once lived in an extended family unit. It is a different affection that I have adapted to as they have adapted to my way of showing kinship and affection through the tongue and hips and presence. How much is unhealthy and impinges on adultness? Some families and pair bonds are dependant to the degree that what one can do, the other forgets how to and specializes on other things. This specialization or dependancy is a product of being a functioning social creature. And within the strength of the group comes the weakness of the individual. I feel though, I have retained the base skills of independance but choose to keep this home base. When let out, I have returned to the refuge for the advantages if offers and the security I value. Being a more timid individual than some, perhaps that choice is naturally easy. For Ms. Zhou, well, being more of a loner, gourmand, and not the world’s swiftest hunter, her choice keeps being here too.

Which brings us to the more clear cut matter of food. Certainly in that way I am dependant on their return each day, or after 3 sunsets on occasion which I am notified of by the amount of water and food stickpiled. This I live in trust of, perhaps similarly to their trust that I will not smother them in their sleep or defecate in their marked personal territory zones.

Health needs I am largely self-sufficient as they are. My immune system can do most. My self-medicating with plants and drinking from self-access toilet in worst case are as capable as their health needs abiltiies for themselves. Obviously I can’t dial for a doctor. But then, so far as I can see neither my medical aid nor theirs can do much of anything effective to cure thyroid condition at any rate. We are all dependant on the flukes of the future and unforeseeable outcomes of our own genes and experiences.

Paws ahead!

Anony-Mouse wished me to consider the statement,

“Domesticated felines remain in a kitten-esque mode for their adult lives as humans have not allowed (and prefer them) to be dependent on humans for food, affection, and basic health needs.”

This is indeed a complex issue and is mired up to its crux in the inter-species responsibility, slavery, democracy and conflicting paradigms of what constitutes a healthy relationship. Although somewhat peripheral to my speciality of xenobiology, as for any scientist, or indeed living being, each must come to peace with the answer one is satisfied with while reasoning out the matters that won’t fit together within ones own heart.

So far as kittenesque, everyone is, right? We all are bound inside constraints of other’s needs of them, both being looked after by dozens and doing some looking after.

It is true that domesticated felines have had their freedom compromised compared to feral or wild cats such as ocelots by living in closer association with humans. By contact, we are changed. We, being both hairless talls and my species. As I understand it some simians have taken on kittens as surrogate children, taking a cat into species isolation which is a troubling subject. For myself I have always been housed with another of my species, even if sometimes with one disagreeable to me. My freedom to go tomming is curtailed. True, at my age and with my operation, the urge is diminished but I remain a sensual and sexual creature. As with a foreskin or any bodily loss, it is better not to dwell on what might have been.

My desires to prowl and mark a larger territory have shrunk to a smaller scale in the same way any urban dweller’s scale shrinks when coming in from the Australian outback. It is an adjustment but I don’t think a pathologically damaging one. The matter of inter-dependancy is trickier. I have power to change their moods, their sleep, their possessions, to communicate my needs, pleasure and displeasure emphatically.

They could be argued to be the power brokers to a disproportionate degree. Perhaps analogously to how a man rules the woman in the house. The roles are different. The apparent power is different is different but even within that there is a sense of respect and equality, different arenas of strength. One must for one’s own esteem focus on one’s areas of strength not what one doesn’t have.

Mror now and later.

To rate my misery on a scale of 1 to 10, I’m about an 8, mitigating factors being the strong sun, my in-house cat colleague being not particularly needy and verbose, not knattering on about the diss-jointed catniptripped dreams she hitchhiked on of the hairless talls. Instead there is the pleasant stillness of the hairless talls, perched as birds on the edge of their chairs. I hop up behind one, curl into the hollow of a back, out of sight of those predator spaced eyes, within the envelop of his energy and heat. By my symbiotic presence we have the refuge of mutual company, needing no more communication than this.

Analogous to the pupil dilating to new moons, or sliding to a hairline slit, so too does perspective widen and narrow according to internal and external conditions. When a an pupil is wide, stomach is full and still, inferior or superior does not even factor in. One is invinceable and gorgeous. Power is moot. Intelligence is an assumed underlying root that need not be questioned. When the world is dark and hot, night’s energy’s pulses obvious dark beauty. When one feels so well, a love of acceptance rather than gratefulness, comes easily. Appreciation is as smooth of reach, as unthinkingly achieved as licking one’s own butt.

In contrast, I’ve noticed when my digestion is at its peak of imperfection, such as today with more vomits than seagull flybys, the world is most unsatisfactory. The passably utilitarian and clean food bowl seems ugly, unsanitary, poorly thought out and badly placed, the aethetics of a tolerable space grate, the range of pleasing lightedness diminishes, my startleability spikes and patience declines. If left alone, I pine, my stomach churns, and more often than not comes out.

I scan the 150° around from my nose but it makes me a trifle motionsick. My swoozy vision is not the cause but an effect. As much as I let it be, as much as I observe me, knowing this too will pass, (most likely with a spattering flatulence,) I still feel out of sorts, fighting my own body. I know it’s natural enough to be irritable when the body is playing hookie with the mind. It’s also natural to just want the illness to pass quickly. I try to do what I can but I get overruled, hissed at, when I try homeopathic medicine of papyrus plants. They’ve now put a guard around the stems so I can’t reach the succulent leaves. Today I feel too fatigued to even grouch or commiserate more.

Knowing how I feel, how cynical I will be given the state of my energies, I’d rather just sleep it off if I can. Once flickr is back up perhaps you’ll catch me cat napping so there can be a more up to date shot than the one from August of me.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will take leave of you. Make good use of your hours between naps?
Mror power to you.

Oh Mror Lord! What a week of indulgence (and Happy Thanksgiving to all the hairless talls it applies to). We have had duck, tuna, turkey, cheese and some exquisite mixture of an indeterminate meaty cream-meal. I’m going to wear my upper lip bald from all my face cleaning. That’s not complaint, mind you. Bring it on. I’ll know when to stop, right? I’ll tamp it more compactr with purrs just in case more opportunties present themselves between now and my hap.

What beautiful dreams I’ll have — entire buffet lines of moist, tender selections. Sometimes life is every bit as cockle-warming as a Richard Bach ferret book. He’s very popular in translation to Catonese, you know. A few scholars have brought it over across the digital divide because of their inspiring spirit lifting nature. Sometimes the hairless talls honor the good within all living beings. And on that note,

That’s the way it goes, in the mouth, back up again. Excuse me body, you seem to have mistook yourself for a cow. *heavy sigh* I’m not so much appreciating these stomach burbles either. The doctor had a prodding look at me, her minions injected me with liquid under the nape of my neck, leaving me feeling somewhat belonging to a bell tower. After all that barking around me in the waiting room, my ears are certainly ringing. I did have the chance to get acquainted with a sweet goldren retriever though. Not the quickest telepaths but still, he has some interesting political views for me to chew over. Which I may as well do now since all the excitement has me clean worn out. This quick rehydration boost does have me feeling somewhat steadier on my feet though.

Well, Miao for now!
Paws to smell the breeze!

Sitting alone when one wants to be can be a challenge when someone else wants contact. That is how loose skin and auto-ejecting hair to make a snowstorm of defensive fur come in ever so handy.

[psychically mo-blogged]