A few weeks ago I voiced my curiosity as to whether you can truly describe the company of other human beings as a simple joy. I haven’t quite decided yet. But I think the company of animals totally can be. And it is for me.
There’s a cat called Dog that lives at my house. That is the truest way I can phrase what’s going on. Dog is a cat, and he is not our cat. He belongs to our neighbours two doors down, but the best part of eight years ago our cat died and Dog moved in. We called him Dog mainly to deal with the guilt of the fact we were letting in and feeding and loving a cat that wasn’t ours.
It’s unclear whether it was the chicken or the egg, whether as a result of nature or nominative determinism, but Dog turned out to be a lot like a dog. Probably more like a dog than like a cat. First of all, he is absolutely gigantic. Most people who see him say they have never seen a bigger cat. In fact, I have kept a count of how many people, upon seeing him, claim he is the biggest cat they have ever seen. We’re on nine. If you’ve seen Dog and think he’s the biggest cat you’ve ever seen, please get in touch.
He likes a bit of rough. I don’t mean to objectify him. He will just put up with quite a lot of quite vigorous tummy rubbing. He also snores really loudly. It’s hard to concentrate if you’re in the same room as him. He likes ham but will only eat it if you feed it to him from your hand. He likes tuna and he pushes the tin around the room with his head when he eats it. He’s quite an old man now, and he acts like it. During the daytime, he’s got a constant eye-roll on, but at night he gets really sociable, almost like he’s drunk. He’ll come over and try and sit on me when I come back from a night out. It’s pretty nice.
I like trying to understand how much Dog is able to comprehend and how similar our brains are. The way that generally works is that I assume common sense from him and then he does things that prove me wrong. The best example is this.
Part of our peculiar relationship with Dog was for many years based on the fact that he could not enter our house of his own accord. We had cats before him, Barney, Buster and Luigi, so we had a catflap. But all our late cats, God bless them, were a little bit wimpy and middle-class, and sometimes some of the more brutish neighbourhood cats would come in and eat all their food. So we bought a microchip catflap.
For the uninitiated, this is a catflap that has a microchip scanner and grants access only to cats who have permission. Perfect for wimpy cats. For the best part of eight years, we have had the catflap set in such a way that Dog could leave as he pleased, but we would have to let him in through the door if he wanted to come in. We did this, I suppose, in a vain attempt to retain some control over this situation, a situation that Dog was clearly in the driving seat of from the start. Despite not having opposable thumbs.
That being said, when everyone was out of the house, dog had no way of coming in, and quite often we would return home to find him sitting outside the back door waiting for us.
Finally, last Christmas, things changed. My family and I went away for a few days and we decided that, it being winter and Dog being almost 15, it was time to give him the keys to the castle.
This was easier said than done. The sharper amongst you may have worked out that to do this you have to shove the cat through the tunnel headfirst in order for the catflap to read its microchip and grant it access for future. This was quite a stressful experience for all of us. Dog’s inability to speak English meant I couldn’t explain to him why I, one of his best friends and perhaps even a weird older brother of sorts, was shoving him headfirst through a tunnel. He was a bit off with me for a day or two after that. But he got over it.
The next challenge was to teach him that the catflap was now a valid way of getting into the house. Again, lack of English was a problem. He would sit at the back door waiting to be let in, and I would stand on the other door, exaggeratedly refusing to let him in and pointing furiously towards the catflap. He didn’t get it. Doesn’t understand pointing, I thought. Interesting.
Then I’d put my arm through the catflap and beckon him over. He didn’t get that either.
So then we started putting a tin of tuna in the catflap tunnel. I knew better than to shove him through again – I figured he’d only further associate the catflap with trauma. So we just left tuna in the catflap tunnel all the time for a week in the hope that he’d just hang out in the tunnel and then eventually he’d just push his head through and the penny would drop. Or maybe, next time the house was empty, he’d give the flap a go.
One day, my mum and I came home together after a full day outside and Dog was inside, on the armchair in the living room. We’d been out for at least ten hours and he must have gone for a wee at some point. There was no wee on the carpet. So we had to assume he’d worked it out, and we were so, so excited. We rushed him. He had no idea why we were so excited. He probably didn’t even know we were excited.
So, one way or another, he worked it out. I did assume it was more ‘monkey-on-a-typewriter’ than stroke of critical genius, but I was proud of him. Clever boy.
The next day, I was sitting on the sofa by the back door. I heard a little peep from behind me, turned round and saw him. Dog was sitting outside the back door, waiting to be let in.
Never have I more strongly wished that Dog spoke English. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to tell him what was going on as I wanted him to tell me what he thought was going on. What is it, Dog? How can you come in through the catflap yesterday and then and not understand that you can come in through the catflap today?
That’s when I realised – you can’t assume anything when it comes to a cat’s brain. There is no guarantee that using the catflap once means you can use it again. Fair enough. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t try. But fair enough. Or maybe he just didn’t remember ever having done it. I can’t know that he would remember something that happened the previous day. I just wished that he could comprehend the significance of what had happened, that after eight years of waiting outside the back door, he could now come and go as he pleased.
I think that Dog has nothing we could liken to human critical thinking. His brain is a collection of habits. He assesses the scenario and does whatever he is used to doing in that scenario. When there’s people in the living room, he waits to be let in. I suppose that when we’re not there, he comes in through the catflap. Old habits die hard though, if you have a brain the size of a golf ball.
Dog still waits outside the door to be let in. And that’s fine. Dog’s different way of seeing the world is utterly refreshing. I love the way his face rarely matches the vibe of the situation he’s in. I love the face he makes when I turn the lights on in the kitchen and he’s just been fast asleep. I love putting my thumb into his paw, in between his toes. I love picking him up and putting him over my shoulder – even though I’m not sure he loves it. He’s simple and honest. And I love him for that.
Apparently octopi are quite intelligent too. It’s a weird one, intelligence, isn’t it, because it’s all relative. We consider intelligence to be things like having a really impressive memory, or being really good at the Countdown quizzes. Dogs, octopi, dolphins would all be rubbish at that. But apparently they’re really smart.
I read an article on the Natural History Museum website called ‘Octopuses keep surprising us’. First of all, what is the plural of octopus? I’ve used every possible variation and I don’t think I’ve ever been right. It’s like it’s constantly changing, based on stock prices or the weather or something. There should be an app where you can check the current correct plural form of the words octopus, cactus, formula and appendix. Like, “No, actually, it’s formulā. Wait, now it’s formulapses.”
Octopuses keep surprising us. Octopi have three hearts. That’s pretty common knowledge, right? No massive surprise there. Do you know how many brains they have? Nine. Yep, nine, one in their weird freakish alien head and one in each tentacle. A brain per tentacle.
You know how octopeese catch their prey? They catch crabs with their suckers, pull them in to a little beak in the middle of their bodies and they lick them to death. Wow.
Octopice have nine brains and three hearts and apparently they’re one of the most intelligent creatures on Earth. Did you know they’ve got a little flap on the back of their head where you can turn it inside out?
Isn’t that mental? Octopodes put all the effort into all the brains and the hearts and stuff, but if you have thumbs you can turn its head inside out. That is literally like building a supercar and then leaving it on the street with all the doors open and the keys in the ignition.
Everything is pretty silly.
Yes, everything is pretty silly. But it’s quite fun to believe it. After all, nothing can ever be completely true or completely false. You can’t know whether the story of Johnson Farside is true or not, and nor, really, can I. It is a bit of both. It’s true in as much as it shows you something. It’s shown me some things. It has left me feeling that it’s quite hard to truly know how someone else feels, and that maybe it’s pointless to try. People come and go, and things get smaller fast in the rearview mirror as you’re driving away. Sometimes it feels nice to really feel stuff, but in a world where there are no absolutes, ultimately nothing is worth the trouble. I’ll leave you with a pearl of wisdom shared with me by the Great Mr Ted when I failed to make the school hockey team. He said: “Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper”.
All love, young grumblins. Schlaf gut, lieber Prinz.
From Episode 5 of the Simple Joys Podcast. Listen to the full episode here!
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