Last year, after the last pageant practice, Veronica and I set off in search of a cat.

I had been wanting a cat for a few years. My previous cat had been dead for more than 5 years, and I knew it was time. I didn’t have a job, and that scared me.

When I didn’t have a job, should I really take on the new responsibility of a new pet?

And yet, maybe that was the best time. Veronica was SURE we should get a cat.

So we set off. We looked at and petted kitties, but Veronica had a spec: “I want an orange kitty.”

What about this cuddly calico?

Mmmm….. no. Isn’t there an orange kitty?

We found the last orange kitty in the surrounding area, a tiny starved kitten with a meow that would fill an auditorium.

Simon was the last of his brothers to get adopted. He was born in a shelter. And his little bones were so prominent, I learned more about the skeletal structure of a cat than I’d ever realized before.

He came to us with bite wounds that opened and bled for several months.

But he LOVED us. We fed him regularly, and he wanted to be next to us all the time. When I wake up in the morning, and I go to the bathroom first thing, this little orange cat would trot up and leap onto my lap while I’m on the toilet. He could not bear to be separated. He would lean into the pettings and scratchings.

Until he turned his teeth on me.

I could imagine him thinking “I love you! I love you!” until he suddenly thought, “I could kill you!”

He is after all a cat equipped with sharp teeth and claws.

And this cat had an affectionate and appreciative heart.

He would flip very unexpectedly from enthusiastic affection to bites that would leave teeth marks on our arms and hands.

If I wanted to anthropomorphize him, I would assume that his tough beginning with mean brothers (I assume it was his brothers, maybe it was his mom) who bit him when he was a helpless kitten.

He was traumatized, and learned some terrible habits of what love meant and what he needed to do to protect himself.

Then again, do cats have that same understanding as we do of psychological norms?

Undoubtedly not.

My invented narrative of why my cat behaves this way could be utterly nonsensical to him.

Pets are often the carriers of invented narratives from their people. We like to interpret their body language and likes and dislikes from our own perspectives.

Simon the Christmas cat has been given an invented story.

And often times friends and family who we meet around Christmas time get narratives assigned to them too. I will try to make a story to understand behavior that seems foreign to me.

But I could be entirely wrong. No doubt I am wrong in some percentage of my assumptions.

I would like to make room for these other friends and relations the way I make room for my kitty’s foibles. With love, and making room for what he lets me know he needs.

I like that strategy for promoting peace on earth.