To Be or Not To Be ... A Cat

Earlier today, my cat in his 'insane, savage kitty' mode managed to bite me, get into places he knows he shouldn't be and break the glass in one of the prints I have hanging on the wall, when he knocked it to the floor.    Since it was something my mother had given me just before she died, I probably overreacted, but he's been tossed off that bookshelf quite a few times and when he leaped to it, he looked at me as if taunting me and daring me to come after him again.

He doesn't get like this all the time - but when he does, I just want to scream.

Well, that's kind of what I did.  He ran away, ended up staring at me from his litter box as I ranted and raved.  I began to calm down and he went ripping around the place again.  So, I put him out on the front porch.  Don't worry, he'd already chosen to spend time out there this morning - he loves it, no matter the temperature. But, I shut the door on him and came back inside for a few minutes. Ok, I love the little bugger so I wouldn't dare leave him out very long without an escape, but DAMN I was mad at him.

A few minutes passed and I walked back over. He was standing on his back legs looking in the window.  Could he be any more pathetic?  I opened the door, he came in, wove his way around my legs, rubbed on my feet and promptly ripped back into crazy cat.  Sigh.  But, at least by then, I had calmed down.  I had to put the print up out of sight so that I didn't keep getting angry about it, but I was calmer.

Then, a friend posted a video to me (you have to watch this - it was so TB this morning).

She had no idea I was fighting with the cat (good heavens, that sounds pathetic), but as I watched it, I realized that I wasn't being fair to the cat.  He was being exactly that ... a cat.  I want him to be a dog, or at the very least - a catdog.

How many times do we do this to each other?

Our expectations of each other are so far off from who we actually are that we end up arguing and throwing tantrums.  My cat is a cat.  In fact, he's worse than just a cat - he's a kitten (who just found a way to knock one more thing off my wall as I type this - fortunately, it was only bamboo and will survive).  I want him to be all grown up and cuddly, intelligent enough to know what I want from him.  He simply wants to be a kitten.

What do you want to be when everyone expects you to be something else?  How badly does this mess us up?

I'll keep trying, I guess ... I'll keep failing, but I will keep trying.

And, since I can't NOT post a picture of him here, he's been really attracted to the light bulb in my lamp.  Everytime I pull the camera out to grab a picture, he gets interested in the camera, but I loved the way the lighting happened in this photo.