Advice—April 2005

Dear Sparkle,
My human doesn’t understand me (what else is new?). I’ve been locked in the house all winter and I’m sick of it, and of course I’ve been looking for fun activities to keep busy. Well, I came up with a great pastime—wrestling with my roommate, a neutered tomcat like myself. We love it! (Well, I love it, my roommate sometimes thinks I play too rough, but that’s his problem.) After a good wrestling match that leaves fur all over the rug, we often like to curl up together with my human for a light snooze. My human is completely puzzled by this and she thinks I’m being mean to my roommate. She keeps talking about trying to find us a new pastime, like the one we’ve got isn’t good enough! How do I get her off my back?
Signed,
Good Time Aggressor

Dear GTA,
I hear you, big guy. It happens at my house all the time too. Binga and I love beating up on Boodie and my human is always telling us we’re too rough. But if Boodie didn’t like it she wouldn’t keep on coming back for more. And, as the Beta (non-dominant) cat in our household, it is her job to take a licking (and biting and getting jumped on). So it goes with you and your roommate. Obviously playing rough has little negative impact on your relationship—you both can settle in for a nice, relaxing nap. If you guys really hated each other, you’d be screeching and howling and drawing blood. Humans just can’t seem to grasp all this, but as you know they are a little soft in the head. I mean, what does this say about them? Apparently they can’t tell the difference between hard play and fighting and when they get upset, they can’t make up with the person they disagreed with. No wonder humans have such a hard time getting along with each other.

But anyhow, onto your problem. As long as your human sees your wrestling matches, it will upset her, so your best idea would be to do it when she isn’t around. If you keep wrestling in front of her, she may start doing dumb things like trying to distract you with toys or squirt you with a spray bottle (yecch!). If she tries any of this, I recommend that you do your best to ignore her. Here’s the reason why: she may eventually resort to distracting you with treats. Now, if she starts doing that, cool! That is definitely a good distraction, and worth abandoning the wrestling match without proving your Alpha cat manliness. In any case, spring is pretty much here, and your human will probably start letting you out again so you can keep an eye out for real intruders, catch the occasional field mouse and just generally enjoy the good life. Maybe if you’re lucky your human is bright enough to at least figure this out and start letting you out a bit early. After all, what are fur coats for?