Why Do I Love This Cat?

Someone on the Etsy forums posed a simple question: "Who loves cats, and why?"

Good question.

I love cats, especially my cat, naturally. She's the sixth cat I've ever owned, although it's more like she owns me. I am her bitch.

This is the culprit: Raven. You may say, "The word culprit implies guilt. What is sweet little Raven guilty of?" Well... everything, basically. She gnaws through the wires for laptop adapters, headphones, cell phone chargers, et cetera. I've spent about $200 over the years replacing power cords for laptops or cell phones, and my bf has spent probably more on headphones. She yowls in the morning if you don't get up at the usual time, for example, if you sleep in on the weekend. She also yowls if you don't feed her on time... or if you refuse to feed her early. A squirt bottle only buys you a few minutes' reprieve from the skull-penetrating yowls. (She'll usually spend those few minutes chasing her own tail in a fit of pique.) If she's overexcited, which is essentially any time she's not asleep, you have to stay sharp if you're petting her. She may suddenly decide to deploy a "love bite" or a "playful" swat with her razor-sharp claws.

Raven is a total attention-whore. No matter who you are, if you come into our house, she owns you too, bitch. She owns your lap, and if you're not using those hands to pet her, she will tell you what she thinks of that, buddy. (Meaning more yowling.)

She fears children, maybe because they're even crazier than she is.

For a cat going on seven years old, she is amazingly immature. When I first got her as a kitten, I consoled myself (usually while washing her pee out of my duvet for the umpteenth time) that as she got older she would mellow out, like the older cat that I also had at the time. I thought she'd eventually slow down enough to dispense with the uptight yowling and compulsive chewing and attacking visitors and such. No such luck. She's exactly the same today as she was at 4 months old. Points for consistency, Raven.

So, to get back to the original question: if she's such a pain in the ass, why do I love her? Well, why not? I love my family, and they're a pain the ass a lot of the time, too. I love her because I chose her, and she is who she is. She'll snuggle up to me even if I squirted her with the water bottle 2 minutes earlier to get her off the kitchen counter. She'll still come when I call her, even if an hour before, I staggered bleary-eyed out of bed and shut her in the downstairs bathroom so I could get one more half-hour of sleep without enduring her compulsive yowling.

I guess I love her because she obviously loves me enough to put up with me, so it's easy to return the favour. Come to think of it, isn't that why we love anyone?