The Human—Pet Bonds Reflected in “A Man and His Cat”

Liu+Na

【Abstract】Nowadays， a great number of people are keeping pets at home， with which they are seeking relationships for companionship and love. And there has been a tremendous growth in public attention on human-pet relationships. In “A Man and His Cat”， Tim Kreider wrote about his relationship with his cat who he shared his life and home for 19 years. This article explains the human-pet relationships reflected in Tim Kreiders essay “A Man and His Cat”.

【Key words】human-pet relationships； Tim Kreider； essay； “A Man and His Cat”

Tim Kreider is an American essayist and cartoonist. He wrote about his relationship with his cat who he shared his life and home for 19 years in his essay “A Man and His Cat”. The human-pet bonds in this essay can be seen as follows.

1. Pets Fulfilling a Variety of Roles in the Lives of Their Humans

For childless people， “the pet seems to be a surrogate child.”A pet may be given the family position of a child and appeal to peoples need to nurture. People even selectively breed it to make it more like a child， make it attuned to their emotions and to give unconditional love.

Tim Kreider himself tended to see his cat as his wife. Their relationship was longer than any other relationships of Tims adult life. The cat stayed in bed with him and they slept together through nights. When Tim woke up every morning， the first thing he saw would always be his cat. This scene was just the same as the daily life of a husband and his wife. When Tim was alone with the cat， he would behave like an arch-fop， made up names for the cat， talked to her in a mellow voice， and played music with her. Tim was a single man and his cat was “a very attractive cat”. Even Tims then-girlfriend Margot thought he was in love with the cat.

2. Pets Making a Few House Rules

For Tim the cat may be “another being in the world”. She was not just a cat. She had her own likes and dislikes and idiosyncrasies. She was another ego in the room with him. So he should regard the feelings of the cat when he made major life decisions.

When Tim first adopted the cat， he made strict limits on her. The cat would not be allowed upstairs， where Tim slept. But that limit was short-lived. The cat seemed to have taken up residence on Tims bed. She was such a cat who set her own rules. In the morning， the cat would wake Tim up in a special way to remind him to feed her. That was a little punishment for his carelessness. The cat refused to drink water from a bowl， preferring drinking from Tims glass. Tim had to give in and served her water in a glass tumbler. She didnt like to be smelled and she would flee. Tim was learning to understand her， to accept her little personality.

As Tim wrote “the cat was jealous of my attention”， she couldnt stand Tim reading books， working on his laptop and doing any other things that would attract Tims attention from her. It would be even worse when Tim took his ex-girlfriend home. The two females would treat each other as an enemy and ready to fight. When Tim was physically intimate with a woman， the cat sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him， avoided to see the scene of debauch， quietly manifested in her behavior a strong dislike. Under the pressure of the cat， the girls Tim brought home must accept Tims notion that was “love me， tolerate my cat”. It seems the cat helped Tim to weed out women he wouldnt want to spend his life with anyway.

3. Pets Emotional Impacts on People

A pet can be the one that people express their affection to. Tim wrote that people have “a reservoir of affection”. They need to express their emotion to somebody such as their child， lover， parent or friend. When people do not have such emotional reposing， they give their affection to the companion animals. Tim must have offloaded that reservoir of affection onto his cat. He did have girlfriends for a period of time， but he didnt deliver enough of his affection to them. Tim explained that “love a cat is a lot less complicated than loving a human being”. She couldnt talk； she was vulnerable to human projections. But she provided an unconditional relationship which generated more satisfaction than human relationships. Tim was fortunate to have his “heart cat” in his life.

Pets often reduce the feelings of loneliness and isolation especially when the caregiver lives alone. Whether the cat had consciousness or not was not important to Tim. He received companionship， sought comfort from， and also nurtured his beloved cat. Thus he was not alone because he had a cat.

Pets dont tell us how they thought of us. They just use their entire life to accompany us during a fraction of our own. It is hard to say how closely we can bond with a pet. But “a man who is in a room with a cat—whatever else we might say about that man—is not alone.

作者简介：刘娜（1993-），女，碩士，就读于天津外国语大学，美国社会与文化方向。