We all have our off days. Times when it feels like the world is out to get us. Moments when we feel small and helpless. Weeks and months when we just want a murderer to sneak up behind us and slit our throats or at least hurt us pretty badly so that we are hospitalized and provided with some really strong medicine.
Not cats though. Oh no. They never seem to have the darkness descend upon them. For example, take this cat lying on the floor in front of me pawing at god knows what. Here he is, day after day, wandering around the house like an idiot that doesn't have a goddamn care in the world. Can you imagine such a life? I sure can't through the dense fog of my malaise.
Cats aren't known to suffer from depression, and this really bugs me. Good for them I suppose, but can't they just get a little down once in a while like you and (specifically) me? Would it kill them to be a little mopey from time to time just to show us that we're not the only ones who get clinically depressed?
I mean, I can see why cats are always so chipper: free food, no responsibilities, get to shit literally anywhere they want in the house.
I got this little asshole of a cat a few month’s back. My therapist said that having a pet to care for might cheer me up. But as I sit here witnessing his emotionless, unquestioning deference to life, I've frankly never been more miserable.
I got him from a shelter because I’m completely against farms where pets are bred. The idea of animals having sex creeps me the hell out, so I prefer to shop where they are in isolated cages to insure there'll be no funny business.
The shelter had a two-for-one deal going, so I thought “What a steal!” and brought this dickhead and his brother home. I ended up returning his bro a week later because I realized that one cat is a fucking nightmare already. Though sometimes I think I backed the wrong cat. Maybe the other one would have been more of a sad sack? Man that would’ve been awesome.
The action of adopting two pets then returning one (no refund?!) had a surprising consequence. When I got home from the shelter and smugly told my cat that his sibling wouldn't be coming back, you'd think that he might have shown a flicker of emotion, maybe even got a little morose and sad, which would’ve been absolutely terrific and would’ve really made my day. But goddamnit if it wasn't clear this cat couldn't give a rat's ass. I even told him his brother was likely to either be put to sleep (lucky duck!) or go to a much better family that wouldn’t resent him. He didn't even bat an eyelid or seem like he was listening to me!
Cats are by nature fickle creatures. Wait, no, I meant fucko-creatures. Yeah, they're real fuckos. But if I had to describe cats, the one word I'd probably use is “small.” They're all fairly puny.
Sure, sometimes this cat lays on its side and whips his tail this way and that in an impatient sort of way, but apart from that I can see no other outward signs of dissatisfaction, which really gets me down sometimes.
I mean, I can see why cats are always so chipper: free food, no responsibilities, get to shit literally anywhere they want in the house (I find cat-litter disgusting). They really are living some sort of dream life. But even so, you'd think there'd be something that might make them feel a little blue. Like maybe they have a scratch from a territorial dispute with another cat that they wish they had have fought a little more dirty in order to win and retain their domain?
Well I'm telling you, there isn't a thing that they regret! They're perfectly content all the time. It's really aggravating!
Sometimes I try my hardest to get this cat depressed. I'll tell him that he is getting old and hasn't accomplished what he set out to do in his life. I also tell him that his parents weren’t married, which makes him a (goddamn) bastard, and his folks probably didn't even love each other very much anyway, which I find super depressing. But nope, he's having none of it. He just saunters off in a bitchy sort of way that leaves me with no satisfaction. Sometimes I lay awake at night, fists clenched, cursing him but mostly myself.
Cats do show signs that could be considered to be part of a depressed state. They sleep all day, if given the opportunity will gladly eat themselves to death and they do have sudden outbursts of violence, though they are rarely self-destructive and their wrath is often directed outward/at me. The reason being that cats don't really have a concept of self that they can absolutely loathe with every fiber of their being. Plus they don't have the power or force to wind a fist back and punch a mirror they've just caught their sorry, pathetic reflections in. Ahh, to be a cat without a care/suicidal thought in the world!
A cat's natural state is one of complete and utter obliviousness. Notice how if you're patting a cat on the head with one hand and annoying it by pinching its belly with the other, the cat will never attack the hand that is patting it, which is much closer to their sharp teeth. My annoying-hand might be real scratched up, bitten and bleeding, but my patting hand is in pristine condition until I switch hands to give my wounds a chance to scab up.
I once saw a cat that I thought might have been depressed. He was sitting on a couch like the shell of a defeated human: upright though slumped, its belly overhanging and looking like it wanted more out of life, which delighted me for a moment until it leaned forward and started licking its dick. At that point I realized that that cat wanted for nothing, ever.
The feline is much closer to us than we realize. Socially speaking, cats are basically just little human men, albeit more languid. They do exactly what they want when they want, which is just like us only they aren't plagued by crippling doubt and the feeling that they're total phonies. Plus cats get pretty annoyed when you push them off couches so that you can sit down, which is very similar to the reaction human men have when you do the same to them, I’ve found.
I wish I had as carefree a life as a cat: naked all the time, allowed to lay out of the pavement to absorb the sun's warmth on your naked skin, not being frowned upon as much when biting your toenails. But I wouldn’t like the part where you get fed the same shit every day. It doesn’t seem to faze them though. Nothing does. It makes me so mad!
It's interesting to note that cats might not feel depression because they've been hardened by a bunch of horrible shit that happened to them at an early age. Having your balls cut off to stop you from enjoying the greatest of life's pleasures (as well as two-person sex), having a microchip implanted in you so that you can no longer technically be deemed “an animal,” and having people constantly manhandling you in a number of various ways, such as wrapping you up in blankets, pulling your tail, poking you when you’re asleep then yelling when you draw blood, imprisoning you, taking you places where they shove things up your butt, teasing you with morsels of food that are never proffered, dressing you up in Robin Hood costumes, playing audio of cats meowing on the surround sound system late at night to unsettle you, giving you noogies and generally annoying the shit out of you.
But they take it in stride because everything else about their lives is utterly perfect. There's a reason why you've never seen a cat take a gun into work and shoot up the place. There really is.