This is MPSIMS material if ever there was, but I figured I’d share it. I’ve started volunteering at Animal Friends, a local no-kill shelter. Today, there was a lovely cat called Miss Salem whose owner got engaged to a fellow who was allergic to cats. She chose him over Miss Salem (foolish girl!), which is how Miss Salem wound up at Animal Friends several months ago. I was over there socializing cats, meaning petting and playing with them when a woman who was cleaning the cages pointed out that Miss Salem was apparently too depressed to even get out of her cat bed while her cage was being cleaned. I went over, picked her up, cat bed and all, and sat in a large, comfy chair in that cat room and petted her, stroked her, scritched her, and generally fussed over her until she started purring. I agreed that it was a cruel, hard thing to be so abandoned and feel so unloved, and generally made much of her. I eventually had to set her down on the floor, still in her catbed, to see to something, and she wound up getting up and having a stroll about.
Here’s the ironic thing. I’ve been feeling pretty down and lonely myself recently, and, on the way home, it occurred to me that there would be worse things than someone picking me up, bedding and all, and giving me a cuddle on days when the world’s too bleak to get out of bed. Miss Salem will be loved and cared for until she finds a home where she won’t be thrown over for a fiance, and I’ll be visiting her a bit more regularly myself. I know none of the animals there have it easy, and a few of them have stories which are BBQ Pit-worthy. I also know I almost always do manage to get myself out of bed, but, as I said, I’m a bit down, lonely and frustrated by life. There are worse things than to have someone scritching you behind the ears and telling you everything will be all right, and right now, there’s no one to do that for me, at least no one in easy reach.
In my next life, there’s a lot to be said for coming back as a pampered housecat. Meow!!
My cats have informed me that they fully intend to come back as my cats in their next life. They find this more amusing than I do.
My horses would prefer to come back as my cats, since that would get them out of having to tote my carcass about the countryside, but they’ll settle for being reincarnated as my horses if necessary.
I’d like to come back as one of my own cats, but I’m not quite sure how to swing that.
I asked Ms Álainn, and she was very clear about it: a genetic human can never become a cat.
A cat that transgresses may be demoted to an (apparent) human for one or more lifetimes, after which it may be allowed to revert to felinity; but a genetic human—never. She seemed quite appalled at the very idea.
So if The Wallet’s claim is true, what we have is a bad kitty. “Bad,” of course, by cat standards.
(Seriously, it seems obvious that what we would like is to come back as a cat that is cared for by someone like us—but what percentage of the f. catus population does that represent? Based on what I’ve heard from shelter workers [one of whom was forced to quit because of the number of fluffballs she had to euthanize each spring], I’d venture to guess that it’s distressingly small.)
