Feline Mutiny

This may sound a little strange, but if you are reading it, you probably know me, and as such are used to me being strange. So here goes. I only ever feed my cats chicken or fish cat food. I’m a vegetarian, and they are not, but I still have a thing about not wanting to feed them mammals.

See, I told you it was strange.

Anyway, I accidentally bought beef cat food this week. I didn’t notice until I’d already opened the can. By that time, they were circling me with looks that said they were going to eat me if I didn’t hand over the contents of the can. So I set it out, apologizing to them for getting the wrong food.

And guess what? They ate it. Voraciously. They acted like they’d never known anything so good could exist. The little traitors.

Because I practice metablogging (my blog knows it is a blog), this is the part where I have to comment on the fact that I’ve gotten to the part where I need a point.

So here’s my point.

It’s very easy to forget where the boundaries between ourselves and others begin and end. It’s very easy to forget where we’ve imposed our own values, ideals, or preferences on others. It’s very easy to assume we know what those we love like or want or care about. Then when they don’t fall in line with what we expect, we feel betrayed. We aren’t betrayed. We just feel that way because that is human nature. We’re all little control freaks at heart, whether we mean to be or not.

I have four more cans of beef cat food. I’m thinking about donating them to the Humane Society so I can get right back to pretending my little traitors don’t really care to partake of mammal-feasting.