Yoga Cats

I'm telling you— I'm turning into a crazy cat lady. I talk to my cats. I play games with my cats. I have a special spot for my cats on the bed. Adam and I refer to one another as "daddy" and "mommy" when addressing the cats directly.

I even do yoga with my cats.

Apparently, my cats like yoga! I've been using it for stress relief, and every single time I get out the mat, the cats run over to stare at me with bemused, fascinated expressions.

Lenore even appears to do the poses with me. When I lie on my back, she lies on hers; when I sit up to do seated positions, she sits up with me.

Charlotte will usually watch nearby, although occasionally she will become incredibly agitated and alarmed if I lie still on the floor for too long, and will begin to paw at me and yowl. Sometimes she even pulls on my hair with her teeth. My theory is that she thinks I'm lying still on the ground because hurt; after all, whenever I'm very upset and I start to cry, she does the same thing. Once Adam was tickling me on the couch and I was squeaking with shrill laughter, and Charlotte seemed to think I was screaming and that Adam was hurting me, because she RACED into the room, terrified, and began mewing hysterically and pawing at my head.

My cats are not people, and I'm aware of that. But they ARE intelligent, and they DO have emotions, and they even recognize words and phrases. I think most animals do.

For example, I was hanging out with a few other seminary gals this evening, and the hostess' dog was really, really shy. When I asked why she was so shy, I was told that she was originally from Cuba, and had been horribly mistreated as a puppy.

"If a car is going down the street blaring merengue music, she becomes upset," the hostess told me. "If there's a guy outside the building speaking Spanish, she freaks out."

It's not the first bilingual dog I've ever met, either— when I was in France, the family I stayed with had a dog who had once belonged to an English lady. The dog responded to commands in both English and French, and knew certain words (walk, dinner, toy) in both languages. Sometimes, that damn dog was the only person in the whole house with whom I could converse in English.

I know that we anthropomorphize animals to a large extent, but still, it's remarkable how intelligent they are, and how startlingly human they can seem at times.