Tigers in Cages

Our oldest cat is 19 years old, yet with some regularity she will tear through the house for a couple of minutes like a much younger cat: up the back stairs, down the hall, down the front stairs, through the dining room… I never know why, exactly, but one theory is that cats get bored and do this to amuse themselves. I think that might be right. Domestic cats are, from what I’ve experienced, still very much wild animals. A house cat is a small tiger in a large cage.

Just the other night our other cat caught a mouse in our bedroom. We turned the lights on to assess the situation and he was headed for the door with it in his mouth—no doubt to dispose of his quarry somewhere more private. Of course, there’s always a chance that the mouse will escape, because our cats aren’t necessarily hungry enough to eat a mouse immediately; it’s an evening of entertainment as well. We quickly closed the door to prevent his (the cats) escape and he immediately assumed a posture that asserted he wasn’t interested in sharing: a steady and slight downward gaze as he stood motionless, splitting his attention between managing the mouse and carefully observing our movements to take it from him: a wild thing, possessive of its prey.

Tigers in cages. Ours enjoy long hours of sleep on sunlit couches, specially-purchased pet beds or, preferably, fresh laundry. But there is restlessness as well: refusing to sit still in my lap while I work, pleas for attention, for stimulation, for a simulacrum of hunting and stalking. Pleas for a release of the animal energy that builds like water behind a dam.

We are tigers in cages* and when we dream, we dream of freedom.

* I know we’re not “tigers”, we’re “monkeys”. But “monkeys in cages” just isn’t as evocative, and keeping monkeys and tigers in the same cage seems like a questionable zoological practice.