My cat is gross and useless but I love him (theoretically)

Apology #4: Capu

Cat, I like to think I don’t have favourites, but we’ve all noticed that I much prefer your brother over you. I suppose that saying “That’s Kato, he’s the better one” whenever strangers meet you two might have tipped you off. I know that introducing you as ‘the one who scratches all the hair off of his back because of his flea allergy and likes to wipe his nose on people’ doesn’t help you to make a great first impression. Here is the thing, though: you are a cat. This means you will survive, because, as xkcd has so wonderfully illustrated, human intelligence is inversely proportional to the human’s proximity to a cat. Ergo, by the time a human is near enough to realize that you are bloody, half-bald, covered in scabs, and like to use humans as your facial tissues, these humans lack the intelligence to realize what an unbalanced cat-human relationship they are about to enter into.

For instance, a week or so ago, a friend of mine insisted on cuddling with you even after I warned him that you were ugly and Kato was better then you. Then, this friend lay down on the living room floor and began drinking water out of an old cardboard juice can, even though I offered to get him a perfectly good glass of water from the kitchen. Considering this is peak shedding season for you, I can only assume that this juice can was full of clumps of your cat hair, probably coated in a mixture of dead cat-skin flakes and old concentrated juice droplets. And he drank water out of that. I can only blame you for this lapse in his judgment. Not only are you scabby, snotty and bald, but you also diminish the intelligence levels of my friends.

Anyway, as you can see, what I’m trying to say here is that I’m sorry that you are so gross. I am sorry, kitty! Remember that I do still pet you, knowing what you are. And I love you! Though not nearly as much as your brother, or most other things on my kitchen table, including the half-used pad of college-rule paper you are sleeping on top of. And when you’re in the kitchen sink and I turn the water on full blast, that’s always most definitely an accident—I just didn’t notice your 15 pounds of hairy kitty flesh sitting directly beneath the tap! And so I’m sorry for that, too.

Love,
Amy
who still doesn’t quite seem to get what an apology is.

Apology 3: My Dear Nephew

Dear nephew,

I am sorry that I have repeatedly described you as a hairless mouse, a monkey, a disturbing body infestation, and an alien. I may have overreacted to you slightly. Let me explain about the latter two insults. You see, when my sister described the way you were trying to claw through her ribcage with your tiny fingernails, my mind immediately leaped to such pop culture classics as the Alien series (while I am aware that you are currently too young to know the Alien series, I am sure you will one day see and appreciate the magnitude of the early insults I heaped upon you). I was aware that you were, in fact, a human, and not a razor-toothed extraterrestrial worm, and I managed to avoid describing you as such in my sister’s presence. However, I could not avoid describing you in this way to a few of my friends, co-workers, and a variety of strangers at a bus stop one day.

As for the hairless mouse and monkey metaphors: most mammals arrive on this earth after being crumpled up into a tiny ball and forced through an opening roughly 1/16 the size that they are. For this reason, I do maintain that, before they are properly unfolded and ironed flat, most smushed-up little newborns look relatively the same: something like a deflated red balloon dipped in honey and rolled on the floor of a hairdressing salon-- regardless of size or species. However, I will admit that, when I saw the first photos of you, I was struck by how cute you were (even though you had been out in the real world for less than an hour!). And, now that I have met you, I can agree that you are very sweet—adorable, even!—and positively humanoid.

Love,

Amy