The PAWSOME! Collection: TWO BOOKS IN ONE (Paperback)

Enjoy a sample from PAWSOME! Head Bonks, Raspy Tongues & 101 Reasons Why Cats Make Us So, So Happy

#31: CATS SHOWER YOU WITH SURPRISE GIFTS JUST BECAUSE THEY THINK YOU’RE AWESOME

One of the very great joys in life is receiving gifts. Unfortunately, gift-giving occasions come around all too infrequently—and too often with disappointing results. (Show of hands if your junk drawer contains no fewer than five gift cards entitling you to $25 worth of merchandise in some store you’ve never spent so much as $1 in.)

And even assuming you’re one of the lucky few who can count on opening a delightful box of Just What You Wanted on Christmas or birthdays, how long has it been since someone surprised you with a thoughtful present given to commemorate nothing in particular? When was the last time somebody handed you a gift-wrapped box on a random Tuesday and said, I’m giving you this present just because I think you rock?

Do you have to think back more than ten years to answer that question? Or is the answer maybe, just maybe, never?

If you live with a cat, I’m guessing your answer is more like, A surprise gift? Why, I got one only last week! And that’s because cats adore bringing their humans considerate little love tokens for no other reason than to tell us, as clearly as if they’d said it in words, Hey, you—you’re WONDERFUL.

True, our cats will rarely bring us something we would have picked out for ourselves. Cats, after all, are working within certain insurmountable limitations, such as not having charge accounts or access to Amazon Prime delivery. Also, a cat’s worldview will differ in fundamental ways from a human’s, tending to veer more toward the practical. Sparkly baubles are all well and good, but something you can eat—now that’s solid gold, baby!

Which is why your felicitous feline will considerately place a small mouse or songbird—or, in the case of my own strictly indoor cats, plastic-and-felt reproductions of same—on your pillow, instead of a diamond bracelet or silk Hermés scarf.

But it’s the thought that counts, and the thought in this case contains just as much downright, true-blue love as if it really were diamonds or silk. That fake mouse or disturbingly real songbird {{shudder}} is your cat’s way of letting you know that he was thinking about you for no darn reason other than the fact that you—yes, you—are so indescribably marvelous that he can’t help but think about you All. The. Time.

Who could put a price tag on that?

PAWSOME!

Enjoy a sample from YOU are PAWSOME! 75 Reasons Why Your Cats Love You, and Why Loving Them Back Makes You a Better Human

#33: YOU LET YOUR CAT FOLLOW YOU INTO THE BATHROOM

I’ve heard some ailurophiles say they have a closer and more intimate relationship with their cat than with their significant other.

If I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that—close as my husband and I are—there are any number of intimate things that my cats, and only my cats, will ever see me do. Some are of the goofy, dancing-around-the-house-in-your-underwear variety that you can’t quite bring yourself to let anybody see. But most take place in that most private of private spaces, the sanctum sanctorum of every household.

I refer, of course, to the bathroom.

There are things I do in the bathroom that my husband has never seen and will never see (if there’s any god at all). It’s not that I worry my husband would love me less if he happened to see me sitting on the toilet or shaving my armpits. (Although seeing me do both simultaneously might take some of the bloom off the rose.)

It’s just that I’d rather engage in these activities without any kind of an audience at all. And for that reason it took me a minute to adjust to having my cats with me in the bathroom—and, furthermore, to having a cat with me in the bathroom at all times, no matter what I happened to be doing.

My Vashti—the second cat I ever adopted—used to sit at my feet and watch with rapt attention as I applied makeup, and her successor, my current cat Fanny, enjoys doing so to this day. My clingy Clayton, unusually for a cat, never needs or wants any time alone, and seems to resent even the implication that I might desire five cat-free minutes in my day. In his old age, my cat Homer used to curl up atop the clothes hamper while I showered, and snooze peacefully in the warmth of the steam. Like an old man taking a shvitz, I would tell my husband.

Perhaps you also have an instinctive desire for strict bathroom privacy. But perhaps you, like me, find yourself wondering, Is there really any good reason to lock my cats out? Especially when it seems to make them so happy to be in here?

And that, as always, is the best and final argument.

How could you bring yourself to deny your cat those small moments of joy she appears to experience when sitting at your feet, looking up at you intently as you masque your face, or curl your eyelashes, or clasp that errant chin hair firmly 'twixt your tweezers and give it a good yank?

And it’s not like there’s anybody else who could sit there watching you do these things and still maintain a glow in their eyes that clearly says, You’re the most fascinating creature on the face of the earth.

PAWSOME!