As of late, there has been a lot of comparison between me, in a sexually aroused state, and a cat. A kitten, more acutely, but for the purposes of this post (this eventual metaphor), we're gonna stick with cat. Those of you who know me well can imagine how turned on I would have to be before I found the kitten comparison anything but completely repugnant.

And that's what it is, or what the word "kitten", in this context has come to mean: me, in a state so worked up and in the moment that I suspend my cynicism for that kind of drivel, and really, my criticism of really anything at all. Me, getting beyond that state of endless thought, fast-moving analysis, the sarcasm, the defensiveness, the stress.

I'm sure, for most of you, such a state isn't terribly hard to imagine. Myself, I have one definite account of it in recent memory, and I'm dubious that there'd be more than that if I looked farther back in the records. But then, I have a tendency to forget, quickly, how something felt, and only remember the facts and figures, some of the conversations and the visuals (though almost always in a third-person, movie-camera angle.)

I really think my sex life would benefit incredibly from learning how to meditate, how to shut off the go-go-go of my head. I bought a Psychology Today magazine a few weeks ago, an issue on sex and attraction. It sits, crumpled, on the floor of my bathroom, open to a page that has one of the oversized quotations from the surrounding article: "When a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent." I feel like the further information that must be in the article would be illuminating, if not entirely surprising, and I feel like I should read it, but by the time I get around to actually picking it up, I'm generally done with whatever I was in there for in the first place.

I do think it's interesting how often science seems to be running to catch up with things that seem completely obvious to the new-age set, though.


So, I've found another comparison between my sexual self and a cat tonight, because heaven forbid I should witness some natural phenomenon and not find a way to make it about me. Riding my bike tonight, I come across a cat toying with some small, helpless prey. Hypocritically, I ride up to stop it. Unlike the two or three other cats I've done this to on my late-night excursions in the past few weeks, this one didn't seem at all perturbed by me. I rode the bike up until I was a foot and half away from it, then had to get off to deal with it at closer range. The mouse it was toying with must have been injured by the time I got there, it would have been easy enough for me to scoop it up and bring it somewhere safe, but not wanting to get bit, I put my hand between the cat's head and the rodent. I expected, finally, for this to spook the cat, but I found the cat's head pushing resistantly against my hand. At first I thought it was stubborn, then I realized that it just wanted my affection. I pet it at length to distract it and give the mouse a chance to escape, and I remembered I that I know this cat-- not just metaphorically, either. This is the same cat that's often on this stretch of road, often comes up to me and demands my attention. Every time I pass it, it comes to greet me, it's colleague.

So there it is. I didn't find a delicate way to put it, but it's obvious, non? Both of us cats, catching and toying with prey, injuring or killing it, and for no good reason. We're both well fed, well taken care-of. But it's in our nature, to chase and destroy. It's in our nature to make a life into a plaything.


"I've been a bad, bad girl.
I've been careless with a delicate man.
And it's a sad, sad world.
When a girl will break a boy, just because she can."


There's probably more on my mind-- more about how much today sucked, how many little conversations have backed up in my system and will die before they have a chance to get out, like so many seedling maples, growing in a gutter. About missing my muse, the man who, if nothing else, has given me the will to write again (Talk to me in person, world, if you want know where to send that giant thank-you note.) About things he's got me thinking and talking about-- what I really want out of life, why I won't let myself have them.

But I have to finish my English homework, and get this damn mix CD done, once and for all. For him, of course. I do this as a token and a labor of love, finding just the right combination of songs, just the right order so that it builds and falls appropriately. I bet the cat never did that for the mouse.

In the end, I guess, that's what separates us from the animals.


On with it.