I was taking a bath this afternoon, as is my wont (habit, custom, etc.) and mama came at me with a wet Kleenex and took my kitty tears away. I am amazingly docile when she does this, and it’s nice to have a little grooming from someone other than myself, but you know, sometimes I just like to do it myself and if I don’t get that little bit behind the ear or at the corner of the eye, so be it. I’ll live.
I’ve been around those parents who, for example, when I’ve asked one of their tiny small kid-sized anthros, “How’s it goin’, dude (or dude-ess)” and, suddenly, one or the other of his(her) parents runs over and says, “Oh, he’s (or she’s) fine—today he (she) made a drawing in kindergarten all by himself (herself)” and I say, “Hey, mama or papa, let the kid answer for him (her)self—he has a tongue, he has a voice and he may or may not wish to tell me about the kindergarten drawing; he may wish to tell me that he was daydreaming in art class about having a kitty just like me or about why paper dolls come out in a row when you cut them a certain way or WHATEVER! But let the kid TALK, please, and tell me the story himself.
“Oh, but he’s (she’s) so shy” they say, and I say, “Yeah? Well, the one helpful way to get over that is to speak when spoken to and have someone (like me, of course) really listen to what you might have to say!”
I, as an independent type of animal, feline and proud of my ability to (if I were pressed to do it, that is) stalk and tear the throats out of my dinner, take my own baths, clean up my own doo-doo (les besoins in French-much more elegant but doo-doo is doo-doo and that’s that and we all understand one another, no?) and in general, take care of my own small world without having to rely on mama and papa too much.
(Doggies, for example, are not quite as gifted as we, but hey, you can’t choose who your parents are, can you? Plus they do a lot of licking at certain parts so at least that part of them is clean—relatively clean, that is…).
And as more and more little kid-creatures come to visit me, I think to myself, “I wonder who that little thing would be without so much attention from everyone else trying to solve his problems, tell him what to think, how to answer questions put to him (and him alone!)?
Let the kid think and answer for himself, for heaven’s sake, or make his own mistakes if he’s doing something not quite the way the parents would like it done. Give him LIBERTY, as long as it’s not endangering his life or others’, and think of all the neat ideas that could be generated by that little developing brain being left ALONE to think about how to work life out!
Well, so I let mama take away my kitty tears to make her feel good, but she knew, I could tell, that she had overstepped her position as caregiver and that I would clean my eyeballs very well, thank you. And I did.
And then I gave her kitty-kisses to let her know that I was growing up and grooming by myself without any help and that I would always love her, especially if she would let me find my own path.
A great gift.
