The cat's got us in the bag

Who understands cats? Dogs are easy. You know what you're getting when you buy, say, a bull terrier. Even a layman will recognise the troubled soul of a kicked mongrel, the authoritarian longing of a German shepherd for orders or the patient disposition of a child-loving St Bernard. Praise, stroke and play with a dog and he will love you. Train him and he will follow you. Neglect him and he will annoy you. The dog is the open book among pets.
But the cat. Its behaviour goes beyond our horizon. The way it lies down on the keyboard when you want to write something. The way it struggles when you want to push it away. The indifference with which she walks away when it suits her. The autonomy with which she stays away. The willingness with which it returns!
You can lead a horse; the cat is free. You can call the dog by its name; the cat will ignore you. Why? What are the underlying reasons that allow it to dispose of us - and not the other way round?
The idea that we have domesticated the cat over thousands of years is absurd. I'm sure that if the animal were bigger, it would first allow itself to be stroked and then tear us apart. After all, don't all cat owners recognise the moments when a pet becomes a predator? Suddenly it startles and looks around nervously, as if seeing everything for the first time. Like a micro version of the Bengal tiger, it goes on the hunt for a speck of dust, a dripping tap, its brother or its own tail. Until the attack slowly subsides and the cat, not unlike a predator, stretches out in the sun. How it lies there in pleasure, shamelessly turned on its back, fearlessly exposing its delightful belly fur. Or curled up cosily, her tail wrapped around her own paws, as if she could do what we can't: like herself.
Oh, and when she finally tells you with her siren-like purr that it is now allowed to stroke her. And how this purring turns your head until you want to murmur silly things in her ear and dip your face in her warm fur. She is superior to you. She makes you submissive. She puzzles you. She takes your mind away. Every other pet needs you; but you need the cat.
There's no other way to put it, cats have therapeutic powers. It reflects its owner's character better than any psychoanalyst. It loosens the toughest knots in the souls of frustrated teenagers. Even the overbearing enthusiasm of an eight-year-old («Yay, you're so cute») is met with the stoic phlegm of a koi carp.
What I want to say: We have two new flatmates.

Mikael Krogerus is an author and journalist. The Finn, father of a daughter and a son, now lives in Biel and writes regularly for the Swiss parenting magazine Fritz+Fränzi and other Swiss media.