Here is a text found yesterday evening on Alain Lipietz’s Facebook page. Alain Lipietz was a Member of the European Parliament during twelve years. He was candidate in the presidential election of 2002. He is still a very active politician in his town and in his political movement EELV (Green Party). Those who like cats, and more widely animals, will be deeply interested.
” We have just buried our small pussy Miah. She died from old age. The vet had even given us some drops of morphine to administer to her. It wasn’t necessary.
She was used to settling down on my knees to watch TV. The day before yesterday she nestled against my thigh, her head buried under my buttock, and yesterday she was not even strong enough to do that. She put her head under a pillow and began to getting colder. I covered her with my pullover, after having moistened her mouth.
I am more and more perplexed in face of this contract of affection between different species. Miah was rather silly, while the other cats with whom I lived were very intelligent, pushing me at understanding more and more complex messages. Miah didn’t. She only knew how to mew, roar even to demand caresses, when I worked, when I washed the dishes, when my hands were busy doing something…
I tried to explain her that it is not like that that a female obtains what she wishes, nothing could be done. She had simply understood that I loathed bending so she climbed on the sofa to be at the level of my hand, which a sort of language a little more elaborate than those roarings.
But she compensated by retaining a head of lovely kitten. I had eventually given up explaining her that she didn’t do things right. I had agreed to be – here-for-carressing, as a duty of state.
And that’s what I have difficulty to understand. I read books, articles on animal intelligence, the “Theory of mind” and now on the intelligence of plants and vegetable sensibility. Never anything on affection (except on learning of monkeys’ maternal tenderness) in particular between different species.
What do pussies expect from us? Why do we have to accept with patience their requirements? Why watching over them in their agony? As a metaphor of our being-for-death? What will remain of us is not our books, the time we spent acting for the Planet, but the concrete tenderness to our close friends, even if it is a ball of fluff that stretches her head out for caresses? “
On his blog Alain Lipietz had already published a text of reflection at the time of the death of his previous kitten.
http: // lipietz.net/Reflexions-sur-la-question-Chats
