The Day I Accidently Talked With the Cat

It wasn’t the day I was talking to myself in the presence of the cat.

It wasn’t the day I talked at the cat.

It was the day the cat meowed and I mentally converted that sound to “You may feed me now.” and,

“Dude, you gotta give me five minutes.”
“I’m starving. You must feed me now.”
“Don’t be a dick. You can wait long enough for me to get a cup of coffee.”

And the conversation sort of devolved from there.

The problem was after two years of the pandemic, working from home, careful pod visits from my pod people, and using the same five TV shows (Venture Bros., Archer, Futurama, M*A*S*H, and West Wing) repeatedly for warm and familiar, unchallenging background noise, my everyday contact with humanity was at its lowest point, my social skills reflecting the lack. The lines of demarcation: weekday versus weekend, noise in my head versus creativity on a page, familiars versus friends; all smudged. My brain has just gently slipped into this cat-talking, time-fuzzy place.

Now, I love my pets and I am grateful for their companionship. But I don’t wheel my pets around in strollers, I don’t crochet little outfits (although this was considered during the darkest depths of Covid), and I don’t imagine they think of me as anything but the big stupid cat that dishes out food and affection. So the conversational slip was a bit of a wake up call. Allowing my mental processes and creativity to get all gooified can’t continue.

I have a firm grip on how biology works and thus, I am firm believer in getting any necessary vaccine I can get my hands on and using good old fashioned common sense disease prevention that’s appropriate for me. But it feels time to slowly peel off those layers of masking and allow people in close again; to shake hands and whisper in ears; to surface and come back to conversations out in the world. Meow.