“Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets,” a hit song from the Broadway musical “Damn Yankees.” My wife has a cat named Lola who proves it every day.
Lola and I don’t agree on much. One thing we do agree on emerges every dinnertime: I want her to quit gnawing on my ear so I can feed her, and so does she.
On most other topics, she thinks I’m full of baloney. Those who don’t live with cats probably can’t conceive how a person and a cat can argue. Those who do live with cats understand that there are many ways for a person to express opinions to a cat and almost as many for cats to reciprocate.
Over the years, Lola and I have come to recognize each other’s means of expression. Which is too bad since we’re almost always coming from opposite sides of every issue.
Every now and then, she’s right. For example, she insists that she’s a more creative eater than I am. She says she has mastered eating virtually upside down, while I am always able to chew and swallow while in an upright position.
I immediately fed her to test her hypothesis, and I’ll be darned if she wasn’t right. She stood there on all fours, head facing down into the bowl. She took a mouthful, chewed and swallowed uphill.
In turn, I took a bite of a banana, chewed it up and, before swallowing it, aimed my head down at the floor to match her predicament. She was right — I practically choked trying to coax the banana up my throat because my head was pointed in the wrong direction.
And she’s always harping on how athletic she is compared with me. She’s pretty good; I’ve accepted that from the beginning. She can leap five feet into the air to ride on my shoulders. I can’t leap five inches into the air to ride on hers.
And she can zoom up a flight of stairs before I can get up out of my chair.
But there’s more to being an athlete than soaring through the air. The other day, I told her we should take my wristwatch and time each other sprinting from one end of the house to the other. I was counting on my much longer stride. I’d go first.
By the time I’d reached the other end of the house, she’d fallen asleep on my watch.
So it was her turn. I gave the “go” signal as I focused on the second hand of my watch, but before the second hand had made its first move, she was leaning on the back wall.
So I’ll acknowledge maybe she’s a better athlete than I am. After all, she has four feet to my two.
But she’s always telling me that not only is she more athletic than I am, but she’s smarter, better looking and cuddlier, and my wife likes her better. But I refused to concede all those points. I couldn’t concede she’s smarter than I am.
All right, so I never knew she could outswallow me, but winning one argument doesn’t prove you’re smarter at everything.
“Overall, between the two of us, I am the smarter one,” I said.
“Merow,” she said, which means, “You’re the big dope.”
I was furious. “You’re the big dope,” I snarled back.
“You’re the big dope,” she repeated, to which I replied, “You’re the big dope.”
We then went back and forth, face to face, for the next couple of hours.
“Merow. (You’re the big dope.)”
“You’re the big dope.”
Until, finally, she pulled a fast one on me.
“Meroow,” she snuck in, which means “I’M the big dope.”
I fell for it: “I’m the big dope,” I shot back without thinking.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, “Thanks for admitting it.”
Realizing the trap I’d just plunged into, I mopped my brow and stalked off to get another banana, as she chuckled and strutted upstairs to take another nap.
Okay, so I’ll have to admit it. She can run faster and jump higher than I can. Maybe she can even win a debate. But wait till suppertime. Let’s see her get the top off that cat food can without any fingers.