The Cat's Out of the Bag

Not many of you would be aware of a little rom-com TV show that aired from 1997. Just recently I was watching an episode from season 2, ‘The Cat’s Out of the Bag’. In this episode, Dharma agrees to take care of her friend’s humat for a few days. Yup, you read that right. Humat, is a portmanteau word (that I made up. Don’t use it in your essays) which stands for human cat. This humat, better known as Mr. Boots is actually a human who behaves completely like a cat.

Mr. Boots here, does not only purr and mew, but also rubs against legs and eats cat food and gets stuck in trees. Although the show offers no explanation for this particular behavior, I’m afraid I might know what happened.

The man, like me, must have had a cat that he loved dearly and spent a lot of time with. He might have followed his cat around and pretended to be one during playtime, walking on all fours and ending down to its height, just for fun. Oh no, don’t look at me. I don’t do that. (Or do I? You’ll never know.) He must have been with the cat, loving and caring and sometimes following it around for years. After some years, however, the cat must have lived its life as much as it could have hoped to and was sent away to farm (no, pets don’t die, ever.)

The cat’s departure left the man in a catatonic state where he wanted to mourn but at the same time didn’t want to accept the cold, hard truth. So, he found out an escape route. He decided that the cat loved him so much that it had left a part of its soul with him, somewhere inside him. He endeavored do justice with its soul and started behaving like a cat.

At first, it was unusual, almost absurd for him but with a few years practice and complete isolation from human contact, he managed to burn all the brain cells of the human part of him and actually became a cat.

You must be wondering why I put so much thought into it. Well, it just happens that I am owned by a cat (all cat lovers must know that you can never own a cat, it owns you). I spend so much time with her that my friends sometimes comment, “You have started looking like her”, or “you sleep all day, just like your cat” or the one from my roommate (admit it, roommates know you better than anyone) that really led me to understand the concept of Mr. Boots, “You are going to turn into your cat someday”.

You might find it trivial but I was terrified. What if it were to happen to me?

What are your concerns regarding your relationship with your pet? Tell us in comments.