The Story of keeping a Cat

I have two sister cats born to one child, one named sin, and the other named cos.

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when they first got the kittens from the adoption center, they were only two or three months old and childish, so naming became an important thing. They look so alike at first glance, and there are subtle dissimilarities that make me think it would be a sin if I can't reflect this in my name. I didn't want to call them sin and cos, at first. I always thought it was too straightforward. During the Spring Festival last year, a friend called on everyone to write a pair of Spring Festival couplets with their own major. I wrote "Tian Zeng time continuum, spring full universe orthogonal foundation". Sin and cos are exactly a pair of orthogonal bases. (but I haven't thought about it for a long time, but I haven't come up with a more suitable name. Later, when they were taken to be immunized, the veterinarian told the veterinarian their names, and the veterinarian asked, "Why not call them levorotation and dextrorotation (left-handed and right-handed)?" I don't know how to respond. 

Maybe it's because I can't remember the spelling of these two words myself. At that time, they were only the size of a slap, and they could barely be held up at the same time with one hand. When I first got home, I was afraid that they would not be familiar with the environment, so I temporarily kept them in the bathroom to familiarize them with the smell of cat litter pots and mine. They adapt to their new home without difficulty, drinking milk from kitten milk powder, going to the bathroom, covering their bowels with cat litter, and playing with each other or Resting in their spare time. After a week, I moved them to the living room along with the litter basin, and they spent the whole day nervously and excitedly exploring the new space, and then settled down. It only took me a little while to remember their subtle differences in appearance, and it was much more difficult and interesting to see the differences in character. When they first arrived at home, one was a little shy, while the other was careless and familiar. After thinking about it for a long time, I decided to call the first one sin, and the second cos, because in my mind cos is a more sunny positive function (it is an even function). It was only later that I realized that the correspondence between parity and extroversion and introversion is controversial, but since it was decided in the first place, I am not going to change it. As they grow up, first impressions of them gradually prove to be meaningless. I gradually realized that the kitten that made me feel a little shy and introverted at first was the more dominant of the two cats. It is more thoughtful, more robust (it can only be seen more clearly with the arrival of puberty), and more alert. I can't say which one is smarter because they have gradually developed different exclusive skills. 

Sin soon learned to jump up and hook the doorknob to open the bedroom door, but cos never did, but cos quickly figured out how to climb to the top of the bookshelf (it wasn't easy because the shelves were full of books and had to find an ingenious way to get to the top) and sin never went up once. In other ways, they are indistinguishable, but they are still a little different. Sin prefers to Rest on my stomach than cos, cos prefers rubbing my feet and licking my hair, and so on. They are like the same piece played by two pianists of different styles, at first glance, but there are differences everywhere in detail, and the difference is the most interesting part. At seven or eight o'clock in the morning, they would scratch the door outside the bedroom to wake me up (not necessarily because I was hungry, but sometimes they would also call me before dinner was finished the night before. (I get up and add breakfast to them and go to work. When they come home from work, they usually wait for me at the gate, yell affectionately as soon as they see me, follow me wherever they go, shuttling between my legs as if they wouldn't stop me until I tripped over.

 The time from work to Rest is when they are most active, playing, eating, licking themselves and each other, playing with me, and if I hide in the bedroom, they will relentlessly ask to come in and stay with me. After I Rest, they usually frolic in the living room by themselves for a while and then return to the silence in the middle of the night. This is not the first time I have a cat or even the first time I have a cat in New York. I used to have a snow-white adult cat for a short time. The cat is not a bad character, but does not like me, to be exact, can not realize what my existence means to it (or what its existence means to me). Later, he was adopted by a friend of mine. He was very intimate with each other and liked each other very much. People often sum up this difference as fate, and I believe there is something more complicated, but I don't know how to explain it. I don't like to exaggerate the emotions of animals. Human babies whose brain neurons in cats are no more than two years old have no self-awareness and do not feel secondary emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, and guilt. But cats' intimacy and acceptance of approved people are so real and specific that they can be understood without any knowledge of neurophysiology. For example, on this weekend afternoon, when I was typing in the sun, cos leaned over the top of the cat tree behind me, squinting at me to take a nap, his tail dangling slightly over my head. Sin rubbed around in my arms, trying to get my computer to make room for it. I couldn't find a comfortable position, so I had to climb to the window to see the scenery in the yard and occasionally turned my head to see what I was doing. Cats don't need me, but cats care about me. This is what the so-called acceptance as a part of oneself means. There are some things about cats that everyone who has been quietly with cats for some time will know. For example, they will twist themselves into various positions that people think are very uncomfortable and then stay comfortably. When you are relaxed and happy, your tail will rise upright to reveal your buttocks, while the tip of your tail will droop and sway slightly, like a flag. When rubbing people, they will gently sweep the skin with the tip of their tails. 

He is completely insensitive to music, treats all kinds of music equally, and can fall asleep to very loud music. I like running water. I like to lie on the windowsill and look down on the yard. It farts, but it doesn't sound. if there is any leftover food after you are full, you will empty it next to the bowl, which means you want to cover it up and then come back to eat it. The reaction to any little thing that looks interesting is to hold it and lie on it so that no one can see it, and a few seconds later you can't help but kick it out and play with it. For cats, rubbing, licking, and biting are all ways to express intimacy with people, and can't understand why people are afraid of bites. Some I think is the personality of my cat, such as: when eating and drinking water, I often pick it up with my hands and lick my hands instead of eating and drinking directly with my mouth. Even if you eat flowers and plants that will poison you (such as lilies and green pineapple) and feel sick, you will still go to play next time. I like to watch myself take a shower. If you think cat litter is not clean enough, refuse to use cat litter to cover urine and urine, but symbolically scratch the plastic wall of the cat toilet instead. The cry is not meowed, but different from each other. It's more like a baby version of "Whoa, whoa, whoa?" Sometimes I forget to put my tongue back after washing my face and licking my hair. Like to untie shoelaces and eat shoelaces. Every time I picked up cos and walked to sin, sin, I would run to the top of the cat tree and lie down and look at me in horror. But not the other way around. I never understood the source of this reflection. It is well known that cats do not regard their owners as their owners. 

But cats certainly don't just use people as feeding assistants. In my opinion, the relationship between cats and people is not a relationship between two species, but a relationship between two independent lives. When a cat gets along with a person, they are not getting along with the abstract person as an abstract cat, but the concrete cat is getting along with the concrete person. Of course, there are differences in appearance, personality, and IQ between them, but this difference is not a gap, but a bond. It is implicated in this relationship, making it unique, unpopularly, unmalleable, and exists only between this particular cat and this particular person, as if there is only one person and this cat in the world. Sometimes I do have this illusion as if the world only exists in this corner where I live, and three lives are looking at and accepting each other. Outside the window in front of me is the Hudson River, across the river is the newly capped new World Trade Center, and there are occasional ferries on the river. The narrow wooden trails by the river are full of people who come out to enjoy the bright weather in early spring. Some are running, some are walking with strollers, some are taking pictures, some are meditating. 

The trees outside the window grew almost transparent buds, the treetops shook gently in the breeze, and the squirrels jumped up and down. The sun slanted into the window through the branches, reflecting a delicate shadow on the back of the cat curled up by the window. The cat's body fluctuates slightly as it breathes, with the occasional flapping of its ears. This is the fragmented world of this moment in my life, and for the two cats, it is their whole world. When I first decided to adopt them, I was very hesitant because I wasn't sure if I could make enough effort. To be exact, I almost asserted that I couldn't do it. However, from winter to spring, I found that I had far more Guts than I expected. I don't know if I will accompany them to end their lives that's too far, even by my measure of life. For a person like me who hates making promises, I'm not even sure if I'll be with them next spring. But in any case, at least at this moment, on this sunny afternoon in New York in early spring, these two cats and I are in a small world, independent of each other, looking at each other, accepting each other, and recognizing each other as a part of our lives. That will never change. It is said that cats don't keep their memories for long, that is to say, I won't be so sad if they leave, which makes me feel much more at ease.