I just realized that while children are dogs -- loyal
and
affectionate -- teenagers are cats. It's so easy to be
a dog owner.
You feed it, train it, boss it around. It puts its
head on your knee
and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting.
It bounds
indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.
Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns
into a big old
cat. When you tell it to come inside, it looks
amazed, as if
wondering who died and made you emperor. Instead of
dogging your
doorsteps, it disappears. You won't see it again
until it gets hungry
-- then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen
long enough to
turn its nose up at whatever you're serving. When you
reach out to
ruffle its head, in that old affectionate gesture, it
twists away from
you, then gives you a blank stare, as if trying to
remember where it
has seen you before.
You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think
something must be
desperately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so
distant, sort
of depressed. It won't go on family outings.
Since you're the one who raised it, taught it to fetch
and stay and
sit on command, you assume that you did something
wrong. Flooded with
guilt and fear, you redouble your efforts to make your
pet behave.
Only now you're dealing with a cat, so everything that
worked before
now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call
it, and it
runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps on the
counter. The more
you go toward it, wringing your hands, the more it
moves away.
Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you can
learn to
behave like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the
door, and let
it come to you. But remember that a cat needs your
help and your
affection too. Sit still, and it will come, seeking
that warm,
comforting lap it has not entirely forgotten. Be
there to open the
door for it.
One day your grown-up child will walk into the
kitchen, give you a big
kiss and say, "You've been on your feet all day. Let
me get those
dishes for you."
Then you'll realize your cat is a dog again.
