I am beginning to wonder if I like cats because they are needy the same way that i am or if I have begun to assimilate or emulate their psychology instead. The constant need for contact and affection: I wonder if, behind it all, that’s really what my ego is. If you pare everything down, if you strip out the unessentials, what is left, at the core? I remember the attention I would get from my parents after spending an afternoon drawing pictures. There are times when I feel like I have transferred that whole project onto society and photography:i take pictures or create art, and expect society to shower me with accolades. And then I will feel wanted. I will feel there is some place for me in this world. My role becomes clear.

I think, in some way, I was harmed by having too good of a childhood: I was–or rather, am–a spoiled only child. There was constant attention and affection from my mother. She was doting in a way, but not just by pampering me with food, though there was that. I think it was the feeling of absolute security–the absolute security of knowing that you were wanted, and that you belonged–that has now, ironically, created an absence that cannot be filled.

When I see my needy and clingy cats calling for attention, I never hesitate to give them what they want–I “parent” them much the way that my parents cared for me. I spoil them with food, let them sleep under woolen blankets, and will scratch and pet them whenever they want me to. I suppose that this is, in some fashion, a surrogate family for me: a way of continuing or resuscitating the emotional economy that I am used to, a way of reviving the emotional autarky of the nuclear family.

Of course, we all have that need, but to different extents: and in that regard, we are all cats. There is no point in pining for the prelapsarian: on a regular day, that is, a day in the course of which I will feel completely lost and abandoned, I will at least have the company of my two cats, who will, without asking, jump on my lap or cuddle next to me in bed. They say that cats are only loyal to their food bowls, but I think they’ve gotten a bad rap. Anyone who lives with cats can at least fool themselves into thinking that some of this love is unconditional. It is not like how it is with us humans: tremulous requests that form in our minds but that never make it past our lips. The cats are quite comfortable in asking and demanding for this kind of attention. They give less than they receive, true, but they speak to that part of the psyche that, when in pain,
calls out in the very same way.

In the course of these one-way transactions you find that giving isn’t so bad, and that giving is a way of ameliorating your own need to receive or get something in return. Nothing ever is,
in the end, one-way.

Will I ever get what I want from this world? Will I ever be recognized for whatever talents God, my parents, and my UC Berkeley (go Bears!)/Stanford education has bestowed on upon me? Or will I, like most other people, get swallowed by the huge anonymity machine that eats through most of humanity and human history? At this moment, I don’t know the answer to that. But I feel that rather than waiting for the answer, I am actually, even through this non-action, making an answer. This veers dangerously close cliches like John Lennon’s about life being what happens while you’re making other plans.

SOme of these conclusions came about in a weird way, having to do with the differences in the various women that I have dated and loved over the years: some, like my parents, are quite doting, quite “ti tie” as we say in Chinese, whereas others are more independent, and cater less to the man’s whims and needs. I hope that none of this strikes you too much as sexist. I don’t feel entitled to anything because I am a man. I feel entitled to things–love, attention–because that is what I am used to, from growing up, not to mention a huge innate need which might involve scouring my genome for clues more than psychoanalyzing my youth. In any case, I have dated quite a heterogenous group of ladies and each has delivered their love and affection in various different forms of packaging. Sometimes you like the one more than the other…years later you change your mind. There is something maddeningly mercurial about this, and stripped down to its essentials, you feel like you are watching the seemingly chaotic evolution of you yourself…and at the risk of sounding hopelessly narcissistic the evolution of the personality, the dynamics of the ego–IS something interesting. That is whole point of introspection, is it not?

Cats allow themselves to be petted. They hardly ever reject you, if you are persistent enough. And they are always pleased by the attention. So it’s true that what I am describing here is a refraction of human nature: but its also a distortion. If we were all like this, all the time–nothing would ever get accomplished. But for what it’s worth, these cats allow me to regress to this more primitive state–one that we cannot stay in, but without which we would most likely go mad.