How to Think Like a Cat - Stephane Garnier 2018
Your Cat Knows When to Say No (and Readily Does So)
’I will NOT go away. I do NOT wish to go!’
DR SEUSS, THE CAT IN THE HAT
Cats hate being told what to do. Obey orders? Not for them!
’If that’s what you want, get a dog!’ they mutter.
Stubborn to their paw-tips, cats will seldom undertake an action purely because they’ve been ordered to do so.
Do we humans like obeying orders? Of course not. And yet we put up with them all day long, both at work and at home. And that’s not even taking into account the many indirect orders conveyed by those social codes we ’must’ follow to the letter.
Learn to say ’no’, as a cat does.
Stop endlessly enduring other people’s needs, and following directives that don’t suit you, or you’ll end up living the sort of submissive life where you always say ’yes’ when really you would like to say ’no’. Whether it be for a small act of kindness that then turns into a regular custom you find you can no longer stop doing; or taking on tasks that are not part of your job description with such regularity that your colleagues and superiors come to expect it of you, with no offer of financial compensation for the extra workload. Enough!
Learn to say ’no’ occasionally to your children, your partner, your boss and your friends, not out of pure selfishness but to preserve your freedom of action and your time. If you always say ’yes’ to everyone, how much time will you have left for yourself, to carry out your own tasks or to satisfy your own pleasures?
Learning to say ’no’ means knowing how to preserve your time, your capacity for action and your life, as well as winning the respect of your family, friends and colleagues, who sometimes take advantage of this inability to say ’no’.
The balance must be restored between orders and small acts of kindness. None of us should be permanently at the service of anyone else.
’NO means no! Is that clear?’
Food for Thought
’Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods’
P.G. WODEHOUSE