Your Cat Always Remains Natural

How to Think Like a Cat - Stephane Garnier 2018

Your Cat Always Remains Natural

Your Cat’s Day

8.30: A RELAXING EVENING

· Cushions, sofa, a delight for any cat looking to relax after a hard day.

· ’What are they still doing at their desk, bashing away frenetically at the keyboard?’ your cat surely wonders, before leaping up and walking over the keys, tickling your nose with its tail. And you grumble because you have to ’get this thing finished’.

· Your cat serves to remind you that there is a time for everything, for work, for family, for your partner, for relaxation, and for your cat of course.

· It’s 8.30 p.m. and your cat feels that it is no longer time to ’get this thing finished’, but to ’shut up shop’.

· I didn’t listen to Ziggy most of the time when he stretched out on the desk beside me after umpteen comings and goings between my lap and the keyboard, rubbing his nose on the corner of the screen. It was 10 or 11 p.m. and I was getting bogged down in my writing without really making much progress.

· Who was right at that moment in time? A relaxing evening lost for little actual work.

· I now impose a rule upon myself: 9 p.m. at the latest, I step away from my desk. Have a pleasant evening!

’A cat may go to a monastery, but she remains a cat’

ETHIOPIAN PROVERB

No false seduction, role-play or borrowed style: your cat never puts on a costume or assumes a particular attitude when approaching you. Whatever it desires or requests, your cat will always do it in line with its personality.

Your cat is honest, as we have seen, because it’s much simpler that way. So why would your cat put on an act in order to be taken for something it is not? What good would it do them?

And what good does it do us when we do it — often out of lack of confidence? Nothing. We are lying to ourselves again, and we are lying to others. And the worst is that we are convinced that this disguise we’ve just put on, to deal with a particular situation or certain individuals, will be more credible than what we are deep down inside. What stupidity!

How can a cardboard-cutout film set replace the majesty of a real mountain or a raging ocean?

When we lie — out of fear of not measuring up — we make ourselves vulnerable to being seen through, devoid of either charm or charisma.

There is nothing plasticky about our natural state. It radiates everything that we are. It makes us beautiful, attractive and credible in other people’s eyes.

Being natural is the pledge of what we are, with no sham or subterfuge. Knowing how to remain natural in every situation and accepting who we are remains the best way not only to be appreciated but to really impress people. Never underestimate yourself.

Remain natural in all circumstances.