No offenses, but I had recently done an interesting parallel between cats and humans.I have a 1-year-old grey male cat. He’s quite a normal cat, not particularly special, unless for his gentle behavior and big aware eyes. Thus, he’s my dear cat. I jokily named him Gattaccio, which in Italian means something like “bad cat”, that‘s to compensate his sweetness!

After we nurtured Gattaccio we adopted Marvin, a 6-month-old black fluffy purring cat, already nurtured. Marvin came with a big belly, while Gattaccio has always been slim and elegant. Voracious of attention as well as of food, Marvin seemed to be afraid of not having food enough, therefore jumping from his bowl of food to the another one, eating with his open mouth and tucking his head next to Gattaccio’s. The latter patiently didn’t mind. He never struggled for food, but have always lived in peaceful and loving families. The one he was born in was led by a caring young man who had Gattaccio’s mother and siblings, plus two medium size happy hopping poodles and a free ferret. Thus Gattaccio is a lucky guy.

Now, Marvin must have come from a disordered and crowed environment (he arrived to the Pet Supermarket from the local county Animal Care), where too many different people must have taken care of him and a bunch of other cats. His playfulness reminds me of those children who move a lot, pay little attention and are actually very confused about who they are and where they are.

As it should be, Marvin is slowly getting to understand that nobody will steal his food, that he is safe and sound and will continue like that (I wish I could have this feeling of stability in life!).

But, something happened. Both of them seem to be starving three times a day, or even more. Gattaccio, the slim and reserved one who rarely emptied his bowl of food, is now becoming voracious. His resembling Marvin.

Why?

No, I don’t think it’s imitation, neither jealousy or insecurity. I believe that the cause is having been both of them nurtured. The physical lost must have prompted another kind of physiological response. I see many fat cats in good homes, but I’ll try to control mine.

We can see the physical reality as a metaphor of the psychological one, which I find extremely instructive. Because everything is connected and there is no body without a soul, the physical castration corresponds to the lost of one’s creativity. Cat’s creativity means mainly reproduction, human creativity is much more than that. What is a human being without his or her own creativity?

Inventiveness and the ability to change, do, create – whatever moves the world around in a progressive way is the mark of the human kind. When this is lost, it only remains the physical part of life, a body. A hungry body, or better, a hungry silenced soul reduced to fulfill itself with surrogates of its real food.

Emptied of a proactive life, a human is doomed to eat, eat, and eat. A sad substitute for the absence of real balls.