When Children Turn Into Cats

I JUST REALIZED THAT while children are dogs, loyal and affectionate,
teenagers are cats.
It's so easy to be the owner of a dog. You feed it, train it, boss it
around and it puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a
Rembrandt painting. It follows you around, chews the dust covers off the
Great Literature series if you stay too long at the party and bounds
inside with enthusiasm when you call it in from the yard.
Then, one day 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 footsteps, it disappears. You won't see it again
until it gets hungry, when 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.
It sometimes conks out right after breakfast. It might steel itself to the
communication necessary to get the back door opened or the car keys handed
to it, but even that amount of dependence is disagreeable to it now.
Stunned, more than a little hurt, you have two choices. The first -- and
the one chosen by many parents -- is that you can continue to behave like
a dog owner. After all, your heart still swells when you look at your dog,
you still want its company, and naturally when you tell it to stop digging
up the rose bushes, you still expect it to obey you, pronto.

IT PAYS NO attention now, of course, being a cat. So you toss it onto the
back porch, telling it it can stay there and think about things, mister,
and it glares at you, not deigning to reply. It wants you to recognize
that it has a new nature now, and it must feel independent or it will die.
You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be
desperately wrong with it. It seems so anti-social, so distant, so 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, naturally you assume that whatever is wrong with it is something
you did, or left undone. 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 exactly 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.
Your second choice is to do the necessary reading, and learn to behave
like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door, and let it come to
you. If you must issue commands, find out what it wants to do, and command
it to do it.

BUT REMEMBER THAT a cat needs affection, too, and your help. Sit still,
and it will come, seeking that warm, comforting lap it has not entirely
forgotten. Be there to open the door for it.
Realize that all dog owners go through this, and few find it easy. My
glance used to travel from my cat Mike looking regal and aloof on the
fence to a foolish German shepherd on the sidewalk across the street,
jumping for joy simply because he was getting to go outside. Now I miss
the little boy who insisted I watch "Full House" with him, and who has now
sealed him into a bedroom with a stereo and TV. The little girl who wrote
me mash notes and is now peeling rubber in the driveway.
The only consolation is that if you do it right, let them go, be cool as a
cat yourself, one day they will walk into the kitchen and give you a big
kiss and say, you've been on your feet all day, let me get those dishes
for you -- and you'll realize they're dogs again.

pmsfl xxxxxxxxxxxxx

ha a nice.

too true swamp....i use to be wonder woman....now he just wonders about how i could be so daft and not know why some fella with his pants around his ankles shoutin profanaties is super cool.

nice one

[sukisue]

cats or dogs no matter wat kids either are nice and well behaved or they just turn into monsters and you wonder is it my fault and where did i go wrong or is it just the pick of the bunch

pmsl nice one