Herding Cats
Is it possible to get them to do what we want?
I’m a cat mom, maybe even a crazy cat lady. I have been called both. But some days I feel like a failed cat herder.
Herding cats — the term is associated with a seemingly difficult or impossible task in which the person doing it is headed for a certain failure. Credit for this term is often given to Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
That idiom speaks to me. I have three cats with minds of their own. They are incredibly difficult to corral if there isn’t food involved.
It probably doesn’t help that my efforts to herd my cats often coincide with activities that also embarrass them. There is an overwhelming number of cute Halloween costumes for cats and dogs. I bought a shark costume that I put on my little cat, Harper Lee — transforming her into a cute little tabby shark.
As I tried to take a cute picture of Harper standing in her costume, she just flopped over on her side and refused to move. I think she would still be there today if I hadn’t taken the costume off of her. She hated it. Once I extracted her from the costume, she ran and hid in the closet the rest of the night. By the looks she gave me, it was entirely possible she was planning something nefarious to do to me in return.
