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This Time, The Little Kitty Got Himself Injured...
William, or Will, as I usually call him, is going through another one of those episodes in which his personality gets him into trouble and the rest of us have to deal with the consequences. He is almost four years old, and if there is one thing I have learned about this cat, it is that he has never been particularly interested in living a peaceful life. He is intense, possessive, territorial, and occasionally violent. I love him, obviously, but I am not going to pretend he is some innocent little angel who has been unfairly mistreated by the world. Will has a character, and that character is sometimes a problem. This time, he got into another fight, and the result is the face you see in the picture. He is wearing a cone, receiving treatment, and being taken care of. Everything is under control, thankfully, but he looks like someone who has just discovered that his personal decisions come with consequences.
The funny thing about William is that he seems to have absolutely no interest in learning from experience. He keeps returning to the same situations with the same determination, as if every fight were a completely new opportunity to establish his authority over the neighborhood. I sometimes wonder what exactly goes through his little head when he sees another cat. Does he feel challenged? Does he believe he has a reputation to defend? Is there some invisible feline committee keeping score of these encounters? I have no idea, but I would not be surprised if he genuinely believed he had a point to prove. He has been like this for most of his life, so this is hardly a shocking development. Still, there is something absurd about watching an animal repeat the same mistake over and over without apparently connecting the experience with the outcome. Humans do this all the time, of course, but at least we have the advantage of being able to explain our bad decisions in elaborate paragraphs.
Now he has to put up with the cone, the treatment, and the indignity of being cared for by people who probably understand his situation better than he does. And judging by his expression, he is not particularly pleased with any of it. He looks offended, suspicious, and vaguely disappointed in everyone around him. I can almost imagine him wondering why his freedom has suddenly been restricted when all he did was go outside and conduct his usual business. The fact that his usual business involves fighting other cats seems to have escaped his attention entirely. There is no way to explain to him that we are not doing this to ruin his life, that the treatment is necessary, or that staying out of trouble for a while would be a perfectly reasonable idea. We can only take care of him and hope that he recovers well. Meanwhile, he has to endure the terrible injustice of being looked after, which is apparently a burden he considers beneath his dignity.
I do feel bad for him, because whatever his temperament might be, he is still our cat, and seeing him injured is never pleasant. His inability to understand the consequences of his behavior does not make those consequences any less real. That is probably the part of having pets that people tend to overlook when they joke about their ridiculous habits. We can laugh at their personalities, their stubbornness, and their strange little rituals, but we are also responsible for them when things go wrong. William cannot understand why his body hurts or why he suddenly has to wear this ridiculous accessory around his neck. He cannot look back at his previous fights and decide that perhaps he should reconsider his approach to conflict resolution. He just knows that something unpleasant has happened, and now the people around him are handling things he cannot handle himself. So, beneath the comedy of his expression and his apparent outrage, there is a small animal who needs patience, attention, and time to recover.
For now, we are taking care of him, following his treatment, and waiting for him to get better. I would love to say that this experience will teach him something, but I have lived with William long enough to avoid making promises on his behalf. Knowing him, he will eventually recover, return to his usual self, and start acting as though the entire incident was an unfortunate misunderstanding involving several other cats and absolutely no fault of his own. Then, one day, he will probably go back to his old adventures, because apparently peace and quiet are not part of his long-term plans. I will do what I can to keep him safe, even if he seems determined to make that job unnecessarily complicated. For now, he is resting, recovering, and wearing the cone of shame. He may not understand the lesson, but at least the rest of us can appreciate the irony: William keeps picking fights with the world, and somehow I am the one who ends up managing the consequences.
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