School’s back in session. We’ve just finished out the first week, and frankly my kids are sluggish. Well... in their brains anyway. They’ve had quite a bit of outside activity over the summer. We’ve gone on bike rides, hikes and camping trips. We’ve been to the beach and traveled to see the grandparents. It’s been a pretty active summer, and in a lot of ways it felt like this year we were trying to make up for everything we couldn’t do in 2020 and 2021.
But we weren’t exactly killing it with the summer educational workbooks. We were all so antsy to get outside and see family that those workbooks we bought at the beginning of the summer with the intention to do a lesson or two a week... well... I’m not going to say they remained unopened, but I will say there were very few creases in the bindings. So when my youngest suggested we watch Inside the Mind of a Cat, a documentary for cat lovers that seemed to be at least partially educational, I jumped on it.
This was our first Friday family movie night since school began, and watching a documentary seemed like a great way to get the brain juices flowing again, especially considering that my kids love cats. Or at least, they love our cat. His name is Vincent. He’s a black-and-white tuxedo cat we picked up at a shelter. According to my children, he’s basically part of the family. However, what’s going on inside his little cat mind is a huge mystery to all of us. He spends most of his time in the garage. At night, he goes off and prowls the neighborhood, sometimes coming back dirty or even bleeding from who knows what! He keeps to himself mostly, glaring at people except for when he wants food, and then he excitedly purrs. In my opinion, he’s a pretty typical cat.
As we watched Inside the Mind of a Cat, all five of us just nodded along as we learned about why Vincent is such a complex little feline. We learned about the biology of the cat, particularly about their spines, which explained why Vincent could jump incredibly high. We learned about their peak hours, just before dawn, which explained why Vincent often sounded like he was in some sort of a jolly drunken college party at about 4:30 a.m.
But the best part was when we learned how cats smile. This was the moment when my two daughters, Aspen and Norah, decided it was best to pause Inside the Mind of a Cat, run into the garage and drag poor sleeping Vincent from his perch on the top shelf (a station we’d just learned is all part of his hunter mentality). The girls brought him in, and naturally he glared. According to the documentary, a cat smiles by slowly blinking. All of us were staring at the cat. Finally, Vincent slowly blinked back, and I don’t know if I’d ever seen my children so excited while interacting with him. It was almost like we had, for the first time, after many years and many attempts, exchanged real words with this finicky feline.
Near the end of the documentary, two cat psychologists (yes, they exist) were asked if a cat could love its owners. They said that love is a complex emotion, but it was likely that cats could feel love. And so I asked my kids a variation of the same question: “Do you think Vincent loves us?” All three kids paused for a moment. They looked at each other, then at the cat, gears clearly turning. They were thinking hard, which was what I’d hoped for before we started this documentary. It seemed like they were considering what they already knew about cats and what they’d recently learned. Finally, my middle daughter, Norah, looked at Vincent and said, “Do you love me Kitty-Kitty?” And I kid you not, Vincent looked up, and slowly blinked a “cat’s smile,” then purred and rubbed up against Norah, making her giggle.
Norah looked at me, smiled and didn’t say a word. She just nodded, clearly feeling loved by Vincent the cat. We finished Inside the Mind of a Cat, and then we put Vincent back on his favorite shelf in the garage. This documentary was just the right mix of getting my kids to think a little more while teaching them something new about their very dear friend and family member, Vincent. Everyone gave him a slow blink, and he did one in return. Then we headed off to bed.
