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How my interest in cats began.

Daydreamer

Scatterbrained Creative
Since I feel in the mood to talk about it. :D

Besides, perhaps some people will find this to be an interesting (yet admittedly rather lengthy) story.

When I was younger I had three toy cats, although the count would go up to four if you included my sister's soft toy which she would often lend to me on car journeys. I held many of my toys dearly, giving them all unique names and personalities.

That's why I never liked the days at school where we had to bring one of our toys in, since other kids would change their name and make them act in a way which was uncharacteristic to the character I had assigned to that toy. Sometimes I'd avoid the others because of this, and people found it odd that I cared so much about continuity. They'd ask me why that toy couldn't be a different character for a day, and I'd tell them that it just wasn't right.

When it came to playtime, ironically enough I took things quite seriously. I built up all these intricate plot lines, and dedicated character arcs to certain toys. Each section of my room was a part of an imaginary world with a unique time zone to it. I enjoyed creating fantasy, doing so was one of my major pastimes as a child and it is still a significant part of my life. Over time I began to branch out, not only did I have an imaginary world for my toys, but I also had an imaginary world that I pretended to live in. I told a friend of mine about it, and they also had an imaginary world of their own so we would often bond over that, sharing stories about our worlds with one another.

Our friendship was...complicated. We would argue and go through phases where we didn't treat each other all that nicely. Looking back, we should've ended the friendship way sooner than we did. As we got older, we began to become rather different. They began perusing interests which didn't gain my attention, and conversation became difficult. Slowly we were finding that we no longer had any common ground to discuss, so it came into question just what exactly we should talk about. That's when we realised that we did in fact have a common interest...pets.

So our conversations from that point were either on cats and dogs, or whatever school drama was going on at the time. We gave up on jokes because it became apparent that we both had very different senses of humour, and it was a wonder how we were still friends at this point. It felt as though we were just keeping the friendship alive for the sake of it, we didn't enjoy each others company as much as we did.

My friend suggested at the time that we should volunteer at this local cat shelter, but then she quickly decided against it. So that left me with a decision to make, I could either also decide against it since the original plan was for us to both do it, or I could do it anyway but on my own. In the end I chose to volunteer anyway for the experience. I'm glad I did.

We still bonded over our interest in cats though, in fact we'd often go to the school library and look at books on cats, also we'd go on websites researching and doing quizzes on the subject. I'd share Simon's cat videos, and we'd look up pictures online of cats and talk about which ones we'd hypothetically adopt.

It started out as simply a means of creating conversation in a lacking friendship, but the more I researched into the subject it suddenly became something else. A strong interest in itself, perhaps even more than that...an obsession. Or at least that's what the people around me started calling it.

My research was no longer just for our conversation, but to also fulfil my own sense of curiosity. I wanted to know about cat genetics, body language, wild cats, the history and culture surrounding domesticated cats and so on. My room started to fill up with cat related clothing, decorations, and even encyclopedias on the subject. I ended up adopting a cat from the same shelter I volunteered at. Plus, I even did my work experience at that same place.

After I moved to a different area I lost touch with that friend, but I think we'd emotionally drifted apart before then anyway. Even though she was interested in learning about cats, I don't think she ever truly reached my level of entrancement with the subject. When I was doing my science mock GCSE my knowledge on cats actually came in use when a question on cat genes came up. :D Unfortunately, no such questions appeared on the final exam.
 
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This is an interesting story and your friend obviously didn't have as intense an interest as you did. But that friend has an influence in your life with cats. Sometimes people come into our lives and we don't know why, but there's a reason.
I'm sorry I said I was a dog - I do like cats, too. (But I still like dogs better.) :dogface::dogface::dogface:
 
Nice read. I've always like cats. We had them growing up. We've been a dog family for 13 yrs. now but did have cats before that.
 
I miss my cat -

Your way of handling toys reminds me about some elements of my childhood I didn't think about for a too long time
 

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