I am not a cat lady. I was a cat-child certainly, and I fear it is inevitable I should at some point in my dotage become a cat lady.

“Don’t hit the cat!”
That was the spark. The tutorial hostage (pupil) was slapping his cat.

“Don’t hit the cat!”
He hit the cat. It wasn’t hard, not at all. None were hard hits, but he hit the cat.

“Don’t do that!”
He did it again. Right. This meant a change in lesson plan:

Grammar lesson: If this, then that.
Game: “If you hit the cat, I will hit you”.

Without feigned violence, how can grammar be interesting? With this child, it cannot. He’s a love, but he is usually not interested in learning anything unless of course there’s some vivid example, and what could be more vivid than us pretending to hit each other?

Can I be clear this was feigned, silly, cartoonish, non-connecting nonsense, and not a real strike? It was because the cat really did get hit, before, that I went loopy in the first place. Thank you. Back to our comedy:

“Don’t hit!” It’s the verb of the day.

He hit his own hand calling out, “Hit, hit, hit.” Bloody fastest he ever learned anything.

Eventually the cat took refuge in my lap. It was unhurt but annoyed. She looked quite happy with me. Her name’s Tiger. The boy’s dad asked if I wanted to take the cat home.

“NO!” yelled the boy.
I asked the parents, “Do you want the cat?”
“No!” they rang out in unison. “Do you?”
“NO!” yelled the boy. So that was that.

The next day, the boy played a series of fake-out games, pointing and calling “Look, there! Tiger!” There was nothing. I didn’t see her anywhere.

“Where’s the cat? Where’s Tiger?”
He didn’t know. He asked his mother.
She looked at me and said, carefully, “Lost.”

I really hope Tiger is happy, wherever she is. The boy seems entirely unaffected. The parents look peacefully relieved. And I have escaped, once again.

With me, that cat would have soon been spayed, but I suspect now she’s doomed to overpopulate an already hideously over cat-and-dogged area.

Maybe I am on the road to relenting, and becoming a cat lady. If this, then that… “If I change my mind later, then I will be a cat lady.”
It’s just a grammar example. It’s not true. Please let it not be true.

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