Being a Cat

You know how kids always wonder what it’d be like if they were an animal? I feel like it has crossed our minds at some point. As humans, we know it kind of sucks being people sometimes. Sure, the emotional response and personal growth aspects make us happy to be human at times. But other times, we wish we were something else. And even in our younger years, this has been the case. When we’re kids, we hate being treated like kids and want to grow up. But when become adults, we hate the “adulting” that comes with life and its challenges, so we wish we were kids again.

And for some of us, we just wish we were an animal of some sort. We might’ve wanted to be a dog, or a bird, or a great white shark. Or heck, some kids wanted to be a dinosaur when they grew up. As for me personally? Well… at one point, I daydreamed what it’d be like to become a cat.

That’s right. It’s time for another installment of Astonishing Reveries. Let’s begin, shall we?

~

Being a 90’s kid, talking cats were everywhere. We had Thackery Binx from Disney’s Hocus Pocus, Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Garfield, Sassy from Disney’s Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, and others that I may be overlooking. Also common at the time were those body-swap movies, or movies inspired by Big in some way (and oddly enough, those films were still being done in the early 2000’s). So with these things in mind, I started to imagine what it’d be like if I turned into a cat.

And not only that, but for some reason, I imagined that my cat self would sound like Danny DeVito even though I was 8 or 9 years old and it logically wouldn’t make any sense. Why? Pffffft who knows why? You’re talking to someone who once re-enacted The Cable Guy with Power Rangers action figures instead of watching the movie. Logic and reasoning didn’t exist for me as a little bastard.

Although when I think about it, I suppose that having Danny DeVito attached would bring in audiences. Not to mention, he does have a distinct voice that would really lend itself to a wisecracking cat that loves the excitement of suddenly being a cat and yet wishes to be a human boy again.

I envisioned that a girl I knew from school (probably the 4th grade) would find me after my transformation into cat form and then take care of me. I’d start with Garfield-style inner thoughts as I try to figure out how to adjust to being on all-fours while having hair all over my body. There’d be some clumsiness as I try to get used to walking around, and especially confusion from wondering how to control my tail. Heh, sounds like a good place for one of them montages of me discovering all this!

Actually, a montage would work better as a later point in this little misadventure. But anyway, I go on with these Garfield-style inner thoughts until something takes me by surprise and I actually vocalize something. That’s right! We’d have one of those classic, “Wait… you can talk?!?” moments where the girl who’s taking care of me (we’ll just call her Angie) sees me talk, thus, making her freak the eff out. Naturally, this would have to play out with some overacting in a hilarious scene where she runs around the house screaming and then brings her dad into the room to show him that the cat can talk, only to find that I just meow.

What’s that? You wanna see how it’d unfold? Good idea, let’s see how this unfolds!

“Dad the cat can talk! The cat talks! Come look dad! Look look!”

“Angie calm down. Calm down… what did the cat say?”

“I won’t say it because he said the S-word, but he said it! He spoke dad! He spoke!”

(Dad nods and slightly rolls his eyes.)

“Okay… so the cat talks. Now look, Angie, I know you’re still upset that mommy is gone, and I know you’re still trying to make friends at school, and I know people in this neighborhood aren’t used to us yet, but it’s only been a week since we moved here and you need to get some rest.”

You know it’s a 90’s movie when you have awkwardly-placed exposition and a father whose wife is nonexistent in this movie because… reasons I guess. But let’s continue with this, shall we?

“But dad!”

“Be silly all you want, honeybear. But just… go easy with the imagination. And maybe don’t scream a lot either. Daddy’s really tired from work.”

He leaves the bedroom and heads downstairs as the little girl pouts and looks over at me. I’m sitting on her bed, curling my tail and wagging it around.

“Why’d you do that? You know you can talk!”

“Look, I didn’t even know I could talk either! I thought I could only think to myself until you nearly touched my no-no area and then I freaked out. And besides, what would I say to your pops? ‘Hey let’s grab a drink.’ You know that’d scare him.”

“Are you a magic cat?”

“No! Well… maybe. I know something changed me, but I don’t know how it actually worked and I don’t know where I have to go to change back into my normal body.”

“So you are a magic cat!”

“…yes. I guess I am a magic cat. Man that sounds even more stupid when I say it! I thought I was weird enough at school.”

So then Angie asks about that, and then I reveal that I was a kid from school before becoming a cat, she’s astounded by this as she listens on, I continue talking about how it feels to be a cat and blahbbity blah blah this whole scene mostly serves as that point in a movie where I have to recap what’s happened in the movie so far to any parent who had to be dragged by their kid to see this movie only to fall asleep from the fact there’s nothing in the movie to entertain adults aside from Danny DeVito shouting, “Holy shit!” 

Did I mention that in my daydream, this girl was someone I liked at school? Because more awkwardness would arise if she were to ask what school I went to and if there’s a girl I like.

What’s that? Are you expecting the whole being-a-crush thing to come up at a later point when we’re talking and she mentions that she likes a kid who turns out to be me? Oh really? Do you expect me to incorporate that into the daydream to add some substance in an attempt to give it heart?

Pfffft hell to the nah! Normally I don’t change anything about childhood daydreams, but modern-day me actually feels like it would be better for this daydream to have a girl I’ve never met nor had a crush on as a little kid. Why? I’ll put it this way… if she were a crush from school, and if this daydream actually were a movie, there would be a sad & heartfelt moment in which I as a cat am looking out the window, watching her go to school, while wishing I could be a human again so we could be together. And that is a little too similar to a plot point in the Netflix anime film A Whisker Away.

You should definitely watch that, by the way. It’s a cute movie.

Hey, remember how I mentioned there’d be a montage in this thing? Because here it is! It’s the proverbial kid-taking-care-of-a-pet montage set to a popular song that every pet-centered movie from the 90’s had to have in order to please studio executives who insisted that there be a montage & pop song because they wanted to strike a deal with a record label and make some money.

So yeah, the montage would have clips of Angie feeding me, tossing little cat toys around, climbing a tree with me, maybe even chasing me across her front lawn as I run away with one of her toys. There’d even be brief bits of me scratching stuff and her watching me chase my tail as I roll around. There could even be scenes in which she dresses me up with doll clothes and makes it look like her dolls are having a tea party with me. 

And of course, what’s the point of having a Danny DeVito-voiced cat in a movie if you don’t give him wacky lines of dialogue to say? Just imagine the following dialogue being said by him.

“Whaddya mean whaddya gotta do? Ya gotta take care of me! Feed me, spay me, give me some catnip, do whatever you gotta do to make sure I’m healthy and sane until I learn how to get outta this body and back into my human body so I can be a real boy again!”

I specifically remember imagining something like this when I first thought of this daydream. I knew I had to include it, and I would pay good money to hear Danny read this.

And yes, I know he should be saying, “Neuter me,” but ya have to admit it sounds funnier the other way around.

“Man… I’m walkin’ around on all fours with fur that puts my uncle’s hair-piece to shame! I’m so itchy in this freakin’ thing!”

Hah! I smell an Oscar for Mr. DeVito. Can you just hear him saying this? I sure can.

Oh… and here’s another random bit I’d always think of.

“Hey, where’s the toilet paper?”

“You don’t use toilet paper, silly! You have to lick yourself clean.”

“Lick my… what?!? That is so gross! I don’t want my breath to smell like farts!”

Then I faint with added cartoon sound effects, and the little girl hits the floor laughing. Because all 90’s movies had to have poop or fart jokes somewhere! Gotta live up to that, ya know?

You’re probably thinking there has to be an ending to this, seeing as how I always visualized it unfolding like a full-blown movie. Of course there’s an ending to this goofy little escapade! I imagine that it would have a mix of 90’s-era “cutting edge” special effects with just a little dash of some whimsy to it. Not only that, but there’d be a bit of heart between me and Angie.

It’d go a little something like this…

A magical spark flies through the air and we look up to it as it suddenly multiplies. The sparks swirl around above my head as I creep back a bit, somewhat confused but then slowly walk up to it and let the magic spin around me, causing more sparks and a magical aura to form around my body.

Angie stares on and I start to transform back into my nine-year-old self, clothes and all. My paws turn back to hands, legs turn back to normal, and the tail starts to shrink in, disappearing completely. I’m sitting on the ground but start to stand as I look at my hands and all around. The magic energies spin around me intensely as the aura diminishes a bit, and then lets out one burst of light that fills the area, finalizing the transformation.

She looks on with complete amazement and shock.

“Wow!”

“I… I’m me again!”

She’s about to walk toward me but then I start to feel funny, almost keeling over before I finally cough out a hairball. I look at her awkwardly and then get embarrassed for a moment before we both laugh.

We transition to one week later as we’re walking home from school with another kid from school. The kid waves as he walks down the driveway but we continue walking down the street.

“Soooo… do you miss being my kitty?”

“Well… it was kind of fun in a weird way. But I missed being with friends. And normal food.”

 We continue walking as she smiles, and then I continue talking.

“Do you miss having me as a cat?”

“Kind of. I know that sounds weird. I never had a pet before.”

“That does sound weird.”

“Heh, yeah.”

“This whole thing has been really weird, I just want to not think about it for a little while and…”

I’m about to say more but then a neighborhood cat is about to cross our path before stopping in its tracks. It looks at us and turns its attention to me for a while. The cat looks at me in a very focused manner, and then starts to slowly creep across the street as it meows, running through some bushes.

“…well, that might be a little hard to do.”

She laughs and we keep on walking home from school. The camera pans up, showing the neighborhood as some gentle quirky instrumental music plays and the credits roll.

Feels like a nice fitting end doesn’t it? Though you probably noticed that I didn’t write a reason as to why a seemingly random magic thing causes me to transform into a cat in the first place. There’s a good reason for that… the reason being that I don’t have a reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like, seriously. I never thought about why I’d turn into a cat. I just daydreamed about turning into a cat. Like I said, these things don’t always have logic and I’d often think of stuff that others would find predictable or even cliché.

But I’m cool with it. I mean, this is how I envisioned it as a kid. And aside from the whole crush thing, I honestly wouldn’t change these reveries. Because when you’re a 90’s kid who has really odd thoughts about stuff like this, your daydreams are going to be as cliché as the movies and TV shows that inspired it. It’s something I can’t escape. I can’t help but view things with a little whimsy and I have fun writing about this.

So until next time, keep your pets spayed and neutered. Have a good night everyone! o/