To tell my story with cats and their influence on my life I must start telling you a bit about my story with dogs.
I had dogs since I was a child. The only periods I remember I didn’t have a dog was from 1999 to 2003 and from 2004 to 2008. When I moved from Montes Claros to Uberlândia in 1998, I had a grey poodle called Nick. He was very sweet and friendly but my grandmother didn’t allowed him to travel with me, and later she neglected him completely, so, the dog died. My father was a farmer and in the farm there were cats, but they only came close to us to eat. They weren’t like companions.
Then, in 2003, my mother bought another dog for me. I called him Beto. It was supposed to be a Lhasa apso. In 2004 I moved to Porto Alegre and my mother took the dog to Montes Claros and gave it to an aunt of mine. Later I discovered Beto grew up like a sheepdog! He became enormous!
In Porto Alegre I knew two women, mother and daughter, who had a dog called Junior, a Bichon frisée. They didn’t know how to control the dog. It respected nobody. As I used boots daily, the dog tried to bite my boots and as I never screamed, Junior started to respect me. I trained it to fix some bad behaviours and I took care of it when my friends traveled. He became very docile with me and obeyed me completely.
Then in 2008, after six months living in Curitiba, I adopted another Lhasa apso, Hércules, this one adult (4 years old) and with pedigree. Hercules didn’t like other male dogs when he came, but I was successful in changing this bad behaviour, and after this, I decided to find a companion to him. And a cat was my choice as we lived in a small apartment.
To have cats and dogs is not an easy task. We must train them, and at the same time we must respect them to be respected, so we prevent bad behaviours as those I had to fix in Junior and Hercules. Thor, my cat, at first, used to bite the wires of my computer and my hands. He was a 3 months old baby who wasn’t accustomed to human beings. His cat mother was abandoned pregnant and injured at night in front of the veterinary clinic where Hércules was vaccinated. The veterinarian rescued the cat, the little cats were born and they were kept in a room where people only entered to put food and water to the cats and to clean the litter. The veterinarian told me that as the babies grew up this way, they could be hard to deal as I adopted Thor when he was already 3 months old. In fact, Thor dislike people at home. But it became the most lovely cat I could imagine.
When we go out, Thor goes like a dog, with the collar and the cord, charmingly walking. He prefers this way than to go in his transportation box, where he screams insanely.
Everyday I learn something with Thor. Those days I wake up willing to give up some of my dreams he make me give up my pessimism instead. He teaches me to be kinder, bolder and calmer. In short, the first year having a cat is a bit hard (physically, not emotionally), but all the rest is worthy the investment. I love dogs, but cats are much more aligned to the person I am today. And Thor is responsible for this new me, in a certain way. I love this cat and I encourage people to open their hearts and their homes to cats because they have so much valuable feelings to share with us!
Nycka, the nomad
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