The Kitten Psychologist vs the Kitten's Owners

(Just jumping in now? Read the previous installment, The Kitten Psychologist Broaches the Topic of Economics, here, or the first story, The Kitten Psychologist, here.)

Boy, was I in trouble. I think it would have been worse if I hadn’t called my friends the day I left for vacation, which is exactly why I did that. But, man, give them two weeks to steam off and they were still mad.

And, okay, yeah, I deserved it.

When I got back, they demanded an accounting of exactly how much money their kitten had paid me out of their bank account for our sessions and how often. They didn’t need to. I’d spent half my vacation angsting about the whole thing and had all my documentation prepared by the time we met in their living room.

This wasn’t just some strategy to placate them and get out of trouble. I’d had a lot of time to think during vacation, and I couldn’t escape the fact that what I’d done was wrong. For someone who spent a lot of time and energy trying to ignore my conscience when it suited me, it was sure uncomfortable having it yelling at me from three inches away.

Consciences really need to learn a thing or two about personal space.
It also bugged me that I hadn’t gotten back to the kitten about its email when it found out what I did.
Fuzzy as it is, that thing can be darn intimidating.

But now I couldn’t talk to it. My friends had made sure of that.

“Why would our kitten even need a psychologist?” asked the one with the green shirt. (I may be a coward, but even I know to keep my friends’ identities private online. You’re welcome, friends.)

“It’s sentient. Even humans find that uncomfortable, and we’re supposed to be that way.”

They didn’t appreciate the joke.

“How could you take advantage of it like that?” asked the one in the worn jeans.

Wait, what? “It called me! I had no idea-”

“You could have refused it at any point. Heck, you should have!” Green Shirt fumed. “It’s just a kitten, for crying out loud. It doesn’t know any better.”

“It’s a kitten that-” I stopped myself. Thinking before I spoke was probably a better strategy in this situation if I didn’t want it to turn into a warzone. Well, more of one.

“What? A kitten that what?” My friend’s eyes had taken on the uncanny appearance of someone aiming a gun. I cringed.

“Uh. First: yes. I should have refused. I’m sorry I didn’t, which is why I called you in the first place. Second: you didn’t know your kitten was sentient until just over two weeks ago. How do you know it’s not capable of seeing the right and wrong of its actions for itself?”

“It’s a kitten!” exclaimed Worn Jeans.

“More than that, it’s a cat,” said Green Shirt. “Cats aren’t exactly known for their strong grasp on morality.”

“Well, they do know what it is,” amended Worn Jeans. “They just don’t follow it. On purpose. So, in the case of our kitten…”

“Cats will be cats?” I supplied.

They nodded.

“And, since your kitten is now too young to know these things, and will grow up not to follow them anyways, it’s up to us to make all of its moral decisions for it?”

“As much as possible, yes,” said Worn Jeans. “We do know we can’t be there all the time in every situation.”

“Which is why it’s so important that we only let it be with people that are committed to the same thing, and not boneheads like you,” Green Shirt said, arms crossed.

“Boneheads?” said Worn Jeans. “That’s a little harsh.”

“Well, it’s true!”

I fidgeted. “Should I leave?”

“That depends. Are you going to leave leave or go talk to the kitten again?”

“Well, see, it sent me an email that I haven’t responded to yet…”

“It has an email address?” asked Worn Jeans in bewilderment.

“And a tumblr, too.” I pulled out my phone. The kitten’s latest post was a picture of a fall forest, with the caption ‘We are more than we feel’. The previous was a sepia-filtered photo of latte art.

“It has a hipster blog?” said Worn Jeans. Green Shirt grabbed my phone.

“I’m not sure how to process this.” Green Shirt’s eyes were concerningly wide. “Is that latte telling me to live my dreams?”

“Maybe you should, uh, get to know your kitten better?” I suggested. “And, meanwhile, we can work on a payment plan for me?”

“Yeah,” said Green Shirt, still scrolling through the kitten’s tumblr. “But, uh, I’m beginning to see why it needed a psychologist.”

That sounded hopeful. I swear my bank account perked up at it. And, if I wasn’t still having an attack of conscience, that would have been that.

“You know, I think your kitten is plenty able to do what’s right. Enough that making those decisions for it is only going stop it from wanting to.” Damn, damn, damn. I knew from their expressions that that had been the absolute worst thing to say.

Green Shirt handed me back my phone. “I think we understand our kitten better than you do. We’ll work out a payment plan, but we’re not budging on our requirements for your behaviour with it.”

“Or we can just pretend I never said that.”

“Really?” said Worn Jeans. I gulped. “I can’t believe you.” At which point my friend upped and left the room.

This is what I get for being a psychologist to a kitten. Correction: for being desperate enough to be a psychologist to a kitten.

“We’ll, uh, work it out over email,” I said as I high-tailed it out of there before Green Shirt could do anything.

So, that was finally that. Years of friendship hanging precariously in the balance all because we disagreed about what their kitten could and could not handle.

It’s one of those moments where you’d like to laugh over the ridiculousness of it, but it was a little too serious for that.

I mean, we’d have never been in this situation if I hadn’t let the kitten take advantage of them.

But wouldn’t that mean that the kitten would have always been stuck? Aren’t I doing it a favour by standing up for it to my friends?

I don’t know.

Morality is hard, guys.

Dear psychologist human,
 
I cannot believe you showed my humans my tumblr. Do you not understand that it was meant to be ironic? They think it’s serious!
 
On another note: You still have not responded to my previous email. This displeases me. I require that you respond in a timely manner.
 
We must speak.
 
Sincerely,
You know who.

The story continues in The Kitten Psychologist Tries to be Patient Through Email.

The Kitten Psychologist Broaches the Topic of Economics

There once was a little kitten. No, not the kitten I wrote a story about in September.

Definitely a different kitten. A very different kitten.

Oh, fine. It’s the same kitten. So I’m reusing characters. So what?

This kitten had had a hard time going outside. Which is as much to say as it didn’t. Not after its first experience with snow, which is probably like a person’s first experience with horseradish: you either like it or you don’t. And, in this case, the kitten didn’t like it.

In the last story, wherein the kitten realized that there was probably maybe some benefit to going outside after paying me good money to sit around and ask it questions containing answers that it decided it had come up with all on its own, wondering what I was doing with my life being a psychologist to my friends’ nine week old kitten.

The only problem with this picture (I mean, aside from the obvious) was that the kitten wasn’t paying me out of its own money. Let’s be serious: I can be a kitten psychologist all I want, but we have to admit that a kitten having its own income stream at nine weeks stretches credibility quite thin. Which is as much to say as that this kitten had mastered the use of arcane computer enchantments and pulled the money from my friends’ – its owners’ – bank account.

Frankly, I thought my friends would have figured it out on their own. It might have been a bit cowardly of me to wait until they got a clue and started investigating but either this kitten was more clever than I thought or my friends had an awful memory for their own spending habits. I’m not actually sure which is more concerning, but I had plenty of concern on hand to spend no matter which it turned out to be.

In other words, while my friends were out of the country a couple of weeks later, I house-sat. And, as I sat the house, I had a conversation with my friends’ kitten.

“You really have to stop this,” I said.

“I don’t pay you to have an opinion,” the kitten said with a swish of its tail.

“You pay me to be a psychologist. That’s exactly the same as paying me to have an opinion.”

“What happened to unbiased objectivity?”

“Fine. In my unbiased, objective opinion, you have to stop this.”

The kitten tapped its chin. “Stop what?”

“Paying me from my friends’ bank account without their knowledge or consent.” As if it didn’t already know.

“If you don’t like it, I can always find another psychologist…”

“That’s not the point.”

“And how do you propose I tell them about it when the idea of my sentience is patently absurd to them? Certainly you can’t. They already think you’re crazy.”

Obviously, I was going to have to have a conversation with more than just the kitten. “And how would you inform a potential new psychologist of this patently absurd idea?”

“That’s different. They’re not my human. They aren’t used to me. They don’t have ingrained ideas or habits about me to contend with.”

I bit back a sarcastic remark about the strength of eleven week old habits. For the kitten, that was a lifetime. That and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t had plenty of ingrained habits and ideas of my own about the nature of kittens when this one hired me. I wondered if maybe I should have kept one or two of them. No amount of income was worth this trouble. Well. Perhaps not certain amounts of income.

“Well, just give it some thought and see what happens,” I finally said.

The kitten avoided me after that.

Which could have been the end of that, I suppose. Certainly it seemed like it, which I was a bit peeved about, to be sure. But, in a few days, I received an email:

Come at once. My humans are away. Sincerely, you know who. 

I wondered if the kitten had finally got to my friends’ YA collection. That and I went.

“So, I told my humans.”

“How did they take it?”

“Now they’re seeing a psychologist.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

“You know-” the kitten stretched- “I’ve come to a realization.”

“Oh?”

“This is a ridiculous situation. I’m a kitten. Why do I even need a psychologist?”

I shrugged.

“Exactly. I should be going my wild way on my wild lone. Except…” it glanced at the couch. “…I don’t think I’m prepared to give up the amenities of my current living situation.”

“Then don’t.”

“Oh, I’m not. This may not be ancient Egypt, but this is certainly something. Do you suppose you could talk to my humans? Now that I have, that is.”

And admit that I’d been complicit in what was essentially theft? Um. “No.”

“Drat. I had a feeling this was my fight.”

Sure. That’s exactly what it is.

“Well, do you have any advice on what I should do next? Some words of wisdom I’ll probably ignore when I inevitably come up with something better? Like nothing? I rather like the idea of doing nothing.”

“If you’ll just come up with something better, then why do you need my advice?” No, theft was too harsh a word. Underhanded dealing, perhaps?

“It’s amusing.”

“So, am I psychologist or court jester?”

“Whichever makes you feel better, I suppose.” The kitten yawned. “I’m going to have a nap. If you come up with something, email me. Or stop by. I’ll pay you as soon as you do.”

Who was I kidding? It was definitely theft. By the time I’d got home, I realized that. I also realized that, despite the fact that the kitten really should be acting responsibly with its humans, so should I with my friends. With a sigh, I picked up the phone.

I wondered how long I’d be paying them back.

Dear psychologist human,

I’m not entirely sure what you stood to gain by informing my humans of your part in all this. My intention had been for you to merely vouch for my sentience. You have done me a service, and it is right that you should be compensated in turn, not that you should throw that all away.

But no matter. We shall speak when you return from vacation. I think you will see things much more clearly when this is all over.

Sincerely,

You know who.

The story continues in The Kitten Psychologist vs the Kitten's Owners.