The Cat Years

"I just realized that while children are dogs - loyal and affectionate - teenagers are cats. It's so easy to be a dog owner. You feed it, train it, and boss it around. It puts its head on your knees and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting.

Then, around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat. When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who died and made you emperor. Instead of dogging your footsteps, it disappears. You won't see it again until it gets hungry - then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at whatever you're serving. When you reach out to ruffle it's head, in the old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you, then gives you a blank stare, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.

You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be desparately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so distant, sort of depressed. It won't go on family outings.

Since you're the one who raised it, taught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you assume that you did something wrong. Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble your efforts to make your pet behave.

Only now you're dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call it, and it runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward it, wringing your hands, the more it moves away.

Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you can learn to behave like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door, and let it come to you. But remember that a cat needs your love and affection, too. Sit still and it will come seeking that warm comforting lap it has not entirely forgotten. Be there, too, to open the door for it.

One day, your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big kiss and say, "You've been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes for you." Then you'll realize your cat is a dog again."
Author unknown.

This is what I took with me from my first "parenting teenagers" class taught by a counselor who got recommended to me, not only to complement my psychology studies but also to get help communicating with my 16-year old daughter who perfectly complies to the above cat picture. I am afraid, I comply to the dog owner characteristics as well. To some reason I cannot remember that I had all these communication problems with my now 25-year-old son. However, maybe I was just more distracted during his teenage years, raising his toddler sister, going through a divorce and making meets end. Maybe I just did not realize that much when he turned into a cat because he was a very independent child.
Maybe with my daughter it is so much more difficult because she is like me, and I want her to prevent from making the same mistakes and this drives her away from me and my values and recommendations.

I feel that this class will give me some answers, as a psychology student as well as a mother, pardon, new cat owner. I saw a T-shirt at the flea market that said, "Dogs have masters, cats have staff." I guess that's what it is going to be for a while, cleaning her litter box and giving her options to decide on her own instead of walking her on the leash.