Crash.

I panic.

I hadn’t been watching the cat for one second and now it sounds like something bad has happened. When I investigate the situation it appears the cat has jumped onto the windowsill in the kitchen, missed, fell off and took several wires and cooking utensils down with him. Luckily nothing got broken, including the cat.

Though our cat isn’t the cleverest in town, this time he had an excuse for his clumsiness. He had just returned from the vet, where he had had minor surgery. For the past couple of months we’d noticed a little lump on his right side. We were under the frightening impression that the lump was growing. When we finally brought the cat in for consultation at the veterinary clinic, the vet told us the lump was a cyst. And that the cyst had to be removed by means of surgery.

One day later our cat was released from the vet and his clinic. The poor animal had been completely narcotised. To prevent him from biting or licking his wound and stitches he had this thing around his head which I doubt has even a real name. Matt and I call it a lampshade or a tooter. You know what kind of torture equipment I mean.

Once at home he woke up and tried to walk. And fell. And walked. And wobbled. And fell again. It was weird to see a certain panic within the cat. And the trial and error with which he tried to handle the situation. Sometimes he was just sitting and seemingly waiting for the situation to just disappear. Other times he would be strolling and searching around for a way out. But after a while he got adjusted to his situation. What else could he do? What would you do if suddenly your sight and locomotion were partly removed, without you understanding the reason why? Would you wait to die? Or assimilate and survive?

It reminded me of the Maslow pyramid, a social studies model I’d come across during my studying years. The Maslow pyramid, or Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, consists of five levels of different needs in life. From low to high they are: physiological needs (like food and oxygen), safety needs (like the need for peace, family, security, a roof above your head), needs of love and belonging (for instance friendship and love relations), esteem needs (the need for confidence, respect for and by others) and finally the level of self-actualization (for instance creativity and morality). Higher needs only become important when the lower needs are satisfied. Consequently, satisfied lower needs become less important.

But also, if something happens so that certain lower needs are unmet, that person will find those needs more important again and will focus on them again. That is what became sounrivalledly visible in the cat’s behaviour the first few days of his recovery. Which is, come to think of it, rather funny considering the importance of both cats and pyramids in ancient Egypt.

At first the cat was only preoccupied with the bare necessities to survive. He peed in the litter box. Ate and drank. Then walked around to make his body wake up. After an hour of purely physiological need driven activities he clearly got interested in his safety. He was walking around the house again but now to sniff at everything. For the first time since his return he was interested in laying himself in my protective arms. But then I noticed, he hadn’t begun purring again. He’d lie in a chair or on the bed without purring or any true interaction with Matthew or me. Clearly the second level of needs. Finally, after half a day, when he was assured of the fact that he was safe, and the pain was obviously less predominant, he resumed chattering and mewing. And thankfully, that sweet purring sound was there again. The third level of needs had been fulfilled.

I doubt I could expect any more of a cat than those three levels. I’m not sure whether a cat is capable of self-esteem (though I may be wrong) and pretty sure of it’s incapability of self-actualization. But the first three and their strict order were undeniably there. It’s fascinating to see such an example of an ecological system from such a tiny distance. An intriguing side effect of the cat’s full speed recovery.

A few days afterwards my direct manager, who sits opposite of me at the office, showed me something he’d printed out of Wikipedia: the Maslow pyramid. Whether I’d ever heard of it, he asked me. I smiled. Not only had I heard of it before, I’d seen the living proof of it right before my own eyes.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, April 16th, 2007.

Similar columns

• Simply Red with anger
• Hurrah for furry kittens (& their male equals)
• Murdered by ghosts from the past
• Chas and the girls
• The virtue of (im)patience