A friend of mine once asked me what my cats think about all day long.

I shrugged. “I have no idea what goes on in their little heads,” I said. Some people may claim to have a symbiotic relationship with their pets, where they intuitively understand their animals’ every want and need.

I’m not one of those people.

My cats have always been a mystery to me. I don’t pretend to know why they do the things they do, but my theory is that they think it’s fun to wake me up, knock stuff over and break fragile objects. Oh, and they like it when I pet them, and if they harass me, I’m more likely to pet them.

I’ve owned these cats for about 10 years — their names are Clem and Paul, after Paul Westerberg from The Replacements — and after Clem figured out how to break out of the apartment, it finally dawned on me that I’d succeeded in raising juvenile delinquent cats. The door to my apartment doesn’t fully close, and Clem has become quite adept at flopping on the floor, pulling it open with his claws and running into the hallway, where he enjoys knocking over the bicycles and getting trapped in cardboard boxes filled with junk.

I tolerate some of this behavior when I’m awake, but when I go to bed I set up a barricade — a crate weighed down with objects, and a couple of kitchen chairs — to prevent him from escaping. It’s pretty much impossible to build an adequate barricade when I’m exiting the apartment, and so sometimes I come home and the door is ajar, and even though the cats are in the apartment, they’ve got guilty looks on their faces and I know they’ve spent a good chunk of the day hanging out in the hallway.

This is all my fault, I guess, because when it was warm out, and I didn’t care whether heat escaped from my apartment, I let them run around in the hallway. It was a little treat for them, but I’ve discovered that when you give cats an inch, they take a mile.

When I told people about Clem’s escapades, they seemed impressed. “He must be a very smart cat,” these people said. I’d never really thought of Clem as a very smart creature before, so this reaction made me see him in a whole new light. I gave it some thought, and concluded that maybe he is intelligent, but that intelligence isn’t really an asset when it comes to cats.

“So what if he’s smart?” I told someone. “It’s not like he ever does anything useful.” “You seem to think he should be able to open a beer for you,” this person said. Hmmmm. Maybe this person was right — maybe my expectations for my cats are unreasonable. They are, after all, cats.

I brought Clem to the vet the other day, and once the trauma of being locked in a box and driving in a car was over, he stopped crying and settled down and became his inquisitive self. Unlike Paul, he didn’t hiss or growl or lash out with his claws. In fact, he purred.

“What a nice cat,” the vet said. I thought about telling the vet that Clem was actually a juvenile delinquent, but decided she might think I was crazy. “Yes, he is a nice cat,” I agreed. Of course, I was saying something different later that day, when he staged another break-out.

A brisk walk

I’ve been thinking about this myself, particularly now that it’s cold out, because sometimes there’s nothing more invigorating than a brisk winter walk. I like walking, and I always mean to do more of it, but sometimes it’s hard to convince myself that I should walk instead of drive, because driving saves so much time.

But on Sunday after the snowstorm was over, I got up and walked to the bank and then up to the store to buy a newspaper. It took about 40 minutes, and when I got home I felt absolutely great. So the next time I feel like I should drive to the store rather than walk, I’m going to try to remember that feeling.

Have a comment? A bad cat? Comment below, or email me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.