fitzyfitz
replied to your
post
:
boring headcanon
I had the books as a kid and always liked Mistofflees. I remember asking my mum how a cat called “Mister” had seven kittens, she just asked me what I thought happened. In the straightforward certainty of small children everywhere I just decided Mistofflees was a queen cat who liked to be called Mister. Easy peasy. Didn’t think much more of it for a couple decades, now I know what a headcanon is and I’m sticking by what young me thought. Hardly the weirdest thing in Cats!
‘But how do we explain it to the kids!!!!’
Really really easily. Kids are very logical.
I remember telling my mum I didn’t want to marry a boy because all the boys in my class were annoying - why can’t I marry a girl?
(Note, I can’t have been more than seven at the time, since I vaguely remember which boys had been annoying me and they weren’t around after that. So, we’re talking around 1990. And of course my idea of marriage had nothing to do with sexual attraction, it was just about finding a friend you were happy to live with. Which, tbh, is still the best definition I’ve heard.)
Mum: Yes, some girls marry girls and some boys marry boys, that’s fine.
Smol me: Oh, that’s okay then. [promptly stops worrying]
And, yes - I have never yet heard of a kid who can’t process ‘they used to be a girl, now they’re a boy’ or vice versa (or ‘everyone thought she was a boy but they found out they were wrong, she’s a girl’, or ‘they aren’t really either, here’s how we talk about someone who isn’t either’) a LOT faster than a grown up.
