Pushkin Dispatch: On Being Chosen (and the Duties It Entails)
It has come to my attention gradually, through observation and a series of increasingly comfortable naps that I am not merely allowed in this household.
You can tell these things if you pay attention to the small rituals. The humans shift when I enter a room, not dramatically, but just enough similar to the way humans make space for something fragile or expensive. Objects of importance sketchbooks, notebooks, brushes, yarn and tasty pencils are left within my reach, like offerings. My arrival is followed by a pause in activity and then admiration, sometimes immediate, sometimes after a brief and disappointing delay.
Today’s case study: the sketchbook.
After I helped human to dry watercolours with help of my tail (no photographic evidence captured )
Human prepared to sketch.
I placed one paw, then another, then lowered my entire body onto the sketchbook with the slow, deliberate confidence of a creature who has never once questioned whether he belongs somewhere.
There is a persistent myth among humans that this behavior is inconvenient. Attention-seeking. Mildly tyrannical.
This is like calling rain “moisture with poor timing.”
I am improving conditions.
Paper, left unattended, can drift into abstraction. It can start thinking it is about landscapes, or fruit, or worse! concepts. By lying on it, I anchor it back to what matters: warmth, weight, the faint electric hum of being alive. My fur distributes itself across the page like a generous, if slightly shedding, blessing. The spine of the sketchbook settles under my ribs with a soft, obedient creak.
Inspiration should not be theoretical.
This is normal. People often do, when faced with greatness in its early stages. She hovered, pencil in hand, as if unsure whether to move me or work around me.
I became very still. Not asleep no. That would be vulgar. I entered a state of radiant availability and posed for drawing reference. My tail gave a small, thoughtful flick. My ear rotated just enough to indicate that I was aware of her uncertainty and had already forgiven it.
Eventually, she adjusted, grabbed ipad instead of sketchbook and continued working on series of drawings based on me. Of course she did.
This is what it means to be chosen.
“you may join, if convenient”
“everything else will quietly rearrange itself to include you”
I do not chase attention.
I settle where it naturally accumulates.
I will now continue my work, pressing my full and not inconsiderable weight into the creative process, ensuring that all future drawings maintain the necessary level of integrity, warmth , and visible cat.
P.S. from Pushkin: On Emotions
The human has recently been studying something called “primary and secondary emotions,” which appears to involve a great deal of thinking about feelings instead of simply having them.
When I approach the sketchbook and find it occupied by… nothing a blank page, lying there as if it has every right to exist without me I experience a primary emotion:
“I would like to be here. I would like to be close.”
It is warm. Direct. Entirely reasonable. It smells faintly of paper and possibility.
If this is not immediately acknowledged and I do allow a brief window for human error a secondary emotion may arise.
This one has more weight to it.
“I will now sit on everything with increased commitment and stare at you until reality aligns with my needs.”
This is often described, inaccurately, as:
stubbornness, domination, chaos.
They see the cat firmly installed on their work and ask,
“What was the original, softer request that went unanswered?”
The progression is simple:
“I will become impossible to ignore.”
Both are valid. I am not unreasonable.
But I do prefer when the human responds to the first version. It saves time. It preserves dignity. It significantly reduces the amount of fur embedded in the creative process.
And, not incidentally, it results in better art.
Because behind every act of dramatic obstruction
is a small, well-formed, entirely justified desire
to be chosen and maybe even cuddled.
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