YOGA
CAT
I took up yoga
two years ago, around the same time we got our first cat.
Having read that owning a cat and practicing yoga
were both fail-safe methods to soothe troubled nerves,
I envisioned a life filled with peace and inner reflection.
Now, two years wiser, I know that people who own cats
do yoga simply to release the stress in their lives that
exists because they own a cat.
My cat
mocks me while I do yoga. As I sit on my padded blue mat,
tangled up in a pose the human body, or at least my body,
was not meant to perform, she’ll sit beside me and
perform the same pose flawlessly.
“Now,
raise your right leg, keeping your left leg fully extended,”
coos my video yoga instructor. “Balance
on your sitting bones, and raise the leg over your head.”
Puffing and grunting,
I try to extend my leg. Without breaking a sweat,
the cat plops herself down beside me and raises her right
leg over her head, making sure her back leg remains fully
extended. I look over at her. She looks back
and, pointedly, bends down and cleans herself, without
lowering the leg. I find this insulting.
I
decide I needed more personal instruction and signed up
at our local Y, paying $75 to spend eight days with a
certified instructor twisting me into painful and humiliating
poses. But the cat is not there, executing
a better version of “Downward Facing Dog”
than me, so it’s bearable.
“You’re
doing very well,” says my instructor.
“Thank you,”
I say. “I’m trying to impress my cat.”
The instructor backs away, and avoids me for the
rest of the class. But I don’t mind. I
am raising and extending my legs at an advanced rate.
I can’t wait to get home.
I return home and
pull out my mat. The cat looks pleased. It’s been
a few days since she’s humiliated me.
“Ha!
That’s only what you think is going to happen,”
I say. “Watch this!” I proceed to execute
a flawless “Dead-bug” pose. The cat looks
amused.
“That’s
not all,” I say. “I can also do this!”
I move into Downward Facing Dog, remembering to breathe,
as my instructor said.
The cat ambles
over, takes a seat next to my head, and stares at me.
My arms begin to tremble, but I refuse to give up the
pose. The cat continues
to stare, glancing significantly at my now shaking torso.
I am no longer breathing properly. In fact, I think I
am close to hyperventilating. The cat begins to purr.
I can’t go
any further. I collapse onto the mat. I’m pretty
sure I’ve strained something. I can’t locate
exactly where at the moment, because my entire body is
trembling. Now that I’m on the floor, the
cat yawns and stretches, fully extending her front legs
and arching her back. She holds the pose. And holds it.
And holds it. And darn it all, she’s breathing.
Releasing the pose, she takes a deep cleansing breath.
Her final word on the matter is to claw at my
yoga mat before exiting the room.
The phone rings.
It’s my yoga instructor.
“I was wondering
if you wanted to sign up for our next series of classes,”
she said. “You were making such good progress.”
I think about the physical anguish, and sweat,
of the yoga class. Then I ponder the money spent to experience
this pain. I tell the instructor I will not be returning
to class. If it’s pain I’m after, I can get
that at home for free.
I’ll
just do yoga with my cat.
Hailed
as the “Erma Bombeck of cat writers,” Dena Harris’
stories appear in the newly released Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s
Soul, as well as in her new cat humor book, Lessons In Stalking…Adjusting
to Life with Cats (www.lessonsinstalking.com).