Why I Think Country Songs are Really About...Cats

Can you hear it? This cat could easily be channeling Hank Williams, Jr., "You'll cry and cry and try to sleep / But sleep won't come the whole night through / Your cheatin' heart will tell on you / When tears come down like falling rain / You'll toss around and call my name..."

Last night I was being kept awake all night by my five year old, who again had a nightmare and needed to climb into bed with me. It's not her presence in the bed on its own, it's the way she kicks, hard, especially in the kidneys and rear end. My husband and I greet each other groaning every morning after she visits. We've started stacking pillows around her, between her and us, to get some protection.

Neither of us are kickers, but we are still happy to blame each other's genetics for this child.

Anyway, so you know how when it's 3 a.m. and you are laying in bed, too alert to sleep, too sleepy to get up and your mind starts running around crazy topics because your eyes are too tired to open, much less focus on something like a book or TV show?

Yeah, so my mind was running, and the soundtrack/ear worm was this really silly country song and I don't even know where I've heard it.

I'm into jazz, blues, Motown, classic 70s rock, and singer/songwriter. Just ask iTunes, it knows. My vocal eight year old, who has lately roped her sister into block voting against me in the new minivan when it comes to music (how a new car has empowered my children I will never know -- I used to own the radio dial. I know what it is. Now that they have their own air conditioner controls and think they have a vote about other amenities in the car!)...anyway, my eight year old is into classical music so I'm forced to leave it on NPR (2 hours of news, classical music, two hours of news) all day. I like classical music, especially classical Spanish guitar, which we were treated to this morning. So don't get me wrong. I like it, especially a lot more than wailing children.

In fact, maybe the wailing children -- and since it is summer, they do wail a lot, and with all our extra summer quality time together, I get to hear more of it -- with their twangy, nasally sad song they sing too often, put me in mind of country music.

And maybe my mind was thinking about my kicking five year old which reminded me of the wailing from earlier that day which made me think of country music. Maybe that's how it happened. That made me think about Rascal Flatts and the time they ere on one of the CSIs and how that was the best part of the show, which really jumped the shark about three years ago. So then I was thinking more and more about country music, and that's when my cat jumped up and butted my hand for some love and affection.

I complied, of course, because the company was welcome, but more importantly, I am well trained. Cats do not take no for an answer. Cats hold all the power in the relationship. Cats keep and give and take at will, all while projecting a magical Zen quality. Cats love you and leave you.

Just like people in country songs! All those sad spurned lovers missing the object of their affection, empty and broken-hearted from pouring their all into a doomed affair, drowning in beer and crying for Jesus...it sort of seemed an apt description of my brain at, check the clock, 3:34 a.m.

In fact, when I thought about it...all of the country songs I could think of could just as easily be about cats as lost loves.

Consider "A Lover Spurned" by Marc Almond:

A passing phase

A week of love

But all at once

You had enough

It pales so soon

Waned with the moon

No deep concern

For a lover spurned

She'll destroy you with her little games

That could totally be my cat!

Or go back to Rascal Flatts, "What Hurts the Most"

What hurts the most

Is being so close

And havin' so much to say

(Much to say)

And watchin' you walk away

And never knowin'

What could've been

And not seein' that lovin' you

Is what I was tryin' to do, oh

Oh yeah

Except for the part that she didn't know that I was loving on her. She knew, that cat knew full well but once she had enough, she hopped off the bed and left! Just left me all alone in the dark at, check the clock, 3:41 a.m.

Just go find a country song, read the lyrics, and think "cat." It works, it really does. Also, it adds a level, just like when you add "in bed" to the end of every fortune cookie fortune.