Everything I Know About Difficult People, I Learned from My Cat

I have two dogs.  I cannot have a cat because of an allergic family member, but at heart I am a cat person.  I had two great cats of note.  My first cat was Jezibel.  She was half Siamese and half black alley cat.  She had the shape and coat of a Siamese with the loveliest light blue eyes, but she was jet black, with a white blaze on her chest and an inch of white fur at the end of her tail.
I did not know I was learning lessons about difficult people as we lived together from the time I was 8 until I was 15.  Like all cats, Jesibel owned me, not the other way around.  She did not do tricks, and would only faintly play for a minute with a ball of yarn if we were watching.  I learned from her that I can only encourage others to think my way, but I cannot make them do what they do not want to do.
Jezibel also taught me that her independence meant more to her than I did.  She had a firm understanding with my mother.  Jezibel could go outside, as long as she left my mother's birds alone.  The first time she went after a bird, she stayed in the house for a month.  The next time she went outside, she approached the bird bath, turned to look at my mother standing in the doorway and veered off, never to bother the birds again.  But wander she did.  The longest she stayed away was three days, only to return and stay very close to home for a long while.  I learned that people will wander when they need to, but they will eventually come home if home welcomes them.
My cat also taught me the power of negotiations with difficult people.  She was not allowed on the furniture, but was allowed on laps that were on furniture.  When a lap got up, the cat was supposed to go on the floor.  A sleepy cat does not move easily, so she would go back to where the lap had been.  But would always go to the floor when the lap returned only to place herself back on the lap as things settled down.  She let the whole family know that she understood the rules, but would adapt them to her own needs as necessary.  I learned that difficult people need to feel that they have some control, but will exert some attempt to let their own feelings be known, and if those feelings were recognized, we could all get along just fine.
More about Jezibel and the cat that followed her. We named the second cat Bathsheba, who turned out to be David.  More about the cats in later blogs.