Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh!

I have a very skewed view of love.

I claim to love my cats very much. I stroke their jaws, they love it (Try stroking your jaw, it feels nice. This is how I understood feline pleasure.) I squeeze them until they go "Kakkk. Kakkk." I don't care if I'm wearing black and I'm almost late for work. And the rounded bellies. This is where 1/19th of my salary goes. I make up impromptu lullabies for them. Lately, the lullabies are to the tune of that song that childless ladies dance to (Santa Clara, pinong-pino. Bigyan mo kami, ng anak na pito...), and "Alfie".

But I hate the part where I need to mash cheap sardines with will-be-bad-after-3-hours rice, turning it into a mess that the cats go into a stampede for. I don't like picking up broken shards of vases that they "played" with. I'm not too crazy about bathing them either, and I have not done this. It's torture for all species involved. And I detest, DETEST, having to pick up their digestive products. Cheap sardines make heinous-smelling cat droppings, and it took me a year to learn this.

I love them to shreds, but I hate the messy part of this love. The part that needs work. The part where my hands get dirty and there's a need for Betadine afterwards. The part where there's hurt and stink and more effort than stroking their jaws with my hands. But this...this is the part of love that makes it love even in the absence of the pleasuring touches.

And this, I learned too late. Way too late.

(Someone tell me that I am wrong.)

***

Amusing how I used the word "love" 6 times in the previous paragraph(s).

Wait, I think it was 7.

Anyways, what counts as "love"?

***

Tonight, I learned that I love him. This I knew when someone not him was kissing me, was holding me, touching me in places that make me go "Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh!" And I was closing my eyes all the time. All. The. Time. And I was pretending...

pretending

that

it

was

him.