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How to Live Like Your Cat
Roland Glasser
Stephane Garnier
A fun present for cat lovers everywhere: a light-hearted self-help guide to help you live more like your catLET YOUR CAT BE YOUR LIFE COACH.Do cats worry about their pension? Nope. Do cats take on work they don’t want to do? As if! Do cats rush around hectically when they’d rather be licking their paws and looking out of the window? Please.Cats are free. They are calm, observant, wise, elegant, charismatic and proud. In fact, cats have found nothing less than the secret of how we should all live, whatever species we are! And in this book, Stéphane Garnier will show you what he’s learned over fifteen years of closely observing his cat, and teach you all the ways in which you too can apply the secrets of cats to your own life – at work, at home and with your friends.Unplug your laptop. Throw away your alarm clock. It’s time to live like your cat!
(#u479f3c70-e5d8-52f3-a391-0b92723820ac)
Copyright (#u479f3c70-e5d8-52f3-a391-0b92723820ac)
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.4thestate.co.uk (http://www.4thestate.co.uk)
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate 2017
Copyright © Stéphane Garnier 2017
English translation © Roland Glasser
Cover image © Shutterstock
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Stéphane Garnier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008276775
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008276782
Version: 2018-09-10
Dedication (#u479f3c70-e5d8-52f3-a391-0b92723820ac)
To Ziggy,
my cat
Contents
Cover (#u1baf8400-4401-5003-b601-50caf68fe34f)
Title Page (#ub309d6cf-e136-5516-839a-0e5144bf1a06)
Copyright (#ue17cd89c-7662-5d58-9ace-e8809805f8ce)
Dedication (#u56ea74dc-ad68-56a2-bd20-2cf0a7618092)
Foreword (#ue7b9956e-0995-51c2-a8de-851b64316dce)
Your Friend, the Cat (#uff7539ad-f6f0-5943-bc9b-0f8cc50c5f86)
Your Cat Is Free (#u35b784d0-56d8-5690-935f-0ee9b81b102e)
Your Cat Is Charismatic (#u554db1da-8fd1-5116-aea8-d6e5550e9486)
Your Cat’s Day (#u55066938-5ab1-5855-97d2-02c176060aca)
Your Cat Is Calm (Most of the Time) (#u195e6562-1c6d-552d-8976-9c800c098920)
Your Cat Knows How to Assert Itself (#u0c97ef3d-af79-58e6-a4a0-68d495975beb)
Your Cat Is Wise (#u083446a9-8760-5b8b-b66b-f38ead49c901)
Your Cat Thinks About Itself First (#u0592d57d-0cdd-5f22-b6c1-60910ce2d4bf)
Your Cat’s Day (#u95b7d7da-920b-5306-bbfe-6d300cbb51bd)
Your Cat Accepts Itself as It Is, Your Cat Loves Itself (#udd6cc7bb-c6be-5240-83ae-9c5a301413bd)
Your Cat Has a Certain Swagger, Your Cat Is Proud (#u18149e74-622b-56bf-8f25-39ffce6327fc)
Your Cat Is the Centre of Attention (#u5df6e144-eef2-5175-883b-0c5581e83b01)
Your Cat Is Impenetrable to Judgement (#u987e1484-ecef-5b36-9acb-1ffea968e3b3)
Your Cat’s Day (#u59528fe0-9c6d-54e9-93cb-54c14bedb95e)
Your Cat Is Curious by Nature (#u00fa64ac-be4e-589d-8746-b4174d263e41)
Your Cat Is In-de-pen-dent (#udc2c8fb9-ac18-5b81-a434-cc45986b479d)
Cat Secrets (#u35d0a004-eeb5-5701-a6d3-f1ff55864454)
Your Cat Brims with Self-Confidence (#uc7fb91d5-959c-50c9-8130-de4a66c0699b)
Your Cat Knows How to Delegate (#u8892ba2b-d7cf-5208-9ea6-3e289378ead5)
Your Cat’s Day (#u521268d3-c31f-5101-b14e-a5ddbf537f7a)
Your Cat Knows How to Take the Time to Live (#ub173dd8b-adfa-5de4-9919-30afb7426ac1)
Your Cat Adapts to Everything Quickly (#u05a5aa2d-145c-525b-abaf-04f1bcc315cd)
Your Cat Loves Calm (#ub667fb9a-bf0e-52e3-a47a-6385e98d7853)
Your Cat Chooses Its Own Company (#u665483de-1170-5d3c-89c5-07e824648b04)
Your Cat’s Day (#u59e54892-529e-5eb8-9011-74dbd1e17f7f)
Your Cat Knows How to Rest, It Loves to Sleep (#uca2fb88d-14fd-5353-bd2f-f6fbff791c4c)
Your Cat Knows When to Say No (and Readily Does So) (#uc922459c-8174-50bd-93d3-2ddc9b669fe1)
Your Cat Knows How to Avoid Conflict (as Much as Possible) (#u7507ad53-90eb-5518-a2e2-e5fd3648bae3)
Your Cat Adores Its Home, and Marks Out Its Territory (#u9f383a52-d913-5e7d-8a8a-55eb293cbe63)
Your Cat’s Day (#u6a7ac74d-b8ce-58b9-8740-90b6163966bf)
Your Cat Trusts You (#u411589ef-2472-5830-a15a-bd599ffe5c68)
Your Cat Is a Natural Boss (#ub9e58eda-cf14-5ca6-9d61-dbf73d1a42bc)
Cat Secrets (#u9dfad8ba-7533-5463-bc7e-a11552859fc2)
Your Cat Is Tenacious (#u1c18afb4-2ac5-5c3a-aefd-f22207c5d07e)
Your Cat Is Always Cautious (#uc2a701eb-06c0-5f63-9360-95957e6e2b80)
Your Cat’s Day (#u90c67b34-d881-533d-9323-ada5dd18ae40)
Your Cat Has a Huge Need for Love (#ud8357164-95ed-5899-94a7-02ae6161680f)
Your Cat Is Serene by Nature (#udc1f252e-3fee-56e8-87e4-6d71fd999d67)
Your Cat Knows What It Wants, and Is Direct About It (#u0f17094c-15b9-5eb7-8817-5591affeaeaa)
Your Cat Dares to Ask (All the Time) (#u342d3976-ce01-57d5-a2c6-13a811735a99)
Your Cat’s Day (#u177565b2-c264-5bfb-9e3c-424d335bc853)
Your Cat Is Always Honest (#u993cbf22-ea8b-5e84-841a-2d02c21567ed)
Your Cat Is Silent and Observant (#u73570dd1-efb3-5090-bf5b-d951d92b3fde)
Your Cat Is a Sincere Friend (#u2cba1959-92be-5894-b913-d8d190ee8b11)
Your Cat Focuses on the Essential (#uf40442a5-d996-5330-8fea-2f94d73061ae)
Your Cat’s Day (#u08e2d1bd-061e-5120-91ef-b709cd7f24c9)
Your Cat Always Remains Natural (#u68a73959-4aff-5cd1-bb12-49c9ce32628f)
Your Cat Is Humble and Indulgent (#ue42ebcd0-d88d-54ab-83c9-8e65c2172716)
Cat Secrets (#u02e39b10-bed3-5717-bfd6-5bca66f5373c)
Your Cat Knows How to See the Fun in Everything (#u358986a7-79bc-55e6-b6e4-81d7f286bc2a)
Your Cat Is Beautiful … and Knows It (#u5fc10dde-ea3d-551d-bb9f-8c18939ebdfb)
Your Cat’s Day (#udb2c7b9e-cb7b-5bfa-8b0e-b632c5c4c709)
Your Cat Is at Ease in All Situations (#u78878297-1160-5d32-aaee-d2772dd073e7)
Your Cat Shows Empathy (#u749178d3-bcf1-5ca1-84e7-d403f47729cc)
Live Like a Cat (#ub4692300-a48f-53e4-a8e7-a5e0df71bf12)
Your Cat Always Has the Last Word (#u5cbd92cb-16e3-5bfd-b7f1-93a9ee222d6a)
Test: Assess Your Cat Quotient (CQ) (#u8f59b1cb-aa72-55a9-81e1-c1e59d3ec12f)
Results of the Cat Quotient Test (#u285d2549-cb75-57a5-8086-170e10e47341)
About the Author (#u457a3199-8a21-59b3-b2b3-61c3ff4487a4)
About the Publisher (#u9a367a22-67ea-5efc-b5d5-5566c59cd7c5)
Foreword (#u479f3c70-e5d8-52f3-a391-0b92723820ac)
Some days, you don’t feel like going to work, watching the news, taking every catastrophe to heart or even caring about your own future. You don’t feel like having an opinion on the government’s latest reforms which make you gnash your teeth, any more than you feel like worrying over your career trajectory, or knowing if you’ll have much of a pension by the time you retire.
You don’t want to be constantly plagued by your own personal problems, which are themselves linked to those of your family and friends, and you don’t want to fret about the quality of your diet, or feel guilty for ‘destroying the planet’ every time you draw a bath.
You long to switch off and unplug from it all, just for a day, just for a moment, and breathe.
I look round to see that Ziggy, my cat, has padded silently into my study. He stares at me, blinking, then leaps onto my desk and lies down on the keyboard. It’s a little ritual that we’ve had for years now, stretching back to when I still did much of my writing in longhand and he used to bite the cap of my pen. It makes me laugh, this game we play. It’s as if on the one hand he loves that I write, but on the other hand he does all he can to prevent me writing.
Up until this moment, I considered his soft pawing at me, his comings and goings between my lap and the keyboard, to be nothing more than affectionate games. But perhaps he’s been trying to tell me something else all these years, something as simple as: ‘Hey, don’t you feel like downing tools for the day?’
Down tools. As he nuzzles his nose into my neck, I realise that, today, I don’t care if I’ll be able to pay the bills, or whether the stock market is about to crash. After all, does he care?
Maybe this is the secret he’s been wanting to communicate all this time: know how to let go, focus on the essentials, think about your wellbeing, be like him. Live like your cat!
Cats clearly live much better than we do. So why not follow their example?
This I did, by decoding how they operate, their aspirations and lifestyle. It had been there right in front of me, all these years, without me realising.
