The Emperor Has No Clothes and That Delusional Man Is Not a Cat!

While working as a chaplain/teacher at an urban rescue mission, I was invited to a local mental health facility’s open house gathering.  Always on the lookout for another resource that might benefit our resident clients, I elected to attend—a decision I later regretted.  After the presenter told the group about her agency’s work with marginalized patients, she closed the meeting by parading the clinic’s number one “success story” before the assembly—the star patient who typified the nonprofit’s ability to help low-income folk suffering from various mental health woes.  The premier patient, the shining example of her agency’s stellar work, was a middled-aged man who identified as a cat.  He wore pajamas with a cloth tail pinned to his backside.  He also sported “cat ears” made from fabric.  The wannabe cat explained that he no longer wished to be a person.  He further told us that he was much happier being a cat.

Other than me, everyone in the room seemed pleased that this delusional patient had, at long last, found a measure of contentment identifying as a cat.  Here is the problem.  A cloth tail and attachable ears do not transform a member of the Homo Sapiens class into a purring, whiskered feline creature.   His happiness was built upon a whimsical fantasy.  While all this appeared obvious to me, many of my esteemed colleagues found no problem with an adult male in his mid-forties wearing tiger-striped pajamas while claiming to be a cat. 

If the man were indeed a cat, how was he able to articulate using spoken words rather than with meows and hisses?  Why did he have voting rights?  Why could he operate a motor vehicle?  Why could he read?  Why did he receive government benefits?  I love cats.  I know something about cats, too, and this man was no cat.  And if I have yet to convince you, my sister has four cats, and as clever as her kitties are, they are unable to express themselves with spoken or written words. Her kitties cannot walk on two legs. Her kitties cannot make phone calls. Her kitties cannot brew a pot of coffee.  Her kitties cannot open cans of tuna.

Again, I was the lone dissenter among those attending the open house.  Everyone treated the man as if he were a cat.  I found this rather patronizing.  We do not help the mentally ill by playing along with their games. I refuse to check my brain in at the gate—or in the litterbox.

Later, someone cornered me and complained, “If being a cat makes him happy, what is this to you?”  This is a fair question.  Frankly, I don’t care if every third person dons a Hello Kitty facemask while getting high on catnip, but please do not insist that I play along with such a farce.  I may as well garb myself with a Yankees’ baseball uniform and bill myself as the world’s oldest knuckleball pitcher. 

I am convinced much of the world is walking around with a giant “Kick Me” sign pinned to its back, but my, what a tolerant, open-minded lot we are.

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