Kittenzen: Whoop Ass

Our mama cat, Easy, spends a good deal of time each day playing whoop ass with her kittens. It is play, but it is intense and seems to be something that may be the result of boredom or negative feelings of some sort (hard to read a cat). Anyway, she stalks them, pounces on them, gets their upper bodies in a half nelson and pummels them with her back legs. They squeal a little and run off when they get free, but no real harm is ever done although it looks and sounds bad and occasionally we can't bear it and distract her so that she lets the kitten go.

This seems to be a way Easy gets out some negative feelings and I wonder if we shouldn't practice it more often, too. I have never seen her really hurt one of her kittens or  even get seriously angry with them. She always lets them have her food if they horn in on it, she continues to lick and clean them and they her, and she loves to play with them. She is in all respects a great mom, but she practices whoop ass religiously. We have been told this is good for the kittens: it teaches them manners and boundaries around other cats. In fact someone told me recently that an orphaned kitten was getting a little mean so the veterinarian told the owner to put the kitten in a towel and rough it up some, like a mother cat would do. But I also wonder if it isn't good for the mother cat, too: a way to deal with stuff that just builds up inside--for whatever reason--through hard, rough PLAY.

I guess sports are a way for us humans to do this, and probably humor, too. This kind of rough play reminds me of when Inspector Clouseau would come home and Cato would, cat-like, pounce on him and they would do battle.

We all have negative emotions, be they from anxiety or boredom, and we all get irritated with life, with each other. I know prayer is a great way to deal with these feelings but I also think we need, once again, to watch how the animals work out these things and learn from them. Rather than denying, ignoring or feeling guilty about these bad feelings we need to find a way to play Whoop Ass with each other, especially with the people we live with be it husbands and wives, siblings, or parents and children. Finding a safe but real way to "bark" at each other and clear the air so that we don't carry around the bad feelings day after day and either end up avoiding each other or hurting each other through passive aggression. So, how might you play Whoop Ass???