When I lick you lick we lick

On transforming aggression into care

Two weeks ago, my partner Corey and I adopted two kittens. Our friend Veronica (wildly, a many time Jeopardy winner!) fosters cats with her partner for the Humane Society and county shelter. Our elderly cat Wendy passed last May, and as spring began hinting its arrival, we felt ready for another cat in our home and lives. Corey wanted the joy of kittens.

“Two kittens!” he would say and then an excited, distant look would cross his face. He seemed already healed by the knowledge that some day we might live with a pair of kittens.

I picked them up from the shelter the same day they: a) left Veronica’s home, b) departed from their mom and three other siblings, and c) had their balls cut off (the kittens we adopted are brothers). I was prepared for them to feel shitty, out of it, and scared for several days. Veronica and her nephew had named all five littermates after cereals, and I decided that the black cat, formerly known as Weetabix, would keep his name. I called him Weetie. Corey took his time renaming the grey cat, formerly known at Captain Crunch. He finally landed on Miles.

Weetie on the left, Miles on the right. Photo by my friend Joanna Cowan.

That first afternoon at our house, they seemed shy and disoriented. They played, but lethargically. They ate, but forgetfully. They toddled around the little entry room we’d setup for their arrival. And then, they began to wrestle, playfully, slightly violently, mischievously. Miles would pin Weetie and bite at his neck and ears and then, unexpectedly, begin aggressively grooming him, licking him all over his face and inside his ears, licking his body and sometimes near his non-existent balls. That first night, Miles groomed Weetie. But the next day, after a huge bout of wrestling, I found Weetie grooming Miles. Sometimes, in the days that followed, I would see them 69-ing each other, head to groin, head to groin, licking each other’s bellies and tails, “balls” and asses. Sometimes, it looked like a form of dominance, one cat pinning the other down, biting and licking in equal parts. I found it incredibly sweet and also faintly unnerving. “This is normal, right?” I asked Corey, and he said it must be.

Late one night, looking at my phone when I should have been trying to fall asleep, I googled “kitten grooming another kitten.” Right away, many articles popped up about “allogrooming.” Autogrooming is what it sounds like: a cat grooming itself. Allogrooming is when cats groom each other. According to the internet (however accurate or inaccurate it may be) this only happens between cats that are profoundly bonded, so think a mother and her children, littermates, and cats that have lived together a long time. Experts aren’t completely sure of all its functions (tigers and lions do this, too), but they believe it expresses closeness and can also be a form of establishing hierarchy. The groomer is the one with dominance.

I am currently reading Ursula Le Guin’s Always Coming Home, and this form of establishing hierarchy reminds me of her description of wealth in the Kesh society (which she invented based on real northern California Indigenous tribes). Within the Kesh world, wealth is defined by giving. Hoarding is a form of miserliness—a show of lack. To be able to share what you cook, grow, and make—this is wealth. And for these cats, grooming, licking, and cleaning one another are signs of strength.

My favorite detail about allogrooming is that some experts believe it’s a way for a cat who feels a surge of aggression to transform that into affection. Cats that groom each other see themselves as needing each other for survival, so they don’t want to enact harm on each other. They’re wrestling, maybe biting, and they want to take it to another level, but they also want to preserve their relationship and care for their kin, so they begin aggressively grooming, which calms them. To me, this feels like a magical transformation—taking violent energy and transmuting it into care. What a trick!

Watching all these licking sessions brought this thought to mind: When we feel overcome with heaviness, or a surge of cruelty and anger, how can we transform that energy? Not in order to escape reality but to better care for ourselves and each other? Is there something to learn from the cats?!

What do you think allogrooming would entail as part of our society? A lot of licking each other lol? Reparations? Fair taxation? Redefining wealth? I am still muddling on it because something about the idea feels constructive. Or maybe, I just like letting my mind wander while I observe these engrossing kittens.