If you're wondering: yes, this article is likely about to be as strange, and make exactly as far a reach, as you thought it was going to. Proceed by virtue of your own disastrous curiosity.

Recently, our foster kitten was in heat. By this point she's less like a foster animal and more like an unfortunate member of the family. Perhaps akin to a boisterous, somewhat alcoholic aunt that shows up at all family functions even though no one really invited her, but she's Aunt Linda and we'll be damned if we turn Aunt Linda out. Except her name is Pumpkin and she is a cat. We took said cat from our backyard with the intentions of putting her up for adoption; we weren't going to keep her so we didn't spend the money to get her spayed yet. She's only about four months old or so and still fairly small.

Here she is with her adoptive big brother, Rascal, #twinning.

Unfortunately, Pumpkin is sort of a terrible cat. A terror of an animal. The influence of her favorite family member--who we named "Rascal" for a reason--admittedly does not help as far as respect for authority goes, but at least Rascal treats us sweetly, buttering us up in anticipation of, or penance for, his crimes. This kitten is kind to no one--no man and no beast. She is often a blind rush of violence and fury and open mockery for human law. On the other hand she is very, very cute, and downright lovely when she wants to be.

Then she went into heat and became an absolutely useless mess.

She started skulking around as if trying out some poorly imitated cat version of the stanky leg, chirping and hitting on her step brother since he's our only male cat. A couple times in a valiant effort to act as though she was not totally incapacitated, she'd try to play fight him, only to fall victim to instinct and "assume the position" when he turned his attention to her; where she would normally wreck him in a fight, she was instead powerless to defend herself. And forget the other cats--she was even acting indiscriminately sweetly towards us. Us! Her large enemies apparent! It was wonderful and appalling.

Now I realize cats and humans are not really comparable in this regard. We're not mindless slaves to base impulses (no matter what toxic masculinity may suggest), nor do we usually go through our lives with the maturity and restraint of a four month old cat (which is: very little). But who of us can say we've never done something impulsive or regrettable in the heat (heh) of the moment? Had our judgement a bit skewed, perhaps in pursuit of a love interest, or overcome with some less than desirable emotion we simply wanted to dispel?

What more are we really than chemical reactions and hormones? Okay, that's rhetorical--we've got loads of mental faculties and reasoning abilities and as a society and people we honestly need to start acting like it. I, for one, have never been more glad to not be controlled solely by my biological functions than when I watched one of my cats fall apart with sexual frustration for four days.