Brown About Town with Suma Iyer

We as humans take it for granted that we have a level of enjoyment in the reproductive process that other animals do not.

Broadly, that’s probably true. It doesn’t seem like most animals don’t enjoy sex. From what I can tell, animals have intercourse with dead eyed certainty. It is a purposeful act for them, and little else. Sex equals babies. That’s it.

Once, I was sitting upstairs in a café looking down on a church, and I saw two pigeons of top of one another on a church steeple. If there was any thrill at all, it was from the balancing act. The female pigeon was pinned on top of the spire, with the male pigeon fatly grinding on top of her.

He finished in seconds and they parted ways. No pleasantries were exchanged, and I don’t reckon he texted her afterwards.

However, I contend that there can be exceptions to this rule.

I have two cats, and they are proud (and I mean PROUD) members of the LGBTIQ+ community. I know this because, the morning after I brought them home, I came downstairs to find them gently rimming one another with real skill and affection in what can best be described as a Tight 69 formation.

I do not know how long they had been in the throes of that particular ecstasy. Possibly all night.

This is, I might add, shortly after they had just met. People can be partnered for years longer than the life expectancy of the average cat, and not attempt that particular move with the same confidence.

The love those two have is quite cute, but it’s not very wholesome (pardon the pun, eww). Maybe that’s exactly what it is. They do a fair bit of rimming. They make a little loop sometimes on the couch, just this feverish, arse eating loop, where you can’t see the separation of face and rear. It’s like an ouroboros. It’s the love that dare not speak its name, because its mouth is full of arse and it may lose its tongue hold.

I’m trying to be a good cat guardian, so I sat them down to talk about the birds and the bees. At first the cats were very interested in this subject, but when it became clear that I wanted, in fact, to talk to them about sex and intimacy, they swiftly ignored me.

Which is fair enough. They can lick their own butts, let alone each other’s, with great expertise, and there’s nothing about intimacy that I could impart to two creatures capable of such a feat.

So, I’m trying to be a supportive cat parent but it’s tough. The thing is, they are also very confrontational. It’s bad enough that they’re constantly giving a colon-centric masterclass in functional intimacy, but I could do without the ongoing critique of my relationships.

On one occasion, my partner put his head on my shoulder while we were watching telly. The cats just stared over at us with their big, judgy eyes, like, “Ugh, that’s so heteronormative and gross.”

The cats treat every day like Pride March, even though they’ve made love on every surface in the house, so I don’t know that there’s any space that needs reclaiming.

And every meal like the Stonewall Riots; the fridge is their safe space and I’m the one raiding it. Which is weird, because they’re the ones who’ve proven that they can live on a diet of chocolate starfish, and I’m so beta for needing bread and milk as sustenance.

I don’t want to sound like I’m hating on them. They seem to get a lot of things right. They don’t need jobs, they sleep all day, they have fulfilling erotic lives.

And I guess if I’m not the one having sex on the living room floor, the dining table, the couch and in the vegetable crisper, I guess I’m glad they are.

Suma Iyer is a Canberra-based comic and proud cat parent. She has a show at the Canberra Comedy Festival with Felix McCarthy—The Burden of Excellence—on Sunday 17 March at the Courtyard Theatre. Tickets are $20 + bf via the Canberra Theatre