Teacher’s Pet

My husband didn’t want to get a cat.

Evan had never owned a pet, because, as he explained to me, “black people don’t like animals.” Interracial intimacy has taught me to rethink critical race theory — but I’ll save those insights for another article. Here I’ll explain how teaching my feline to use a human toilet has taught me to rethink my approach to pedagogy.

Our Brooklyn apartment’s unrelenting plague of mice helped me to persuade Evan, but the prospect of a litter box still made him hesitate. I finally convinced him by showing him a few YouTube videos of kitties using commodes. Soon enough a cat came into our lives serendipitously — she nuzzled against my feet as I searched through the ice-cream freezer at the local deli. Then the little cutie, a calico of two years, followed me to the cash register. “If you want Cookie,” the deli owner said, “we need to get her out of here anyway.” Cookie came home with me, dispatched the rodents with relish, and curled up on the couch. Her take-no-prisoners ferocity, combined with her prim elegance, quickly earned her a surname. Evan dubbed her Cookie Lyon after the character played by Taraji P. Henson on Fox’s Empire.

My test as a pedagogue began. The Litter Kwitter™ arrived in the mail — a series of three trays that fit onto any conventional toilet. The first tray contains a pan for cat litter, which the student uses as one would a conventional litter box. During this stage the student learns by habit to do her business on top of the toilet. After several weeks the instructor replaces Tray 1 with Tray 2. The second tray has a small hole. During this stage the student becomes accustomed to the toilet water — naturally frightening to most kitties — and under the teacher’s supervision she learns to aim through the hole. After the student has mastered this stage, which takes several weeks, then Tray 3 replaces Tray 2. The third pan contains a much larger hole surrounded by a narrow rim of litter. Through repetition and coercion, the student gradually becomes accustomed to the porcelain throne. But this approach challenged everything I had previously believed about pedagogy.

My undergraduate years at the New School had trained me to take a progressivist view of education. John Dewey helped to found the New School in 1919, and shortly thereafter the University in Exile program found visas for scholars fleeing Europe. Dewey challenged the commonplace that education entails transmitting a priori knowledge from teacher to student. He maintained that knowledge does not exist, except as a social construction. Education, for Dewey, consisted in this very construction. His philosophy informed the New School’s liberal-arts curriculum, which features virtually no core requirements. As a matter of policy, New School faculty rarely lecture. Instead, à la Dewey, instructors facilitate situations in which students must ask their own questions and generate their own ideas. According to Dewey, teachers should create learning environments in which students develop knowledge independently. My student Cookie, however, possesses little aptitude for the life of the mind. Despite her innate curiosity, she shows no intrinsic motivation as a learner. Only tuna inspires her.

At the New School, Dewey’s method saturated every aspect of student life. Coupled with the university’s historic relationship with exiled Frankfurt School types — and with the survivor guilt that this still causes, even generations later — the program often leaves students bereft of guidance. Hannah Arendt, who taught at the school, lamented in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that Dewey’s system had eroded the authority of educators and had deprived students of their birthright. During my own college days, I suffered a severe, nihilistic despondency. I smoked a lot of pot and spent long nights at the library, where I aimlessly, desperately read random books that other students had left on the desks. Yet the New School’s curriculum ultimately succeeded. I graduated with a deep sense of purpose, along with powerful critical-thinking skills (which Evan tells me can become somewhat tiresome).

Dewey’s approach worked for me in the long run. Sadly, it has had no efficacy with Cookie, a creature ruled by decadent tastes and sadistic impulses. Maybe playing with yarn counts as critical thinking. But Cookie has never quite grasped her tasks conceptually. My faith in progressive education fell apart when Evan and I tried to move Cookie from Stage 1 to Stage 2 (from using a conventional litter box on top of the toilet to using the pan with the small hole). Because of Cookie’s natural fear of water, she became skittish. Bribes of dried salmon produced mixed results. Despite my better judgment, Evan and I resorted to catnip. Even sedated, Cookie fell into a frenzy whenever she needed to go (she tore up cushions and hid under the bed). We finally moved on to Stage 3 after weeks of frustration and frequent accidents. When we left town for the weekend, however, Cookie regressed. We left her in the hands of a capable cat-sitter (a fellow teacher), but Cookie dug up floor tiles and treated them like a sandbox. Only a strong hand could rein her in.

After long struggle, Cookie now uses the toilet, but purely out of habit, demonstrating few signs of deeper understanding. Archaic drives control her behavior. Personally, I admire her foppish dedication to triviality and idleness, to shiny objects and long naps. But Cookie’s unrepentant lust for torturing small creatures has offered a sharp rebuke to my liberalism, as have her maladaptations. Like all cats, Cookie tends to want to bury her waste because the smell attracts predators. No predators live in our apartment, of course, and the toilet’s flush renders burying redundant. Still, when Cookie uses the toilet, she always scratches around the rim, as if clawing at some phantom litter. Nothing can override her basic instincts.

Arendt attended to the philosophies of Aristotle and Augustine, pedagogical theorists who emphasized the importance of habit in the development of character. They became my exemplars as Cookie learned by rote. But Cookie occasionally pees in the bathtub. I sometimes interpret this act as rebellion — as a consequence of the disordered will that Augustine saw as needing discipline. However in my more optimistic moments, I interpret this act as an innovation. Cookie’s choice of the tub, rather than the floor, demonstrates her desire to apply her knowledge. Although Evan remains skeptical, I feel convinced: Cookie has set out to conduct her own, original research.

A.W. Strouse is a poet who teaches medieval literature at Hunter College of the City University of New York.