My thirteen-year-old cat, Kevin, has developed a limp. She’s thirteen and perhaps a tiny bit overweight. No, I don’t know exactly how much she weighs, but it’s safe to say she is thick. Voluptuous. Big-boned.

She’s old and fat, so she limps. She still gets everywhere she needs to go. She goes outside to survey her backyard kingdom. She can still move pretty fast when treats are in the offering. She can get up on our bed for cuddles and occupy my writing chair when she sees the need.

But it’s also clear that sometimes, she just lays down about halfway to her ultimate destination. She’s headed upstairs, but she plops down on the rug instead. She’s coming out to the party pavilion to see me, but she takes a break on the sidewalk. In other words, when she gets tired, she rests. She is, after all, old. And a cat.

Kevin has taught me many important lessons over the last thirteen years. Know your worth. Accept that you are deserving of all the love and affection the world has to offer, but when you’re done, that’s okay, too. Don’t be shy about telling people to back the fuck off and give you your space. If you want to spend several hours lying in the sun, for god’s sake, human, just do it. What’s stopping you?

There’s continual wisdom to be gained from life with cats (and, okay, I guess dogs, too). So, yes, when you’re tired, rest. It’s not rocket science, is it? And yet it’s such a hard lesson for us to learn.

I see memes and posts pop up sometimes that say things like, “Rest is productive.” Which, I guess it is. We are probably better workers when we’re rested. But also, we’re not machines. Our sole or most important value isn’t in our productivity. Really, we shouldn’t even apply that word to our lives as humans, because, again, we are not machines. Our purpose is not to produce.

Rest is important just for the sake of rest. It is an end in and of itself. You don’t have to take a nap in order to then get up and cross a bunch of items off your to-do list. You can take a nap just because you want to take a nap. Because naps are enjoyable. Because this is what your body needs. Because a nap is a lovely way to reset on the particularly shitty days, like the universe provided you with your very own on/off switch. Why not use it?

Rest is a luxury that not all of us have, but I imagine it also as a potential form of resistance. It was a form of resistance for enslaved people in the American South. In the face of white owners with almost complete control of their lives, one way African people resisted their enslavement was by slowing down. Breaking tools. Feigning illness. Taking their time about getting work done.

What if more of us said, fuck capitalism, I’m taking a nap? I’m lying down if I’m tired. Taking a seat. Slowing down. What if we stopped seeing rest as in service of productivity and made it the priority instead?

I know Kevin would approve, because cats are subversive like that. I’d ask her, but she’s taking a nap.

Thanks to everyone who came out to my library talk last night on sports and gender segregation. It was super fun. If you’re part of an organization—a school, a library, a team—who might be interesting having me come talk about sports, hit me up—robynryle@gmail.com. Thanks as always for reading and sharing and liking!

Read Monday’s post about my obnoxious and totally judgmental food rules, here.

My philosophy of bad books, here.

And all about merak (no, you have to read the post to find out what it means), here.