Diva – prima donna; a usually glamorous and successful female performer or personality; especially a popular female singer Merriam Webster Dictionary

Prima Donna – the main female singer in an opera company; a person who thinks she or he is better than everyone else and who does not work well as part of a team or group Merriam Webster Dictionary

Diva – a b****y woman that must have her way exactly, or no way at all. often rude and belittles people, believes that everyone is beneath her and thinks that she is so much more loved than what she really is. Selfish, spoiled, and overly dramatic. Urban Dictionary

The other day I woke up to Super Snoops sitting at the foot of my bed looking at me as if to say, “I’ve been waiting more than 30 seconds for you to get up and let me downstairs. What’s the problem?” I think cats are naturally born divas. Even the sweet ones have their moments of, “Just turn off the rain so I can lie in my favorite sunspot.”

When I was little, I heard that Maria Callas was a real diva. I had no idea who she was or what diva meant, so it got tossed into the back of my mind. A lot of useless stuff lives there, so it was right at home.

According to the Internet, there are a lot of divas around at the moment. We have Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce. I don’t really know much about them. However, they certainly seem to be in charge wherever they go.

Thinking harder about it (a painful process), I realized that there really wasn’t a male counterpart to a diva. The Urban Dictionary says that it’s “hustler,” which is a stretch. I really don’t think Mariah Carey gets what she wants by misrepresenting herself. I think she gets what she wants because people want to make her happy.

I once read that the rock group Van Halen insisted on having all of the brown M&M’s removed from the bowl in their dressing room. I read it in Rolling Stone, so I know it’s true. I don’t know about anyone else, but I would much rather order a room full of white gardenias than paw through bags of M&M’s. Why they would want someone handling their food is a separate issue entirely.

Regardless, all of these people are able to make these somewhat silly and unreasonable requests because they are talented and extremely popular. Management doesn’t want their star to disappear before the show. A new toilet seat at every stop (Madonna) seems like a small price to pay for the income from the show. (Of course, management is not the one who has to search for the perfect shade of paint to redo the dressing room or try to keep the star functioning after they have consumed the entire bottle of pricey Scotch requested.)

I wonder at what point the transition to true diva starts and how it happens. My daughter told me about three potential divas she ran across in LA. The first was her roommate K. K had seemed pretty normal at home. She was a little stressed and flaky, but the world would be full of divas if those were the criteria. However, after being chosen as a finalist for several awards and not winning, she began to boo the winners. Afterwards, she complained somewhat excessively about how the judges didn’t appreciate how really talented she was. Her mother was a definite enabler of the behavior.

Then there was the young man (14 years old) who seemed to assume that because he looks good in clothes, everyone would be dying to sign him. He had appeared pretty normal until the last day. His disappointment at only having a few callbacks exposed the real diva. Instead of trying to sell himself to them, he told one of the agents that he was only interested in modeling and did not want to be trained in acting (for commercials and that type of thing.) The judges did not appreciate his talent either.

Finally there were the girls who received a lot of callbacks and only went to the ones that interested them. How they knew the others wouldn’t have been a good fit is anyone’s guess. But the girls knew they were too good to condescend to meet with them. Hopefully it worked out with the agents who made the cut.

I’ve come to the conclusion that human divas are made, not born. (Although some seem to have better genetic material for it than others.)

Cats can’t help it. It’s inbred. But they look so cute when they do it.