I know that you have no reason to believe this, but I am in manner and in deed a pacifist. I abhor the raising of arms, I flinch at the performative servility of jingoist military-worship, I trust in the deep-down nature of human beings to one-on-one really get one another to a degree that makes armed struggle look ridiculous. And I think that cats are a part of understanding what you see as what I see.
My own cat is a curmudgeonly, intractible, stubborn, and fussy fiend. He knows not what he wants but he will demand it of me constantly. And yet, in this, I percieve and cherish what I believe is fundamental human nature: I give Geemer everything he needs, always, and that is the end of it. He is my cat for no more or less reason than that. I would gladly spoil him rotten forever.
Side note to this: ifn yer thinking I choose to spoil this alive predator animal just for the hell of it, please understand that in three days following the death of his brother, my other cat Shaqtuul, Geemer did not eat. He partook of none food so much as to make me doubly-worried that he would also perish (I learned that a cat needs to eat or else they contract severe liver failure and so on) so to say, and so I said aloud, "I do not live in a world where my other cat dies of grief after learning of the death of the first."
And, well, of course, blessedly, I do not live in that world, much panic as you might expect otherwise accumulated in my body over the course of the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Geemer refusing to eat anything after the dread Tuesday when Shaqtuul died.
He, Geemer, was just sad. I believe that he fully understood what had transpired, more than the to-the-minute behaviors, but because he has since then become more soft. I know that Geemer was sad. I know that he misses his big brother. I can see it. I feel it.
And so, I know Geemer was not always soft, but I also know that he has been made soft, and I made him soft.
I call to mind the character of the fox from Le Petit Prince who had said "one risks tears (a little bit) when one allows oneself to become tame,"
But not as lamentation for lost wildness, but firm acceptance of the opposite. I am not, and will never be, wild. On risque de pleurer un peu si l’on s’est laissé apprivoiser
My own wild beating heart will keep this animal fat and happy forever, and I dare any god or other being to stop me.