What's it like to be a cat for a living? To spend one's days figuring out how to squeeze one's self into places that one would not normally care to squeeze into? To be enamored by every moving thing, whether it's the ladybug on the window, or the cursor on the computer screen, or the laser beam controlled by a teenage boy, or one's own tail?What must life be like when one's only worries are when the people will rise and fill the food bowl, or banish one from the counter, or spill some cream as they're filling their coffee mugs? What must it be like to fill one's days with searching for the warmest beam of sunshine or the freshest basket of clean laundry or the last sleeping child? No worries about exercise, or relationships, or beauty. One simply knows that one looks good, even in one's graceful act of bathing.
And when one has an issue with a fellow cat, one simply lets out a horrifying hiss or a terrific growl, maybe even bats a clawed paw, and the message is clear. Soon enough, one will be playing with one's enemy, or one's tail, and all will be right with the world again.
When one needs a change of scenery or a safe hiding place, one has only to climb a tree, or curl up on a warm refrigerator, or perch atop an open door, and then one can have a view of everything, can bat at the people as they pass by, just for fun, or can completely ignore them, also just for fun. One can turn one's gorgeous green eyes upon the people, or turn and lift one's tail with dignity; one can choose to pay attention, or to not, but one can not be ignored, whether one is lying on the keyboard or the newspaper or pawing at the yarn in the evening or at a person's face in the wee morning hours, hoping for a little nibble of something, or eager to leave a dead-mouse gift, or hoping to get the person's attention just long enough to ignore them.
If I were a cat for a living, I would rule the world, I'm sure. Mice would fear me, children adore me, trees cradle me. And no matter what I was doing, whether sleeping or bathing or eating or playing, I would always be gorgeous.
