This cat shadow on the wall is not a cat at all, but rather a silhouette created by the afternoon sun and a decorative plate my maternal grandparents owned. They are dead now and the plate belongs to me.

People love their pets more than their pets love them, and they are better for it. I have not had a pet since childhood. When I retire I plan to get a dog, a hunting breed, perhaps a German Shorthaired Pointer. A dog tried to bite me recently while I was delivering mail. It happened in front of Surdyk’s Liqour in Northeast Minneapolis. The sidewalk was busy. Normally, I give dog walkers a wide berth. It only nipped my blue trousers. The owner apologized. “He never does that,” she said. I was not upset. They hate the uniform, although I do think the mailman’s daily intrusions give meaning to their otherwise dull, castrated lives.

But enough about dogs, I was talking about cats. Cats love to bask in the sunlight, napping the day away before prowling at night. Cats have a quiet spirit that is very powerful. I get the same feeling from owls. Both are killers. Killers, whether human or animal, are never chatty. Several months ago, I saw a video on X of feral cats feeding on dead Palestinians after a bombing in Gaza. I have no way of knowing the veracity of the disturbing scene. As Aeschylus famously said, “truth is the first casualty of war.” I’ve since deleted my X account for unrelated reasons. I don’t miss it.

On a lighter note, my children’s mother obtained a pair of kittens after our divorce. The boys tease the cats with a clump of feathers attached to an old fishing pole by a length of kite string. I had a gray tuxedo cat as a child named Murphy. Our kitchen sink dripped and it preferred this fresher water source to its bowl. I remember little things like that: the cat with dragonfly wings sticking out of its mouth, for example. Our cat ate birds and baby rabbits in addition to insects. Mostly he liked killing for killing’s sake and the thrill of the hunt. I use to catch grasshoppers in my hand and feed them to him. The grasshoppers would spit on my fingers, an ochre liquid that is supposedly noxious to predators but my cat did not seem to mind.

William Burroughs wrote of cats in his uncharacteristically sentimental book, The Cat Inside:

“A cat’s rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.”

Once an enemy cat entered our yard. Murphy’s back hair stood on end and he hissed with his mouth open wide. Foolishly, I picked up our cat so it would not fight. The animal spun out of my hands in a dervish of claws. My face and head were covered in red scratches. My father took me to an emergency room. The doctor chuckled upon seeing me.

“Well, boy,” he said. “It looks like you opened up a sack full of wildcats.”

The scratches were shallow. A nurse daubed them with peroxide and I was sent home with an admonishment to never get in the middle of a cat fight. No scars remain. It was not the first time I embarrassed my father, nor the last time he embarrassed me. I remain a cat person, even though all I have is the plate and the shadow on the wall if the light is right.