On cats
Once you get a cat, and it does not matter if you enthusiastically buy it or reluctantly find it, or it is inappropriately given to you as a gift by a friend, you will become instantly devoted to the cat, whether you like it or not. Food becomes a central issue and if you underestimate it you will have to face the consequences: if the food is not to the cat’s taste, he will meow its lungs out or he will stand still next to the plate, accusingly staring at you, and starve for hours or even days. Both attitudes will have the same effect over you: whether it is on account of acoustic fatigue or fear, you will dash to the nearest store and buy him whatever he wants, no matter how expensive or eccentric it might be. You will also have to
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Animals rely on their instincts and so they live in a constant state of alertness, indispensable for survival. Regarding cats in particular, this state seems to involve not only alertness but also pleasurable curiosity: noises, smells, shadows, insects, the movement of leaves, the human behavior, and sometimes even nothingness itself seem to fascinate them. As humans, we live so focused on our worries that we tend to forget to really pay attention to the outer world. We have no time for the little things, for the unnoticed, for the simple, for what only is and does not represent means or results, and when we do stop and look around us, we usually do it through our ideas, emotions and prejudices. As we do not connect with our surroundings, I think we neither connect with real time or with the natural pace of life, and that is why we end up obsessed with age or death; anthropologist Marc Augé stated that “the cat is not metaphor for humankind but a symbol for what could be a relationship with time that would make age an abstraction.” On the other hand, poet William Blake wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” I think this last quote explains this quality of cats, which becomes apparent when you catch a cat staring attentively at the most insignificant