A day of rest – notionally, but really, how often? I don’t believe myself to be a scribomaniac, though I try to write daily. No, I am a writer.

I sit here, surrounded by sleeping cats, thinking what strange little creatures they are. They eat to fuel a biological machine that seems designed for sleeping more than anything else. How much of their energy is expended in purring and being petted? Is it mainly used up in the small spurts of activity that manifest as insanely running around and interrogating the ceiling with yowls? Is pooping and pissing in inappropriate places exhausting?

I love them, but that sleepy life seems to me like it would be hellish. Oversleeping in humans seems to be in the neighbourhood of getting ready to shuffle off this mortal coil, or being depressed.

I am sitting here listening to Loudon Wainwright talking about life being a series of dogs, and I choke up a little at the thought of the short life of cats in comparison. My turtles could conceivably outlive me, though I have had turtles who did not, but won’t my cats check out long before I do? I once had an idea that I could soften the impact of a death by increasing the number of cats around me, but that notion is as foolish as thinking that having a lot of friends lessens the departure of one. One cat is not the same as another cat – each of them has a different personality, and they love me each as differently as I love them.

The lie of sciences that lump all reactions and all the vagaries of life into causal chains can be seen in this variety, and if you can’t see that you aren’t looking, and there is no God in the creation you live in. Take it literal or metaphorical, whatever you will, but for me, emptying the soul out of the world empties it into something sadly blank and lacking magic. Why would I write if there were no magic? Cats and writing and magic – not disconnected.