As a child I read Stories of Animal Sagacity, a set of Victorian anecdotes by William Henry Giles Kingston. I didn’t remember his name of course: the World-Wide Web has the full text in facsimile and OCR transcription, with the illustrations reproduced too. Sagacity is a lovely word: it was many years till I came across it again.
Animals are cute and pets especially exploit the fact but it’s wildlife I admire most, for surviving on their own without the dubious blessing of a human brain. Our neighbourhood black cat is somewhere on the borderline of wild or tame. No one knows who “owns” it, though everyone assumes that someone does. Our next-door neighbours let it into their house sometimes. I see them do it: our kitchens face one another across a five-foot fence on which it perches, pleading into their windows with its big eyes.
I used to let it in too sometimes, till it discovered how to leap through an open window, or slink through an open door uninvited. Then I tried to teach it morality, i.e. the difference between graciously accepting an invitation and being a cat-burglar. I had to give up. Deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation—nothing worked. I tried waving a stick and spraying water; it reluctantly fled but its big eyes were accusing: “You are temporarily deranged, but you can’t fool me. You are kind really.”
My neighbours have admitted to occasionally feeding it and letting it sleep on their bed at night. That sounds to me like ownership, I mean its ownership of them.
They are at work all day, but periodically it comes to sit on the fence looking in. It knows I am in too but has given up expecting me to offer hospitality. I see it in the streets too, ours and the one at the back. It roams everywhere, preoccupied, purposeful, living on its wits. I’ve seen it limping lately, not wanting to put down its left front paw. I tried to examine it and it bit me lightly when I touched the spot. I was ready to play Androcles but could see no thorn, only a lacerated foot-pad. That’s when a cat really wants an owner, for it can hardly pay its own vet’s bills.
It was in its spot on the fence when I went to the backyard, so I stroked it and the neighbour came out. He said, “Do you know there are two black cats? We found out yesterday morning. It was sleeping on our bed and when we looked out the window it was on the fence too.”
All my careful cat-conditioning—pretending to be a psychopath to deter it from ever sneaking into our house, or trying to teach it morality—had been based on the axiom that there was one cat, who would learn over time. I’d also prided myself on distinguishing the personality of one cat from another, based on their different life-experience and/or different DNA. Could I believe a tale of two black cats with the same pattern of behaviour? Perhaps they were from the same litter, identical twins.
Last night at dusk I heard a squeal of rage and pain. I ran out in time to see two black cats on that favoured piece of fence which gives a view into the kitchens of both houses. It’s a narrow wobbly perch to you and me, but a privileged begging-spot for a cat with big eyes. The fight was furious till one of them fled with a torn ear: whether that was the one with the wounded paw I could not tell.
Is there a God who looks down on man as bewilderedly as I do, looking down upon these interchangeable cats?
a wayfarer’s notes 
That God is us.
For those who have experienced the urban landscape, riddled with the homeless, the insane, the drug addicted.
Can you distinguish one from another?
Are they treated any differently than the stray cat? Perhaps in some cases not as well.
Can one be certain that they do not have a home somewhere?
Some might occasionally assist when inclined to do so, other times merely make observations to themselves or to others.
Human sagacity. Animal sagacity. We can only truly know our own.
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“A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.” ~Jerome K. Jerome
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Is there a God who looks down on man as bewilderedly as I do, looking down upon these interchangeable cats?
If there is he is one deranged son of a bitch.
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Thousands of years ago,
Cats were worshipped as Gods.
Cats have never forgotten this.
–Anonymous
Good observations–loved it.
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“Is there a God who looks down on man as bewilderedly as I do, looking down upon these interchangeable cats?”
hilarious, Vincent, wonderful observation. also like your astute comments on ownership… throw in a few on who trains whom – we are in accord.
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thanks for the comments, and sorry to be so long to respond.
Charles your experience of urban landscape is so different from mine here. I am sure there are homeless, insane and drug addicted around. Indeed there is evidence of it but they are not visibly comparable to stray cats.
We treat people so well here—I just heard a news item that convicts are so comfortable in jail they don't bother to escape. In one prison in Yorkshire, a dealer regularly breaks in, to sell drugs and mobile phones to the inmates. They have even planned visits by prostitutes, who would break in by the same route. But no prisoner bothered to use that route to break out.
Beth, I agree with your quote. Cats are scheming.
BBC, your remark seemed to be saying that if God is at all like me, he is a deranged son of a bitch. I have no basis to disagree with you.
Scot, glad you liked it. Yes, cats are proud and aloof, though they humour us for their own ends.
Hayden, I was thinking of you too, and your Jake. Who trains whom, indeed. I am glad of the arrangement where dogs and cats are assumed to have owners, because it lets me off any responsibility for them. I saw one yesterday at the other end of the street, orange and white, long fur, which around its neck and front was matted and hanging half off like a half-sheared sheep. If not for the myth of ownership by humans, I'd have taken it to the PDSA (People's Dispensary for Sick Animals—a charity veterinarian thing for people who cannot afford to pay, though they expect donations. As it was, the thing was mewing pitifully, like any beggar who knows the worth of his affliction.
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White cats here, very wild, noone feeds them, scheming is a fact, but what else can they do to live, and live they must, being alive.
My belief is in the spirit of this world, a spirit of numbers, quantities, doesn't matter that some suffer paw tears and fluff dislodgement, numbers is everything, this god is to be damned.
And damn it I do.
Every so often one of these white cats comes to my door with a prize, a bird, dead and eaten, devoured all but the feathers and glue, leaves the remains for me to witness the spirit of its' life. The spirit thinks I am angry with the cat, but no, I am after the spirit, the cat is okay in my book, a creature of life.
So how to reconcile? The schemeing one of the hundreds, the creature of the brain, all brains alike, ONE spirit?
This mystery can be solved. This is my viewpoint.
You Vincent, are an excellent writer, a magnificent thinker!
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amazing! i feel so light now.
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Ghetu, you feel light? What's this due to?
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Thanks Jim. I get lost with this spirit-talk, as you know. Applying Occam's Razor, I can cut it out and still find the behaviour of human and cats explicable enough.
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