I’ll freely admit I’m more of a dog person. I am fascinated by cats, their social behaviors, their mannerisms, their temperamentality. Yet at the end of the day, I like the unconditional love a dog will always offer if you treat it well. This summer is my first one in over 20 years without a dog in my life, as my best friend Noel died a year ago at the start of June at the ripe old age of 16. Throughout all that time that I’ve had dogs, first Pretty the Beagle, then Spot the Aussie Shepherd, then Caesar the Black Lab mixed with a pony, and finally Noel the Shih Poo. 

I’ve also lived with a succession of cats. First among these was a black cat named Mrs. Norris, who we more commonly called Nora, then a grey cat we rescued who we named Crookshanks. After these two Harry Potter-themed names my Dad and I adopted a Siamese farm cat named Leo who could be very lovable but also was a bully to first Nora. Finally in the Summer of 2009 my Dad rescued a fourth cat, an orange and white cat who we named Kitty Kiernan, or Kitty for short.

When I first met Kitty on that Saturday afternoon, she was standing on an ottoman in our living room at our old house on the farm looking out the window onto the porch and into the western fields beyond. She quickly turned at my entrance and began talking to me, meowing with so much excitement. We became fast friends and over the next year she loved to sit in my lap when I was at the computer or watching TV. She also became best friends with Noel, after all Leo and Crookshanks were friends, and while Crookshanks was kind to Kitty, Leo was a jerk to her from the first moment they met. So, Kitty became Noel’s best friend. They slept together a lot when they were young and continued playing with each other even into their senior years until Kitty got tired of Noel jumping on her and tackling her and retreated to her own parts of our current house where Noel couldn’t reach her.

Over the years I’ve collected a large photo album of what I call “Noel Pictures.” I still look at them from time to time, I’ll freely admit I’m still in mourning for my pup. One of my favorites taken a few days before Noel died is of her sleeping on the old red Victorian sofa in the sunroom in my parents’ house with Kitty sitting on the floor below her looking up at Noel with concern clearly written all over her face. In those last few weeks Kitty came downstairs to check on Noel from time to time, and in the last day she came to say goodbye, sniffing Noel and rubbing her head against the ailing pup’s. The amount of affection those two showed for each other both in their youth and as they’ve grown up together really does touch my heart.

This week I’m reading about the premodern concept of the Great Chain of Being, a hierarchy of nature which places God at the top followed by Angels, then Humans, then Animals, followed by Plants, and finally Minerals at the bottom. This is inspired by both Plato and Aristotle, but especially Aristotle’s biology found in his book the History of Animals (Books 1 & 8). Aristotle classified life forms based on what sort of soul they have between a Rational, Sensitive, or Vegetative Soul. We humans, Aristotle wrote, had all three types of soul in ours. All other animals lacked reason but had the sensitive and vegetative types in their souls. Plants, as the name suggests, are just vegetative in their essence. When I was a freshman in high school my theology teacher said that animals don’t go to Heaven, that Salvation is reserved for humans alone, and even then, only those humans who willingly surrender themselves to God. As I’ve lived with Noel and Kitty, as well as Caesar, Spot, Leo, Crookshanks, Nora, and Pretty over the years I’ve come to see more in their eyes than just a partially completed soul. When I saw Noel die last June, I saw something leave her, the will to keep going, the consciousness that dwelt within her little body for sixteen years left her, and her body fell into a far more restful slumber once her last snores stopped.

On Monday evening, as with every other time when I sit down with my parents to enjoy that evening’s televisual feast (to borrow a phrase from Fawlty Towers) Kitty was quick to jump up onto my lap for some quality pet time. I’ve learned where she likes to be petted and try to do my best at it. Considering how blissful the look on her face often is after just a few minutes I suspect I meet my objective time and time again. This Monday though it went a step beyond just mere bliss. Kitty curled up in a ball on my lap and slowly, softly, gently began to snore as I petted her in one smooth stroke from forehead to the tip of her tail and back again in a circle. In that moment I too started to relax, to breath deeper, and to feel something of the serenity I often feel when I imagine myself floating in air or dream of the delicate beauty of the evolutionary order of the Cosmos.

I don’t entirely agree with Aristotle’s idea that animals are inherently lesser than us, sure they aren’t human, but we are animals in our own right. We’ve just evolved differently than animals. Whereas Kitty’s daily routine involves napping, watching birds and squirrels out the windows, eating and drinking, and getting petted whenever there’s a free lap for her to lay down on, mine is far more focused not only on the abstract, both the past and the future, but also on affairs far from our home. Sure, I think about meals just as she does, and I long for those moments of physical interaction with the people I love, holding my Mom’s hand or giving my parents hugs from time to time. When it comes to Kitty though, I do enjoy letting her jump up onto my lap so I can pet her. I appreciate being appreciated. I like the fact that even when we do have disagreements (she has bit me from time to time) she always returns to me when she wants to.

I don’t know how much longer Kitty will be around, we never really figured out how old she is seeing as she was found by a friend in the parking lot of an apartment building here in Kansas City. But regardless of how much longer I get to be her friend, she’s taught me a lot about empathy and what it means to care for someone else.