Cat love

I have spent a rather large amount of money today with a pet moving company to finalise the details of moving Kobi with me to England. I then had a moment of panic, quickly followed by a reminder that Kobi is worth all this, and more. He’s my best little buddy. I also booked my one way ticket to England, and there is something so poignant about booking one way tickets.

This day requires some cat love. I figured it was a good day to remind myself of this poem...

How could I be so foolish as to not believe
that my great orange cat Boris (Armed with Madness)
Butts loves me when he runs to the door like a dog
each night when I come home from work and
probably isn’t even particularly hungry
or lays
his conspicuous hairs on my darkest clothes
out of pure longing for my smell which they do have
because he looks like my best friend my constant lover
hopelessly loyal tawny and apt and whom I hopelessly love

--Frank O’Hara, ‘Cantata’, 1965, from Collected Poems, 1995

Along with these two posts...

Real things are whatever they are, quoting this article by Jeanette Winterson:

“Only crap, senseless hyper-capitalism reduces everything to interchangeable, buy-another-one, substitutes. But real things are whatever they are, and cannot be replaced in the way our simplistic value system pretends.

And love? Love is not confined to human beings; it is cross-species, and it belongs in nature too. We love what we love, and sometimes we are fortunate enough to be loved in return.”

The Philosophy of Cats:

“Have you ever smelt the particularly soft fur at the back of a cat’s ears? I recommend in when you’re having a particularly shitty day. Or any day, really. Warm, dusty and baby-like pretty much sums up Kobi’s smell. He smells like dusty books and biscuits, like milk and cakes, like coffee and bedsheets. I’m convinced Kobi does more for my health and sanity than any trip to the gym (ugh, sorry, I hate gyms). But I’m reluctant to think of him as existing for my own pleasure alone. He is his own being. That delicious smell that wafts around him and which he carries around with such quiet cat dignity, has nothing to do with me. And he seems to know it. He dispenses his warmth and dustiness liberally, but you have to earn his loyalty first.”

Kobi, what adventures we’ll have in England (sorry about the cold, you’ll have to get used to that)!