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{Felines}
I really like cats.
Maybe that’s why I really like men who behave a little like cats: who come when they feel like getting some strokes, or some food, or just enjoy sitting with you on the sofa, and then for no apparent reason decide they’ve had enough now and seek out their own space and leave you alone to get on with the day.
It’s the opposite of what most people like from their men: most people seem to like their men to behave mostly like dogs.
Dogs, with one or two notable exceptions — one a woolly creature I once met in the outskirts of Munich and the other one Harry, a cocker spaniel living with a family of best friends of mine in the country, who has sadly since been run over by a car — disorientate and bemuse me: their potential for aggression on the one hand and their pathetic neediness on the other disturb me. (Harry, I should point out, seemed to have no potential for aggression. His neediness though was quite pathetic, in a forgivable, canine way.)
Cats don’t disturb me. They often make me laugh out loud, and in the main they strike me as abysmally stupid, but when you put an intelligent brain on a cat, say that of a mathematician for example, or a young lifestyle editor, or a social practitioner, then suddenly you have the most perfect pet.
That then begs the question, somewhat, of course: am I primarily after a partner, or am I really after a pet?…
