And then there were two

Mark Twain, who said more witty things in his lifetime than all the rest of humanity, ever, wrote this: “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." It is said that Mr. Clemens had as many as 19 cats at one time.

 Sigmund Freud, who did more than anyone else to make us feel weird about sex, our mothers, our fathers, and toilet training, once wrote (in a personal letter): “I, as is well known, do not like cats.”

 I rest my case.

 Ah, wait. I have not yet made my case. (But whatever it is, Twain wins.)

 I grew up with a feline named Sally Katz who lived long and prospered, and was replaced, after a peaceful passing, by Emily and Stella--Emily the dainty, pretty one; Stella the hefty one. In college, the first thing I did when I got my own apartment was to adopt a rescue cat, whom I named Tenderberry (after a Laura Nyro album), and whom I had no money to get spayed, and who consequently gave birth to 6 kittens. I kept them all, naming them after my great aunts.

 When I moved to Eugene, an insouciant black cat wandered into the backyard one day, took up residence, and stayed for years. We named him Chili after Chili Palmer, the character in Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty. Chili didn’t deign to move with us out to the country, so in came Sonny, from Greenhill Animal Shelter, whom we named Sonny because the thought was we would be adopting a pair of cats--cleverly named Sonny and Cher. But Sonny proved to be such an extraordinary animal that we stopped looking for Cher. We could not imagine a cat of Sonny’s equal. (Kind of the opposite of the human Sonny and Cher.)

 Which brings me to Simon. My daughter Lizzie found Simon, then nameless and maybe 4 weeks old, alone outside a garage on a street near her middle school. She put him in her pocket and brought him home. That was more than 12 years ago. Simon (named after the Australian actor Simon Baker whom I had a crush on back then…and still do) starts his morning—as do I—with a bowl of Fage Greek yogurt, lazes next to me in my writing room, and leaves the house several times a day to chase, catch, and eviscerate voles. It’s a life. Lizzie used to spend hours grooming him. Tom let him sleep on his lap while he read. Tom, that is, not Simon. Now Lizzie is gone, and Tom is gone, and it is just Simon and me.

 And now I rest my case. The case is for ailurophilia, the love of cats.