Daily Formalities

I NEVER cease to be amazed at the persistently ritualistic exploits of your average feline. Our cat, for example, has a number of obsessive-compulsive disorders that mark out the behavioural boundaries of his daily existence. One of them includes tapping the edge of a water container twice before circling the rim three times and finally settling down to drink. I wouldn't mind too much, but I am invariably dragged into each miniature masquerade to the extent that I become an unwitting participant in some of the most bizarre performances imaginable.

With one delicately restrained paw, he will gently touch my face three times before leading me into the kitchen - pausing from time to time to make sure that I'm still keeping up - and then sit in front of his empty dinner bowl with a deliberately disconsolate expression etched across his whiskery features. "There's nothing unusual about that," I hear you cry, but realising that I rarely back down when the bowl already contains food [Note: this is part of an endless war of attrition between cat and man in which I refuse to throw away a decent portion of food simply because he wants to sample a slightly different flavour] he has now started modifying this tedious routine by leading me to the very brim of an untouched plate just to hear me utter the fateful words "You must be joking!" and trudging off in disgust.

It would be easy to conclude that he is simply trying to get me to give in, or perhaps forcing me to act-out the furry fundaments of Nietzsche's eternal return, but he really does derive enormous pleasure from my exasperated reaction, especially when I've been dragged away from writing a particularly intense chapter. I suppose the fact that cats are no longer worshipped as gods means that these poor, displaced creatures have long since been forced to devise their own ceremonial rites, however mundane or debased they appear in a world in which the likes of Mafdet, Bastet and Sekhmet are gradually fading into obscurity. I remain, of course, his humble servant.