"Susan M" <SusanM@shaw.ca> wrote:

Oh, I'm around from time to time, although I've lost all hope of
catching up on the posts. :)

Betty is fine, although I notice that she keeps coming to me with
broken whiskers.  I wonder if anyone else has experienced this?  They
usually seem to happen on the left side of her snout, which is the
side she uses most to mark things.  She must be pressing too hard.

As I've become more accustomed to cat language, I've found that Betty
is actually very expressive, and gives me a lot of attention.  In her
own way, she's constantly talking to me, through meows, the movement
of her tail, the earnestness of her gaze, the paw touches, and the
constant following.

On my lap, the constant purr, and sigh and outstretching of paws.

I anthropomorphize some of Betty's gestures with terms I picked up
here.  When she puts her front paws on my thigh or carpet and
streeetches with her head bowed low, that's a "curtsey" (this was from
Hazel Az).  When she deliberately looks at me and rubs an eye or ear,
that's a "salute" (this one's from Fletcher Glenn).

Betty has become a part of my being.  There are different physical and
metaphysical aspects to each of us, and we give these names - a body,
a mind, a soul, a spirit.  Some of us have another aspect - a cat, or
cats.

My mind, my body, my soul, my spirit, my cat.

Unlike the other aspects, the cat is external and a peer.  When a cat
comes to you, so furry and warm and full of love, the whole becomes
greater than the sum of the parts.  Where there was once a hoomin and
a cat, there is now a hoomin, a cat, and the LOVE that is born between
them, and 1 + 1 becomes 3.

Like some of the other parts, like the soul, you wish that the cat
would be a part of you that is eternal and lives on after you die,
although from experience, we know that it is more often the opposite
that happens.