Hmm.

Cats, I think, are highly reflective creatures. I don't mean they're shiny - far from it. I just mean, well, they seem to think about things. Even if they don't end up acting on the things for a while... and then a while longer.... and even longer after that. At least they think. And that's admirable.

Also quite vain, it seems. At this moment, my cat Suki is sitting on the couch arm, staring at her reflection in the glass door. Mostly the look is pleasant, at ease. But sometimes, maybe she sees a misplaced hair or something, because her eyes will widen and she'll jump up and squint closer at herself. Sooner or later she dismisses the worry, settles back down, and then sinks into her queer level of immobility - with only her tail to differentiate herself from a picture.

Sometimes the look I receive from my cat is unsettling. I'll see her sitting in a patch of sunlight, and think how nice it must be there. So I join her. She raises her head, squints, scoots a foot away, and lays back down again, watching me derisively with one eye. Almost as if she sees me as the pet, the annoying child, who has nothing better to do than to bug my elders.

This afternoon I sat for a long while, watching this phenomenon. I wondered what she was thinking about, watching me like that. What deep thoughts were running through her mind, while her eyes strayed restlessly about my face, and her tail twitched back and forth.

Then I realized it. I saw the look in her eye and my illusions of this grand intellectual drooped as she lifted her leg and stretched to lick herself.