The early stages of the New Year demand a report on the current status of Phileas J. Fogg, our redoubtable cat. Like his human companions in our household, he appears to be aging remarkably well, all things considered.

On January first, in fact, he celebrated his tenth birthday, an anniversary that in the past would have made him quite old. However, the proprietor of our local pet store whose husband is a veterinarian, informs me that ten now qualifies only as middle age. Change has a ways of creeping up on us, doesn’t it?

This woman claims that her cat customers are now living twice has long as they did when she first started her business some twenty years ago. My guess at the reason for this increased longevity proved correct: scientific diet. The stuff that looks so unappetizing to me has the power, it seems, to lengthen feline life wondrously. If I ever thought I was going to get off easily by serving only one ten-year term of living with our beast, I have been sadly deluded.

So, clearly, was my friend the author Tom Lynch who in his most recent book “Bodies In Motion, Bodies At Rest,” promises on page 199: “By the time you read this, the cat will be dead.” But Tom was so severely provoked by his beast that I strongly suspect he was planning a desperate act of ailuricide rather than allowing nature to take its certain but slow course.

My conversation with the pet-store proprietor  mentioned above took place recently on the occasion of Phil boarding at her place of business for four days. Because of interior renovations in our house, he had to get out of it during that time. For him, it turned out to be a bitter exile; for me, it was a welcome first experience in a long time of living in a Phil-free zone.

When we came to pick Phil up after this exile, the store manager suggested that he could not possibly be that difficult at home; there he must surely be better behaved, she wanted to think. My wife Susan, though she felt impelled not to betray the whole truth about Phil, for fear of perjuring herself could only mutter something like “well, not all that better.”

So Phil’s reputation for decorum may have been seriously damaged in the community. If word gets around town, we will have to deal with even children knowing his real nature – –  untamed and ornery.

You would think, however, that his period of exile might have made Phil more appreciative of the sweet comforts of home. After four days of being confined to a small space, our house should now seem to him luxury in itself. And the face time he gets from us every day should have forced him to recognize when he is well off.

But, if he felt at all chastened, he was determined not to show it. Instead, Phil claimed all the same privileges he had enjoyed previously. In fact, he protested loudly at any moves on our part to limit his freedoms. Where we thought ourselves magnanimous toward him, Phil looked upon our largesse as simply his due.

Phil’s trip to the vet’s place was his first licit excursion outside the house in several months. From the vantage point of his carrying case, he had the chance to survey the scene on our street and to take in the winter vistas of nearby city blocks.

How that looked to him has not yet emerged but we presume it must have stirred dreams of freedom. As noted in this space previously, I would be glad to make those dreams a reality but find myself inhibited by the hardheaded approach of my wife and daughter. They seem resolved to keep Phil immune from the dangers of the street, insuring that he will live long.

Despite my willingness to expose him to the unexpected outside, I consider myself a fairly responsible cat manager. However, a chance encounter at a neighborhood party has made me enter into a period of doubt about whether I am fulfilling my basic duty toward Phil.

Among the guests at the party was a woman who felt guilty about having taken inadequate car e of her cat. What bothered her, she confessed to me, was that she had not flossed her cat’s teeth that day. She felt conscience-struck about this dereliction in her duty to take care of the animal’s dental health.

To show you how delinquent I have been, I must confess never once having imagined that I should floss Phil’s teeth. Perhaps my lack of awareness came from the unacknowledged desire never to get my fingers close enough to Phil’s mouth that I might lose any of them. In any event, I am sufficiently calloused not to have lost sleep over comparing myself unfavorably with the lady who flosses her cat’s teeth every day.

Richard Griffin