With the approach of summer, Phileas J. Fogg has taken up a favorite vantage point each morning, lying prone on the sill of an upstairs bedroom window.  This position gives him a fine opportunity to check the activities of other neighborhood cats as well as other beings, human and animal, as the area awakes to a new day.

What actually impinges most on Phil’s psyche, no one can say. Perhaps the call of the cardinal and the warbling of the other birds nearby strikes him more than any sightings. In any event, he often assumes more a meditative pose than a investigatory one as he lies there contentedly.

My own bet about what he experiences is more elemental. I would wager that Phil values most the touch of the soft balmy air currents on his skin. After the rigors of this past winter, he must love to feel the warm contact from the atmosphere, the way the rest of us often do.

Since last report, Phil has been diagnosed for diabetes, an ailment that frequently afflicts cats of his senior status. At first, the vet’s announcement came as a shock, an apparent death knell of our household member. Without insulin shots, Phil’s future seemed short indeed, and there was no way we could imagine ever giving such shots to this ornery beast.

But, if he is now terminal, it does not show. Of course, in the long run Phil is doomed to death like all other living beings. However, he does not allow  disease to cramp his life style unduly. He still moves with a tiger’s sudden speed on occasion and, like his other feline relatives, sleeps contently during much of the day.

The one noticeable difference in his habits comes from his new craving for water. Often he will leap from the floor up to the kitchen faucet hoping to slurp from its flow.  He will even poach on the water glasses of his masters, in our place settings at table. Recently he even indulged himself in a helping of black bean soup before his unvigilant masters put an end to this surprising theft.

Susan threw the rest of the soup out despite my making to eat it. She appeared horrified to envision me downing food that Phil had been into. But is he really any dirtier than we?  Would our eating what had become cat food do us in?

I am reminded of an anecdote from a niece’s childhood. She was once discovered to have been eating some dog chow.  When confronted by her aghast mother, the child confessed and promised not to do it again.

“By the way,” her mother asked, “how did it taste?” “Just like cat food,” her daughter answered.

Among Phil’s traits I most admire is his contemplative stance on the world. I actually feel envy that he can do absolutely nothing for hours on end. Why has he been given this gift and not I?

His stance reminds me of lines in T. S. Eliot’s 1930 poem “Ash Wednesday.” “Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.” If only I had better learned sitting still. The balance between caring and not caring is another and subtler issue, suitable for longer discussion.

I often gaze into Phil’s eyes when he rests in his meditative mood and wonder about his inner life. Then the words of another poet, William Blake, always come to mind: “What immortal hand or eye / Framed thy fearful symmetry.” Of course Blake was talking about a tiger, but Phil qualifies as my tiger.

There are no escape attempts to report on here. Perhaps age has reconciled Phil to the vocation of the cloister. If given the choice at this stage of life, maybe he would even opt for the interior life of our house. After these many years, it is also his house by now, imprinted with his escapades and daily routine.

What I hope for this summer is many bright days. There is nothing Phil likes more than the play of the sun’s rays over the inner surfaces of our house. Perhaps this response to the light is to be expected in a contemplative. If enlightenment looms large in the world’s spiritualities, then Phil is in his element.

I often watch him respond to the rays as they come toward him when he lies on the master bed. He will roll over, seemingly in order to focus the sunlight to its best advantage. When, as happens too often, the morning clouds over, I grieve with Phil for the loss of the light.

I leave off here so as to go play with Phil. This I do despite my fear of having got the situation backward. When it comes right down to it, isn’t it Phil who is playing with me?

Richard Griffin