Greetings, earthlings!

I have the good fortune to live within driving distance of my work. This affords me the chance to come home for lunch and still get back in time to give the taxpayers full value for their money.

Every time I come home, whether it's lunch, dinner or a trip to the local home improvement store, there is one faithful family retainer who invariably greets me at the door. She talks to me and hovers near me until I acknowledge her presence with a brief backrub or an ear scratch. It's Kaboodle, our genuine Ohio adopted stray cat. Sometimes she stands on her hind legs briefly to cadge a response. I think she does not do this for other people in the family.

What little we know of her story has been documented elsewhere by My Wife. But the wonder of it is that she is the only one of our four felines who seems genuinely interested in my return. She may well be the only female of four in the household (soon to be a fifth) that affords me this pleasure, but there are good and sufficient reasons why the others pass up the opportunity.

How does she know it is I?

My Wife thinks that she hears and recognizes the particular sounds of my 1998 Neon, Neona. I prefer to think that she and I have an intuitive bond: of all The Women, she understands me best. A little flattery at the door and I melt for the night. (I call her My Wife in this blog to protect her privacy, but she's pretty obvious when I link to her website, so let's just say it's a literary convention and move on. At least it isn't "The Wife".)

When Kaboodle was still an abandoned kitty with a litter in the Appalachians of Ohio, she first came to me while coaxing her firstborn son, Butterball, down the hill to our house. Perhaps she remembers those days of the promise of safety and acceptance (even though we were only renting at the time from an ailurophobic landlord).

In our "computer room" I wall myself off from all assaults by a folding child gate which locks into a bookcase. The other cats have violated this space from time to time, but never or at least seldom to my knowledge has Kaboodle. Neither has the "Mighty Fluffy Huntress" (My Wife's engaging term) ever dragged one of her infrequent avian conquests into my space.

Debates rage over the relative intelligence of cats, and vast numbers of web pages recount their individuality. "Cat blogging" or posting pictures of your pet has become a Friday tradition on the Web.

So why cats?

Once the Cats had conquered the minds and hearts of the ancient Egyptians, they built on their success, and have passed down their species-specific learnings to those little strays who tug at our hearts and adopt themselves into our households at the sound of a can-opener. It is a long and worthy heritage. We worship them no less than did the Egyptians, those of us who can relate to this aphorism: "Dogs have masters. Cats have servants."