Among Animals

Fidora

Fidora sits on my lap as if this is where she has always belonged. There is no negotiation in it, no asking permission. Her weight settles, warm and certain, and soon the purring begins—low, steady, a small engine of contentment. Her paws knead as if the world were still soft enough to shape, as if comfort itself were something that could be coaxed into being by repetition. Her eyes half close, dreamy, trusting, unconcerned with explanation. It occurs to me, sitting there beneath her, that Fidora may know something essential about being alive, something we humans once knew and have spent a lifetime complicating.

She asks to be felt. Not metaphorically. Literally. Touch me, she says without words. Be here. This is enough. There is no embarrassment in the asking, no self-consciousness about need. Hunger, affection, warmth, and rest are not weaknesses to her. They are facts. The body speaks, and she listens. Humans, on the other hand, learn early to negotiate their needs. We soften them, disguise them, postpone them. We pretend we are less hungry for reassurance, less dependent on touch, less afraid of being alone. Fidora has no such ambitions. She lives in the body without apology, and in doing so reminds me that the body itself is not a problem to be solved, but a truth to be honored.

When she sleeps, she snores. Not always, but often enough to make me smile. A tiny, irregular sound, almost comic, rising and falling with her breath. Sometimes her whiskers twitch. A paw jerks. The tail gives a small, irritated flick, as if swatting at something invisible. I wonder—no, I know—she is dreaming. Science tells us cats enter REM sleep, the same phase where our own dreams take shape. But science isn’t necessary here. Anyone who has lived with a cat knows that something is happening behind those closed eyes. Some private theater. Some replaying of experience. A memory of play, or threat, or pleasure. Perhaps a bird just out of reach. Perhaps nothing we would recognize at all. Dreaming suggests an inner life that continues even when the world recedes. It suggests memory, emotion, and sensation rearranging themselves not for productivity, not for insight, but simply because consciousness does not switch off when the lights go out. That, too, is not uniquely human.

Humans make much of consciousness. We study it, define it, debate its limits. We argue over who possesses it and to what degree. But sitting with Fidora, I suspect consciousness may be less about ranking and more about sharing. Less hierarchy, more continuum. She is conscious without commentary. She is emotionally alive without narrative. She is mortal without distress. That last one matters. Fidora will not live as long as I do, if I am lucky. She does not know this. Or if she does, she does not suffer from knowing it. She lives as if the state of having limits or bounds sharpens affection rather than threatens it. Every nap is complete. Every meal is sufficient. Every moment of closeness stands on its own. Humans suffer not because life ends, but because we cannot stop rehearsing the ending. We drag the future into the present and call it wisdom. Fidora curls into warmth and breathes.

Love, with Fidora, contains no storyline. There is no “where is this going,” no tally of past grievances, no fear of loss waiting its turn. There is attention. Presence. The quiet agreement that this moment is sufficient. Humans often wrap love in explanation. We analyze it, protect it, worry it into smaller and smaller pieces. Animals practice love as attentiveness. Look. Stay. Breathe together. Trust, too, comes without abstraction. The exposed belly. The slow blink. The decision to sleep on my lap, vulnerable and unguarded. Fidora does not believe in me. She believes with me. Through shared warmth, shared rhythm, shared stillness. Trust predates language. We only complicate it later.

Sometimes I think cats carry a shard of consciousness closer to its original form—before language layered anxiety onto awareness, before identity hardened into armor. They feel first. They respond. They rest. They do not confuse reflection with depth. This is why cat lovers recognize one another without needing to explain. We have all felt it: that quiet recalibration that happens when a cat chooses you as a place to land. The soft undoing of urgency. The reminder that being alive does not require justification.

I don’t need to know the content of what she might be dreaming to recognize the truth of it. She is conscious. She is mortal. She is emotionally alive. And for the moment, so am I, less divided, less rehearsed, less certain I need to be anything more than present. Perhaps that is what cats give us, if we are paying attention: not lessons, not symbols, but permission. Permission to inhabit the body. Permission to rest without guilt. Permission to love without explanation.

We invite original essays of up to 700 words for Among Animals. Tell us about the creatures who share our lives—wild or domestic— and the ways they challenge, comfort, and change us. Email submissions to editorelojodellago@gmail.com with the subject line: “Among Animals.”