Why I Love Petting Cats
When I pet a cat, the cat feels pleasure. I know, for my eyes tell me, that the animal feels a skin-deep joy thanks to the stimulation of the nerve-endings on its skin.
Does the cat feel anything deeper? Does it grow to love me for giving it these moments of pleasure? Are cats capable of love?
Perhaps — at our current level of scientific knowledge of the world, we do not know and at present cannot know. As an unknowable question we cannot answer it; “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”.
However, I do not need any science at all to know how it makes me feel. As I scratch the cat under its chin and see its eyes close and feel its purr, I feel joy that I have the capacity to make another entity on this Earth feel good even if for a brief moment.
That joy has augmented my life, colored it, given more vivacity to it by painting what was once a grey palette the vivid colors of feline joy.
“Vivid” comes from the Latin “vivere”, to live.
As I scratch the cat and give its life pleasure, I give myself more life. Even if the cat cannot love, I have loved it in this moment of giving, and that act of love has made my life more vivid. My life has become more alive.
This is a banal observation and one made over a hundred years ago by a man much smarter than I. “It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.” — Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Sprach Zarathustra.
Many studies for many years have shown that unmarried men die younger, although the picture is murkier for women. I am a man with zero experience of life as a woman so cannot understand the gender disparity, but I would guess this is because women tend to be more giving partners in marriage than men — centuries of patriarchy have taught men to not love and taught women to love more.
How lucky have women been in this sexist regime. Their oppression has extended their lives.
And of course for men, this outcome is no surprise.
Lifelong bachelors who survived heart failure were over 2 times likely to die within five years of diagnosis than not just the married, but the widowed, divorced or separated.
We love life because we are wont to love. Without love we are happy to die.
Note love is not a purely synchronous thing — note the widowed, the divorced, the separated. Even bitterness, cruel financial destructiveness, and heartwrenching stress are not enough to wrench the power of love from those who have had it.
I am not surprised.
Imagine twin sisters: Anna and Belle. Anna meets the love of her life, John, when she is 20. They spend 30 happy years together eating good food, drinking good wine, making great jokes, and having great sex, until John tragically dies suddenly at 50.
Anna cannot endure the loss of John. Distraught, she vows to never love again and remains alone until she dies at 80.
Belle, on the other hand, never found the love of her life. She was never lonely — she had many boyfriends, sexual partners, a wide circle of friends who would go clubbing (in their 20s), go for brunch in the East Village (in their 30s and 40s), a decent career and middle class life, and spent her retirement years volunteering to make friends and stay active.
Belle, too, died at 80.
Who would you rather be, Anna or Belle?
Are you wont to live?
