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Rumor has it dogs are the loyal pets; cats are inherently irritated and self-sufficient. Just yesterday I saw note cards that said, "Dogs come when you call, cats take a message and get back to you." This may be true. I have two cats, sisters, about four years old. They come on their own terms, I won�t deny that. They scratch what they want, throw up on my carpet, they have peed on my computer, ripped open the garbage, and torn holes in my blinds to better see out the window. Their world is exactly that�their world. But part of that world, I�ve discovered, is making sure that I am taken care of.

One of them has to be touching me at all times at night. If I roll over, she stretches out her paw so that it is touching me and falls back to sleep. The other one tries to clean me every time she is on my lap, pinning down my hand with her paws and licking it. And both of them know when my heart is heavy. When I broke up with my evil boyfriend and spent a week in bed, so did they. When I cried, they woke up and curled up closer. When he came over, asking for another chance, they looked at him with slit eyes, turning their heads with a look of disgust when he tried to pet them. Once during a party I was throwing a guy there was talking about how much he hated cats, and told me I was going to grow old when them and become the weird lady with cats. My cat walked up to him, sat down in front of him, and raked her claws down his leg. I mean raked, you could hear his skin ripping from the couch. Everyone laughed; she sauntered away, satisfied.

That�s loyalty. That�s why I call them ladies in fur coats. They are, by nature, like women. They may not come when I call (unless I have food) but they are there when I need them, and that�s more than you can say about most people.