I’ve never had a cat who liked to lie on her back as much as Frassy does. It’s not just in hot weather – she does this no matter the temperature in the house. 

Ballet?

Calisthenics? 

When she also turns her head upside down, it reminds me of how much I enjoyed that as a child – lying on my back looking at the ceiling, pretending it was the floor, picturing myself walking around on it, stepping up over the doorways. 

But what’s in Frassy’s mind when she looks at the world this way?

I put words in her mouth all the time, but my thoughts are unlikely to be hers. It’s hard enough to know what another human being is thinking – and yet we imagine we know the thoughts of our pets.

We especially imagine we know what our relationship to them is, what we mean to them, when all we can know is what they mean to us.

Frassy came up on my lap as I was writing this, and helped out. Or so I like to say.