Although the question of whether animals experience emotions similar to ours remains open to debate, I believe that if you set aside any preconceptions you might have on the matter and take a moment to observe my cat, you’ll find that the name that I gave him is not entirely inappropriate: Angry Cat is, or at least appears to be, somewhat angry.
As I lie here, basking in the warmth of your laptop computer and breathing in the lingering scent of your fingertips on the keys, I begin to drift off to sleep, content in the knowledge that I’ll soon find myself in my favorite dream world, the one with the mice and the hummingbirds and the grass and the trees — unless, of course, you shoo me away again, with your unfounded and, frankly, insulting insistence that cat hair is somehow bad for electronics.
The cat sparkles like a vampire in a teen-movie franchise, but that’s just the sunlight reflecting off his fur as he occupies the only sunny spot on the dark wood floor, his eyes narrowed to slits like a cat’s eyes (which, if you think about it, is what you’d expect) as he ponders and wonders and dares to hope that today might be the day the glorious, magical day when he can finally have a cheeseburger.