Boredom is fear of being alone with yourself. Cats are happy being themselves, while humans try to be happy by escaping themselves.

Whereas cats live by following their nature, humans live by suppressing theirs. That, paradoxically, is their nature. It is also the perennial charm of barbarism. For many human beings, civilization is a state of confinement. Ruled by fear, sexually starved and filled with rage they dare not express, such people cannot help being maddened by a

When people say their goal in life is to be happy they are telling you they are miserable.

The Americans used the defoliant Agent Orange, destroying forests – the habitat of countless animal species – and producing genetic defects in humans. Over 58,000 US soldiers died in the conflict. Around 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed. Unnumbered others were injured, disabled and traumatized.

He had no fear and was never caught when entering other rooms. Jack came to see him as the reincarnation of Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, ‘Intelligent, daring, cunning, ferocious … a VietCong version of the Chinese warrior-philosopher in the body of a cat … As a half-grown cat, he was tough, independent, irascible. Soldierly and serene. A

Montaigne’s family lineage included Marranos – Iberian Jews, who under persecution from the Inquisition were forced to convert to Christianity – and when he wrote in support of the Church he may have been safeguarding himself against the repression they suffered.

Self-consciousness has divided the human mind in an unceasing attempt to force painful experiences into a part that is sealed off from awareness. Suppressed pain festers in questions about the meaning of life. In contrast, the feline mind is one and undivided. Pain is suffered and forgotten, and the joy of life returns. Cats do not need to examine

Descartes coined the expression, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ The implication was that human beings are essentially minds and only accidentally physical organisms. He wanted his philosophy to be based on methodical doubt. It did not occur to him to doubt the Christian orthodoxy that denied animals souls, which he renewed in his rationalist

Philosophy testifies to the frailty of the human mind. Humans philosophize for the same reason they pray. They know the meaning they have fashioned in their lives is fragile and live in dread of its breaking down. Death is the ultimate breakdown in meaning, since it marks the end of any story they have told themselves.