Kitty Angels

I compose this entry with a cat on my lap. I'm not even doing anything to Pippin, but he just sits there, purring loudly. If I poke at him, he purrs even louder. If I shoot him with water in the morning because he's been meowing loudly outside our door, a few minutes later he'll be rubbing himself up against me and purring loudly. For Pippin, complete and utter bliss is kind of like that line from the Rubaiyat--"a jug of punch, a loaf of bread, and thou," except for him, it's cat food. It's pretty easy to get him to purr--just touch him. One day, he was snoring, and when I started petting him, he emitted a purr snore. I wish I had it on tape. It amazes me how easily he becomes completely blissful. Most people need the assistance of drugs for that sort of thing.

Well, in my last entry, I suggested the possibility of kitty angels, and right now, my wife and I are going through the last season of Angel. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Angel is a "vampire with a soul." Most vampires do not have a soul, and Angel is always in danger of losing his if he has a moment of "perfect happiness." The first time he loses it is because he had sex. As the creators refine their formulation, it becomes clear that he does not lose his soul if he has sex with a really skanky evil vampire, and in the fifth season, we learn that he does not lose his soul if he has sex with a really nice girl who is hot but whom he doesn't really love.

It's important for Angel to know what would constitute "perfect happiness," because every time he does lose his soul, people have to try to get it back for him again, some of whom he kills as "Angelus," the vampire without a soul. I am glad that the writers on the show made it not quite so easy for him to achieve "perfect happiness" as simply having sex.

But then, I started musing, what if Pippin became a kitty Angel vampire with a soul, who would turn evil if he had a moment of perfect happiness? For Angel, it must be sex with a hot girl whom he actually loves; for Pippin, it is the merest touch, or the sound of food in his foodbowl. Every time at morning when he was fed, he would become "Pippinus," and start trying to kill us until we had his soul restored. He'd then start purring and rubbing up against us in gratitude for restoring his soul, at which it would depart, and he'd start trying to kill us again in a perpetual cycle. All in all, we're better off that cats don't have souls, since then they'd try to kill us.