Feline Perception

In one passage of Particularly Cats Doris Lessing observes and in a sense recreates the sensorium of a familiar creature

Her ears, lightly fringed with white that looked silver, lifted and moved, back, forward, listening and sensing. Her face turned, slightly, after each new sensation, alert. Her tail moved, in another dimension, as if its tip was catching messages her other organs could not. She sat poised, air-light, looking, hearing, feeling, smelling, breathing, with all of her, fur, whiskers, ears — everything, in delicate vibration. If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

Such a passage intrigues me and in a moment I am thinking about humans, stretching to find an analogy for a beast caught in the nexus of sight, sound, smell and texture. Fire?

And so for day 509
05.05.2008