My brother and I stood in the heat of a July afternoon, our faces smeared with dirt, shovels gripped in our blistered fists.

His face was streaked by tiny rivers of moisture that coursed through the grime. It was perspiration, he’d tell you — but I’m not so sure. Cat-burying is emotional work, and this cat had been something special.

Garfield, his name was — and he’d been the neighborhood boxing champ. Kids used to come over from blocks away to spar with Garfield and every one of them had come away bloody. Garfield had been a fighter, a hunter and a gadabout — a true Tom who lived a life of adventure and who died young because of it.

We buried him deep and marked the grave with a makeshift cross. Here lies Garfield, the undisputed champion of Columbia Road.

Other kids, meanwhile, waited impatiently with their baseball gloves and bats and lampblacked faces. Why not just toss the dead animal into the trash, they wondered? What’s the gain in eulogizing a varmint?

Cat people. You’re either one of them or you’re not.

All my life, I’ve known both kinds. Some of my best pals despised cats. They just never saw the point in worshipping a creature that won’t come when you call it and that refuses to fetch anything that can’t be eaten.

Cats, man. They’re always underfoot. They claw up the furniture, yowl all night and occasionally leave dead things on your doorstep. They’re endlessly getting their heads stuck in bags, ripping down drapes in pursuit of moths and climbing to the tops of refrigerators just so they can stare down at you with that haughty look of superiority.

All things that cat lovers like myself appreciate about the animals, in other words.

One day in the life of a cat is filled with more intrigue and adventure than most of us humans will experience in a lifetime. For a cat, bookshelves, headboards and high cupboards are mountains to be conquered. Apron strings, shoelaces and balls of yarn are enemies to be vanquished. House flies are exotic prey to be tracked, stalked, chased and battered into oblivion, no matter what path of destruction must be taken to do it.

The mangiest, most decrepit downtown street cat has more charisma packed into its small frame than the loftiest human. Jim Morrison had nothing on a cat. James Dean WISHED he were as cool as a cat. LL Cool J? Dude couldn’t carry a stray cat’s litterbox leavings to the curb.

How can anyone not appreciate an animal that is so indifferent to homo sapiens, allegedly the most intelligent creature on the planet?

A cat will bug you ceaselessly for food and then, when you finally crack open a can, will yawn and walk away as if to say, “Naw. Not hungry.”

A cat will screech and howl to be let outside and then, when you relent and open the door, will turn around and steal the chair you had been sitting in.

Maybe cat lovers crave abuse. Maybe we just recognize that we’re outclassed, outwitted and overmatched. We simply bow to the greater species and stand back to witness their exploits.

That’s the thing about cats, though. They don’t give much of a damn what we think, one way or another.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Send meows, purrs and hisses to mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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