Belling the Ring

[Anguirel]

Ever since the rise of Christianity, cats have been slandered, insulted, maligned and generalised. Unlikely as it may seem, O Saucepanned One, you yourself are a link in a tradition that associated cats with pagans, Satan, Judas Iscariot and witches. Even in a secular age, this distrust could not be exterminated, particularly among men. Cats fitted into a convenient nook, as of course did dogs. The intellectually lazy could lay down truism-laden laws on these domestic animals without having to think.

"You know where you are with a dog. Dogs are loyal."

Richard II's greyhound happily deserted him for Bolingbroke.

"Cats never really love humans. They're in it for the food."

In a cemetery in the south of France, I saw a Burmese cat refusing to budge from his family's crypt, lying outside the gate for days-just as dogs sometimes do.

Not all dogs are saints. Not all cats are Machiavells (come to that, Machiavelli wasn't a Machiavell.) All that glitters is not gold; things are more strange than the science of cliche declares them to be, and no one belongs in Mordor out of hand, human, cat, dog, iguana, ideally even Orc.