If I were to have pets again after Cassie’s death, I thought it would be best to get two cats rather than one. Amy did that with her rescue kittens, and they keep each other company when alone in the apartment. I thought about the times I traveled for a week or more and left Cassie alone. In retrospect, it feels cruel.

Blair (left), and Sawyer.

Blair and Sawyer are brothers, rescued at about a week old. Mia picked them out right away: the first kittens we saw, and subsequently we saw no others. She knew. They were bonded, and they’d take care of each other when their humans weren’t home.

Pet owners seem precious regarding their “fur babies,” an awful, precious term people use. I find it fascinating that, allowing for respect for their being, they exhibit such individuality, personality, awareness, and traits that we might project as human but are similar-yet-alien. If you respect an animal, you must try to see the world through their non-human eyes. As I try to do this while observing them, I see the two of them as distinct, yet one. Think of Philip Pullman’s daemon concept. The two of them behave like an inseparable unit, unable to venture too far from each other with a closed door between them intolerable, yet vastly differing in personalities. Sawyer is shy around new people, but is adventurous, playful, a shit-stirrer, a rumble-tumble of a boy. Blair is gregarious and excited to meet new people, but sits quietly aloof, watching his brother play and get into trouble while maintaining an air of mature erudition. Blair is the theoretical physicist. Sawyer, the experimentalist.

They understand me in gesture and word. It’s amazing to me the cross-species communications. They know my routines, they crave my attention, they trust they my restraint. They communicate with me both individually, and as part of their Pullman-whole. I look at them and can’t imagine them apart. Which, I know, means eventually the deepest of sorrow as the payment for this togetherness.

I marvel at their journey together so far in their young lives. As someone keeps telling me, two is better than one.