Roxy

I didn’t know Roxy. Not really. Not well. Yet as I walked past, she stood up against the window and smiled. Her tongue was pressed against the glass, leaving a silvery wet residue upon it, while her paws rested upon the sill. How could I refuse such an invitation? I slipped through the door, knelt down by her and she rolled her large head into my lap. She contorted her body until she was half unfurled; so that she was not quite standing, but not quite lying down, while I scratched her ears. There was something oddly feline about her movements, something unmistakably cat-like in her affections, the only thing missing was the purr. If this, I thought, is her reaction to an almost-stranger, how might she greet a friend?There’s a breed-typical self-assuredness to Roxy, to her stance, to her walk, to her smile. It’s as if she knows that love is not something worked at but simply waited for; as if she knows that, for as long as she is herself, then affection and adoration will follow, as sur...