“The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats...” ― Albert Schweitzer

Dear readers,

Rainy days remember me to Charles Bukowski. It is difficult to explain why, as it is difficult to understand his literature, his way of expressing feelings and transmitting them to others. I discovered this author last year when a friend of mine published some of his quotes in a social net. It was like finding a treasure on the seabed. For me, he is the personification of my more complicated feelings into words. I can't consider his way of life as the most advisable but nobody with an admissible behaviour could write in that way, because some kind of mental disorder is required for putting some light in the darkness and obtain this mixture of sadness, sarcasm, and sometimes drugs and alcohol as a final and excellent result. 

I have decided to share with you this poem because I have always had animals at home, in fact lots of them, and I have had the opportunity to analysed their different ways of life. I consider cats as the most intelligent animals until now. I have learnt many things from them as independence and dependence at the same time, intelligence and cleverness as well as their capacity to calculate and their environmental adaptation. But probably that's only the beginning and they have more things to teach me. As Charles Bukowski said once: 'The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever'. 

My Cats

I know. I know.
they are limited, have different
needs and
concerns.

but I watch and learn from them.
I like the little they know,
which is so
much. 

they complain but never
worry,
they walk with a surprising dignity.
they sleep with a direct simplicity that
humans just can’t
understand.

their eyes are more
beautiful than our eyes.
and they can sleep 20 hours
a day
without
hesitation or
remorse. 

when I am feeling
low
all I have to do is
watch my cats
and my
courage
returns. 

I study these
creatures. 

they are my
teachers.

- Charles Bukowski

Best wishes