Cats

He came to me as I roamed the house trying to form a few tormented thoughts into words. He jumped up on the kitchen stool and all but ordered me to run my hand down his back several times.

The sound of purring, I've read somewhere, triggers some kind of calming response in human-type sentient beings. Sure enough, the more I stroked and the more he purred, the more the tormented thoughts dissembled, and the more he wanted more than a simple pattern of strokes.

So I picked him up and pressed him to my chest, his paws over my shoulder so I could rub my face against his. My theory is that beard stubble feels similar to a mama cat's tongue, but whether that's true I'll never know. All I do know is that as I rubbed his face, he pressed his face back, kneaded my shoulder and purred all the more.

I could have stood there all day like that. But all things come to an end, and I set him down and we went our separate ways, content.

The kitten won't let me hold her. She squirms if I try to repeat what I did with the cat. But the kitten will flop down four or five stairs above me as I climb, displaying her belly in an insistent demand that I rub it. And when I do so, she purrs as contentedly as the older feline does when I press him to myself.

The way each of us love and prefer to be loved is different from anyone else's way. But when we learn what the other wants and needs, a balance is struck in our souls.