My love for felis silvestris catus has already been documented. Now, my friend Jim Gordon has both confirmed and challenged that love in two cleverly crafted sentences. He writes:

‘One of the worst mentors for living kenotically is the cat, imperiously indifferent, manipulatively affectionate, instinctively self-interested, morally impervious, purringly contented most times, and furry fury now and again. Such a good balance to help us avoid that anaemic kind of Christian disposition that Thomas Merton called “chronic niceness”‘.

Thanks, Jim, for the invitation to think again, and that not least about how hopelessly cat-like I am. Certainly, reading Philippians 2 will never be the same again.