The Savage Beast Husbands Its Own Domestication
What is it in a cat that when encountering a tree their first thought is to climb it?
Ancestral memory, perhaps: dim impressions of a leopard dragging a kill into the branches, or waiting there to pounce - instinct.
Which might explain why when I see (or smell, or hear the voice of) certain women, I just want to climb them.
And what is it in animals - the bitch-dog wet nursing a litter of suckling-pigs, sheepdogs herding ducklings out of traffic, children raised feral by a pack of wolves - that allows them to forget their instinctual urges to climb, pounce and feed?
The savage beast husbands its own domestication.
The brain conditions the body.
Gazelles limp at my feet, and still I do not leap.
I sometimes feel like I am no animal at all.
“You’re a nice man.” she said. “Yes.” said I, “To a fault.” and we let it lay there between us as the heart beat out of it.