Kuma is the oldest of our three cats. He is about fifteen years old and lived on the streets before we adopted him. In the afternoons, he takes long naps, moving between the wicker chair next to the window, the garden, and the yellow armchair just a few inches from my computer.
Today, he is resting beside me while I try to write. His breathing follows a slow, steady rhythm, accompanied by the dense music of a rainstorm.
I remember a story by Ursula K. Le Guin in which a sleeping cat imagines a world where it rains mice. The image is charming, although Kuma would probably find such a dream rather dull. Much too dry.
In Kuma’s tropical afternoon, it truly rains. Guava rains, giant drops that draw circles in puddles, conversations across the windowpane, and spirals that the wind breaks apart and reassembles.
While awake, Kuma’s eyes follow patterns I do not fully understand, as if he knew the mathematics of rain. As if, in the place of a puddle, he could contemplate a language.
I watch his tail stretched along the edge of the armchair. The curve of his back. The oval shape traced by his hind paws. The triangular ears, poised in a state of alertness. There is no doubt: Kuma dreams in geometric forms.
According to various studies, cats pass through sleep phases similar to our own. When they dream, they recreate scenes from their everyday lives: they hunt, play, explore, and run through familiar places.
Science attempts to explain their dreams. The ancient Egyptians preferred to imagine them. For them, the cat walked at night along the boundary that separates mortals from the gods.
I think both views can coexist. After all, no one can say with certainty what happens behind the closed eyes of a cat.
I imagine Kuma’s dream in the pharaoh’s chamber. Night hangs over the hieroglyphs, and the air still carries the scent of incense and myrrh. A beam of light divides the room into two perfect triangles.
Kuma walks along the edge of the bed as though reading a hidden map within the mosaics. With each step, the circles, stars, and spirals on the floor seem to rearrange themselves beneath his body.
The pharaoh sleeps uneasily. Kuma curls up precisely over the place where pain begins and starts to purr. The sound spreads through the room in regular waves. The shadows that lingered in the corners begin to dissolve.
At dawn, the pharaoh will feel as though he has been protected by a silent spirit, as ancient as the desert itself.
Or perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps I am the one who exists within Kuma’s dream, along with the desk, the screen, the article I am trying to write, and the rain behind the window, all part of a fiction born within his nap.
I watch Kuma on the yellow armchair. In the serenity of his sleep, I discover a different form of knowledge, one that is calm and austere.
I also remember a painting by Franz Marc. In it, too, there is a sleeping cat, curled upon itself on a yellow cushion like a silent flame.
Marc painted cats, horses, foxes, dogs, and deer. He often filled them with color and portrayed them resting, far from the noise of the world. I have always been intrigued by that recurring image, perhaps because sleeping animals inhabit a region inaccessible to us, a territory where life regains something of its original form.
Marc died at the age of thirty-six during the First World War. It is difficult to look at his paintings without imagining that, as he ran toward the trenches, he was still dreaming of red deer, blue horses, and yellow cats.
Perhaps he painted sleeping animals because he perceived in them a form of harmony under constant threat. For while they sleep, they guard something we have lost: an ancient serenity, an elemental way of being alive.
When an animal falls asleep beside us, the urgency of the world disappears for a moment. It no longer pursues us, nor do we pursue it. We expect nothing from the animal, and the animal expects nothing from us. For an instant, we too stop running and stop keeping watch. All that remains is a way of being, complete and silent.
As I watch Kuma sleeping, I discover what, or perhaps whom, I would like to write about. I also discover why.