It’s a mystery why two cats bond — or why two people fall in love

By David McElroy · February 4, 2021

William had always been a loner. Although he lived with half a dozen cats and several dogs, he mostly kept to himself. He seemed happiest when he was alone.

And then a little black kitten named Dagny came along.

I don’t know quite how it happened, much less why. By the time Dagny had been in the household long enough to be just another member of the family, I finally noticed that she was joining William when he went off to be alone.

He used to love sleeping in a laundry basket in the sun. Soon, she was sleeping in that laundry basket with him. She was joining him when he slept on the back of a sofa. And before long, if one of them was sleeping on the bed — or watching out of a nearby window, as they were doing in the photo above — they were almost always together.

As far as I can tell, cats and dogs don’t have the concept of romantic love, much less marriage. But these two shared an unexpected bond — and it seemed to make both of them very happy.

William and Dagny are both long gone now, but I found myself thinking tonight that the mystery of their bonding isn’t much different than the mystery of a man and a woman falling in love with one another.

I used to think romantic love was a rational process. (Seriously. Don’t laugh.) I thought I could carefully choose the woman I would love — and I thought she could choose me, too. My perspective today is that it’s just as unpredictable — and just as irrational — as Dagny and William developing whatever deep partnership grew between them.

I actually had 13 cats at one time while both of them were still with me. What are the odds that these two particular cats would choose each other? Why would William suddenly allow this on random cat to share his space when Dagny came alone? And why did she want to — when none of the others showed any special interest in him?

I have no idea — just as I have no idea why I’ve chosen to fall in love with any of the women I’ve loved.

It’s easy to list some of the characteristics that are common to the women I’ve loved. They’ve all been smart and beautiful. They’ve all had values similar to my own. They’ve all had goals compatible with my own. They’ve even shared some superficial physical characteristics.

But I could name dozens of other women I’ve known who fit the same mold — but who I never fell in love with. Why? I just don’t know.

The only thing I can say for sure is that when I fall in love with a woman, she becomes my ideal woman. I even value things about her that I wouldn’t have valued in another woman — just because she is who she is. That makes no apparent sense.

There is some sort of spiritual and emotional connection between two people who fall in love. Scientists might be able to measure the effects of this bond — in changes of heart rate or other physical characteristics — but the “energy” of love is a complete mystery. Anybody who says he understands it is fooling himself.

After William died in 2015, Dagny was devastated. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such mourning from one animal over the death of another. For something like two weeks, she walked around the house crying out, as though she was looking for her friend. It was painful since I couldn’t comfort her. (Here’s a recording I posted six years ago while it was going on.)

I’ve talked with you before about how much it hurts to lose someone — or to miss something who’s gone. Just a few days ago, I got a message from a man about what I wrote about the pain of missing someone.

“I just found your post from 2015 describing the physical feeling in your chest when missing someone,” he wrote. “I just wanted to say it was beautiful. I’ve never thought someone would write down what I feel so perfectly.”

As I read that, it occurred to me once again that the pain I’ve experienced from lost love isn’t that different from the pain experienced by so many other people. It’s a universal feeling. We all share the human agony of love and need and connection and loss.

When the connection of love happens, it’s like a miracle. It’s the sort of miraculous mystery that can make the rest of life worthwhile — but it remains a mystery.

I don’t understand the mystery of what makes me choose one woman to love — or what makes her love me, which is even more mysterious to me — but whatever it is that causes this, I’m convinced that William and Dagny experienced their own version of that beautiful mystery for themselves.

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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

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