I have been writing in a journal on an almost-daily basis since I was 17 years old. This is a record of me going through each entry from the beginning, and commenting on the me from fifteen years ago.

Every so often, my cat and I have a private moment. It begins normal enough. I’m petting him as he lay in my lap, and he looks at me. His eyes are barely open – green and slanted, he looks up at me. He breathes in and out with extasy, purring. Then closes his eyes and leans into my hand to fully enjoy the moment. Then he puts his nose to my hands and gives my finger a slight lick. Then we look into each other for a while and are just glad to be together and not alone. I’m not so ignorant or self-removed to say it’s not erotic. I didn’t say sexual, I said erotic. We’re a happy couple.

If I didn’t have a cat now (a different one, by the way), I’d have found this entry completely weird. I have similar moments with my current cat, Rock n’ Roll. It’s not sexual, but we’re both getting off on it in some way. So now I’m wondering if some of the stuff I said in the past seems weird to me now because I don’t have a current frame of reference for it. I’m sure it’s sometimes that, and sometimes that I’m a completely different person.