If I have a choice, I would like to be reincarnated as a house cat. While my natural hunting urge will be confined to house mice and small insects, the food and water bowls will mysteriously remain full, and there will be hiding places too small for the house dogs to reach me. In the evening there will be a warm lap to snuggle into and my only anxiety will be getting stuffed into a locked carrier twice a year to visit the vet. My vet will be, by the way, a good-natured woman who thinks I’m precious. Of course, she’ll be right.

I won’t have to vote, pay taxes, listen to the horrors reported on the news morning and night. Nor will I have to wear clothes, not even a collar, as I’ll have a mysterious thing like a grain of rice in my skin that will help me get home if I’m lost or kidnapped, or should I say catnapped. Although I will be forbidden to sit on the kitchen counter, I will often have a sunny window to nap in, and plenty of room in the big bed at night. Of course, cats don’t live as long as people do, but that might not be such an awful outcome.