I have written of Kit Kat, our snowshoe Siamese in another blog. If you haven't read that one -- The Cat Who Ate Skinks and Slept on Chiles -- scroll down and check it out. Among other things, it's about Kit Kat's nine lives. Here in Florida, cats get sick after eating skinks. Sick to death, in some cases. Ours beat the rap and now is a famed chile puss. (Read my other blog and this one and you'll see why.)

Our friend Holly Sedgwick liked the blog pic of Kit Kat and she painted our cat in all her glory. I wanted to buy the painting and found out that it was beyond my budget, but Holly, sweetheart that she is and very generous, sent me, or rather sent Kit Kat an email from Holly's cat in Toronto. From a cool cat to a hot one, this electronic communique saying that Kit Kat's portrait was coming south.

When we opened the package, the painting smelled delectably of oil paint. And there was Kit Kat with red and green fish and blue-tailed skinks swimming over her head. Her eyes were as mysterious as the princes and princesses of Siam that these cats are said to have guarded in long ago times.

We showed Kit Kat the painting. She regarded it with some small alarm, as if to say, "What am I doing there?"

I put the painting in my office so that I could gaze at it whenever I wanted to. Last night, I paused while typing and looked at the portrait. Kit Kat, the real feline was in front of her painted image dozing on a stack of paper. Not just any pile of paper. Kit Kat was resting on Holly the painter's unpublished autobiography. Does art imitate life? Or does life, in this case, imitate art?

Kit Kat was making some sort of statement. She'd made peace with her portrait and was saying,"What you have here is a great painting of a noble cat."

Cats know everything.
Ask any cat.
Better yet, observe their preferences.
They'll point you in the right direction.