Body Language

The cat’s mouth cannot smirk. But most cat owners will tell you that cat’s smirk all the time. They use body language to smirk. They sit, poised and posed, looking at you with self-satisfaction.
One particular time I came into the house to find the Grey Menace delicately cleaning his paws. In front of him was the fat from the edges of several roast beef slices. Dinner. Looking at me with a cat smirk, he seemed to be quoting Saint Augustine: “It was wicked. But I loved it.”
It was during my grad school days. The roast beef was a splurge on a very tight budget. As soon as I reached for him, another “cat’s can’t make that expression.” appeared on the Gray Menace – “shit! He’s crazy!” He was running, looking for a hidey-hole, and not finding one deep enough to stop me from grabbing him by the back of the neck and uttering one word: “Cooler!” If he could have spoken, it would have been to say “I dissent!” as he twisted to bite my hand. But I slowly walked towards the room he hated most -the “Cooler,” AKA the bathroom.
I tossed him into the “Cooler.” He promptly lay down on the bathmat and glared at me. “You’ll slap me? You slap me in a dream; you better wake up and apologize.” The Jimmy Cagney act, I was in trouble. Closing the door, I went and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. About ten minutes later, I opened the door to the Cooler. He was stretched out on the mat, and his body language was all – “yeah, I’m in here ’cause I want to be, and I’ll come out when I’m good and ready. You got that Copper!”
A few minutes later, he strolled out, hopped up on the table, and disdainfully examined the peanut butter and jelly. Sitting there, looking at the sandwich, his body language said it all – “pitiful, just pitiful.”