Beer and My Cat
Spilt beer or water seems sometimes almost human in its uncertainty whether or no it is worth while to get ever such a little nearer to the earth’s centre by such and such a slight trickle forward.
I saw my cat undecided in his mind whether he should get up on the table and steal the remains of my dinner or not. The chair was some eighteen inches away with its back towards the table, so it was a little troublesome for him to get his feet first on the bar and then on the table. He was not at all hungry but he tried, saw it would not be quite easy and gave it up; then he thought better of it and tried again, and saw again that it was not all perfectly plain sailing; and so backwards and forwards with the first-he-would-and-then-he-wouldn’tism of a mind so nearly in equilibrium that a hair’s weight would turn the scale one way or the other.
I thought how closely it resembled the action of beer trickling on a slightly sloping table.