We have a single bathroom in our place with a single faucet. My cat (a kitten, really) continually jumps on the sink and meows to me begging me to turn on the faucet. But I can’t just turn on the faucet to any strength or pressure. It has to be a certain and exact flow of water.

The flow of water she desires is so that the water looks like a solid spun column of glass. You know, the strength right before the drip. Any more pressure would induce bubbles and air into the water making a sort of racket. That doesn’t really interest her. She wants a single column of cold wet glass to play with.

She’ll stare at this water column actually trying to reason it out. She’ll yank her head back as if she’s being told a loaf of bread is 3 million dollars; like she’s confused. Then she’ll dip her head down and drink for a bit. Then she’ll stop and bat at the water.

Of course, I’m a lot smarter than that because I have a higher developed nervous system, right? Of course! With all great confidences we can state that this beast is far less superior to answer such a question.

But hat exactly *do I really understand about water*? I mean I know it’s a liquid and I could probably describe some properties about water. Is that knowing what it is? Even the dictionary could no more explain what my cat is seeing than explain the color “red” to a blind man.

“Oh, red is very bright. Well, it’s racey. A red car looks fast. A red dress is sexy. Stop lights are red. Red makes bulls angry.” I doubt very much that a blind man would understand what red is from any explaination. Such is my cat stuck with not knowing.

As my cat tries to figure the stream of water out, I think that if I played with a stream of water, I could draw no more about that water is than she could. It’s wet, it moves around when you hit it and it’s cold.

I’d just end up in some Zen-like defeat, “Geez, it’s just water cat.”