← All the cats PROFILE · 03 · THE EARLY DAYS

Zeno's Paradox.

Gravity was optional. So, most days, was dignity.

Young ginger cat lying upside down on the top platform of a cat tree
The preferred orientation.
Fluffy ginger cat stretched out belly-up in a sunny spot on the couch
Sunbeam located, occupied, defended.
Ginger cat asleep along a white fireplace mantel, one paw and tail hanging off the edge
The mantel is a bed. Everything is a bed.
Two young ginger cats curled up asleep together on a paw-print blanket
With Howl, back at the beginning.
Ginger kitten with wide blue eyes perched on top of a cat tree cubby
Before the ginger deepened. The eyes stayed blue a while longer.

Paradox was the one who taught this house that a cat can be perfectly comfortable at any angle at all.

Upside down on the cat tree. Belly-up in a sunbeam, all four feet in different directions. Draped over the arm of a chair in a shape no spine should permit. If there was a right way up, she never found it, and never seemed to feel the loss.

Deep ginger, thoroughly fluffy, and enormously good-natured about the whole business of being a cat. She and Howl arrived together and did most things together, which is why they turn up in the same photographs so often.

The Name

Paradox carries the full weight of her name: Zeno's Paradox, the ancient Greek paradox of motion that argues a moving object can never reach its destination because it must first traverse half the distance, then half the remaining distance, and so on, infinitely. A perfect metaphor for a cat who can be at any angle at any time, seemingly defying the laws of physics and geometry. She is motion without endpoint, comfort without constraint, a living argument against the possibility of a single correct position.

YEARS
2007–2025
COAT
Deep ginger, thoroughly fluffy
EYES
Amber
KNOWN FOR
Being comfortable at impossible angles
SIGNATURE MOVE
Upside down, eyes open, entirely unbothered
FULL NAME
Zeno's Paradox
USUALLY WITH
Howl
GALLERY
Wing 03 of the collection