It didn't seem to have rained that much, but the river's burst its banks and you can't get across to the fields and railway line. Not that I really wanted to. Nor did the dog. He does not like getting his feet wet.
It's odd as I imagine that the dog is in many ways smarter than the cats. It's not that I am inclined to feel that trainability is necessarily an index of intelligence. Cats are more trainable than you might think, if sufficiently motivated, but on the whole I think that they can't see the point in pleasing a person. Whereas a dog kind of has that in his DNA. Nor am I a believer in the bigger brain = more brain cells = higher IQ idea as an out and out fact. Corvids are smarter than cows.
I do have a hypothesis that predatory animals might be smarter than prey ones. I know that prey have to escape from predators, but they are reacting while the predator, this is my theory, is proactive. And, come on, T-Rex looks a darn sight smarter than a diplodocus. Elephants break the mold.
But back to dog v cats. The thing about the cats is that there is such a strong sense of individuality about them. I'm not suggesting the dog's a robot or a clone, but the cats seem so determinedly themselves.
Today I went upstairs to lie on the bed while I meditated. This meant destroying the duvet cave in which the cats were dozing. Their faces! The look of offended dignity, of subdued resentment...
Something struck me though when I was talking with my philosophy chum Richard. We were trying to imagine unimaginable things. We have a concept of 'unimaginable' but can't imagine it. A concept of infinity, but can our minds fully embrace it? We were considering whether you could think without words and I had said that when you start to speak you 'know what you're going to say' but not the exact words... Sometimes the thought actually forms as the words take shape. But on other occasions it's like you know what the thought 'is' - as a concept or a 'something', an impression, maybe - but can't put into words. That makes me think that thinking doesn't involve words but that our thinking often resorts to words because we live in words. When thinking isn't in words, it's often in pictures - we are such visual animals - and we can describe the pictures in words.
Yet smells can arouse distinct sensations which may be untranslatable... so evocative and emotional and bound up with 'being' rather than 'knowing'.
That made me consider the dog. For him, olfaction is key. So does my dog 'think' in smells?
And what would that be like? Unimaginable.
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