I’m adjudged handsome. Some say beautiful. One must beware flattery, of course, but such responses are sufficiently spontaneous to convince me we’re not being wooed. By we, I mean Jane, Carll, and myself (Henry). Myself I’m impervious to flattery, not because I’m Stoic or insensible, but because I take every word cum grano salis, as the old Romans used to say, “with a grain of salt.” Everybody’s always up to something, seeking, sniffing out, food or favor, could be sex, no gesture’s innocent, so caveat emptor, fella, buyer beware, take the world as you find it, not as it ought to be. Do you think I don’t know Jane and Carll train me with treats? Do they love me? Most probably. But they also want to shape me, mold me into the dog they have in mind. Am I duped by their endearments, their snacks, sighs and belly-rubs? I suppose – but only because I choose to be. Love is deeds, not an idea. Humans forget this. They mistreat one another, then protest, “But I love you!” Yeh, right.

It's odd, though, this human notion of beauty. Comparative, almost combative. Condescending. Beauty implies less beautiful, hideous, and who wants to be that? Ugliness exiles you to a wilderness of contempt and disregard.

If I’m gorgeous – which I am – it’s no doing of mine, therefore not an achievement in which I should take pride. As God said to Moses, “I am that I am,” and yes, I admit, my looks are not too shabby, but so? That my long ears drip silkily, my milk-chocolate fur curls amiably, my facial whiskers bristle sagaciously, my big amber eyes gaze meltingly, my alert posture hilariously recalls the mock-heroic, is just how I was made by whoever does the making. That my exceptionally good looks won me two doting overlords (doting as in worshipful, not doddering) is yet another instance of looks becoming luck, especially in America, which is addicted to appearances. Luck is not genius, it’s accident. Granted, blessed with so much luck, I must work hard to check my vanity – and I do. I am proud of my humility, very.

And curious, by the by, if you are less than dazzled by my appearance, not to mention personality, what’s wrong with you? What estranges you from the consensus? My heart goes out to you – truly – for your failure to discern what’s acknowledged by most. What is beauty, after all, but consensus? Are Michelangelo’s Pieta or Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus beautiful in absolute terms or relatively: because they are or because we think so? Is beauty “in the eye of the beholder” or must the beholder discover what is there, inarguably, for all to see? Is it OK to be told, as Carll was once by a haughty acquaintance, “Shakespeare is not my cup of tea”?

 Good thing these missives maunder for only six hundred words because this inquiry, once commenced, gets complicated fast. What is beauty? Is it relative or absolute? Is humility only vanity disguised? Do we owe beauty homage or can we dismiss it as not our cup of tea? This is the kind of manhole humans topple into when they start thinking. One thought leads to the next and before you know it the obvious has evaporated into a blur of definitions and discriminations. “It depends on what the meaning of is is,” declared one famous American not so very long ago, as if the isness of is was a defense against disgrace.

We know beauty, let’s leave at this, when we see it. As you will when we meet.