(re-post)
I am generally a cat person and specifically a dog person, that is, I like most cats immediately but have to get to know a dog. This is Bombay, the neighbour's cat, who visits daily and has made a nest-like spot for herself in a hollow of grass.
At times she will, as cats do, take advantage of a human head being at her level (like when I am leaning down to examine something closely in the garden) to push her face up as close as she can, as if trying to really understand this species that uses only two appendages to walk and, mysteriously, leaves a perfectly good home each day to go elsewhere, although she does approve of the boxes of nibbles that come back with me and the books from the library have interesting smells.
When she approaches thusly I stare back and grin and she narrows her eyes in the cat equivalent. It reminds me of waking up and having a child staring me awake. It reminds me of a succession of cats across a number of years who learned that, if staring at a sleeping human did not bring about a response, a moist, warm nose pushed into an ear would.