HE WAS AFRAID of bugs and could bear to touch only those considered playthings, like ladybugs, June bugs, houseflies. Spiders, roaches, mosquito hawks, and beetles made him panicky indoors and uneasy outdoors. Fish and rodents meant little to him because they lacked individuality. Birds were good to watch in flight and admire for their form and color in cages, but they, too, lacked individuality. As a child the only pets he was allowed were impersonal—goldfish, turtles, salamanders. During his ninth summer he put out a dish of milk for a black cat with a white spot on its neck. “You’ll never get rid of it,” his mother said. It was his intention to keep the cat, and at summer’s end he pleaded with his mother to take it back to the city. He had heard that abandoned summer cats died in the winter and used this as an argument, but the argument failed. When he was eighteen he went on a camping trip with two friends. It rained the whole time, and the three of them stayed in their tent. The inside top of the tent was covered with insects. Often in the day he lay on his bunk and watched them crawl over and around one another, fly off the canvas and back again; he felt at home with these insects because the woods were their natural place. When he went into the army he saw many bugs. One day as he crouched in a training foxhole, only his head above ground, a large spider with hairy legs walked within a few inches of his face. He contemplated the spider, and the spider appeared to contemplate him. He was so unhappy in the army that all extramilitary organisms, even plants, seemed more fortunate than he, and he respected them on that account. He had been thinking of masturbating and decided to fuck the spider, after a fashion. He stood up, took out his penis, and rested it on the edge of the foxhole. After slow, methodical manipulation he ejaculated and hit the spider with two of the three expulsions of semen. The spider collapsed into a ball, then righted itself and hurried away. Shortly after his marriage he and his wife spent a weekend at a hunters’ cottage. On the second day he saw his wife walking toward him over a small bridge. Her carriage was unusually straight. She hissed his name in fright. “Get it away!” she said, breaking for the cottage. Behind her loped a large German shepherd. He clicked his tongue, and the dog veered from his wife’s trail and came to him. He felt that the dog’s interest in his wife was the same as his. He held his arm out like a stick, and the dog took it between its teeth. He crouched down and put out his palms for the dog’s paws. The dog offered one paw, but instead of taking it he grabbed the dog’s ankles and threw it on its flank. The dog sprang up in a squirming, bounding motion and rose over him on its hind legs. He took the dog around its middle. They wrestled in this way, the dog showing by its growls when he was going too far. During their grappling and turning he noticed his wife watching from a cottage window. He thought she must consider him very brave. Later she made no comment and only nodded when he mentioned the dog. Years later he took to wrestling with a large boxer that belonged to friends. The dog weighed ninety pounds and seemed all muscle and bone. After fifteen minutes or so, always when he was on the point of exhaustion, the dog let itself be pinned like a calf for branding. One evening at the house of these friends a vet told him that an excited dog of this size could have a sudden change of mood and take off an arm in a bite. He was sure he had understood the dog but nevertheless did not wrestle with it again. The dog eventually became blind and feeble, its eyes milky brown; it bumped into furniture, barked at phantoms, and failed to recognize him. He suggested to his friends that they get it a Seeing Eye man; they were shocked at the remark, and he was ashamed. When the dog died it was replaced by a frantic Weimaraner, which he would have nothing to do with. For company after he left his family his daughters got him a cat from a pound; they named it Filia and were very interested in his attitude toward it. One evening it tried to jump into his lap and fell back. He picked it up, it seemed unusually light; he took it to the ASPCA, where he was told it had a wasting disease and should be put to sleep. His daughters got him another cat, which they named Amicus; it lived till they were grown. When he fell in love with a young woman and she moved in with him she brought her cat. She addressed it only by newly invented names—Mousepaws, Tigerlips, Fur-flinger. As the relationship disintegrates her tone to him will become strident and remain caressing to the cat. Occasionally he will yearn for affection and mistake, for an instant, a word to the cat for a word to him. One Saturday when he is living alone he will see a golden bird hovering, he will think, outside his living-room window; as he approaches he will realize he has misjudged the distance, and the bird is inside. He will open the I Ching at random and interpret the verse as saying that the relationship should end and there will be no blame. He will open the book to another page; the verse will seem even clearer: the visitor should go south. With the help of a towel he will force the bird from the window, be relieved that he will not have to take care of it, and understand that the function of the I Ching is to enable one to do what one would not ordinarily do.