Fair play in love
I am the main provider for my three cats here on campus: Pengo, Peanut, and Poppy. However, Peanut and Poppy don’t live with me. They come for food, nothing more. Sometimes they linger, sometimes they vanish as quickly as they arrived. They don't come when called, and they owe me nothing. Still, I feed them. Not because I expect their loyalty, but because I understand the quiet deal we’ve made. They come hungry. I have food. That's enough.
Pengo is different. He lives with me, mostly at night. During the day, he disappears into the campus. I imagine he has a whole secret life out there: shadowing students, sleeping under trees, finding other hands to scratch behind his ears. But he returns. Every evening, as the sky folds into itself, he comes home, settles next to me, and breathes into the silence of the room like he belongs.
Doris Lessing wrote that you can’t own a cat, you can only be partners. I believe that. Cats are creatures of freedom. They choose. And when they choose you, even briefly, it feels like a kind of grace.
Sometimes I think their way of loving is cleaner than ours. Not warmer, necessarily, but cleaner. They don’t pretend. They don’t make promises they can’t keep. They show up when they want to, and if they come back, it’s because they want to. Not because they’re supposed to.
And that makes me wonder why we expect human love to be something else. Something bigger, or purer, or more endless.
We’re told real love should be unconditional. But that’s not how we’re built. We’re not gods. We get tired. We want to be held in return. We want to be understood, not just endured. That’s not weakness. That’s just what it means to be human.
I used to think I had to love perfectly, to give without ever expecting. But now I think: maybe all we need is fairness. Show up when you can. Be kind. Don’t hurt what trusts you. Mean what you offer. Don’t take more than you give.
Peanut and Poppy still come and go. Pengo still disappears every morning and curls beside me every night. None of them are mine. But they choose me, again and again. And somehow, that feels great enough.
Maybe that’s what human love should be too. Not perfect, not saintly. Just a quiet agreement: I’ll try. You’ll try. No harm. Fair play.
