I was sitting in my daughter’s house, waiting for her to get ready to go out for lunch. I was alone in the living room, except for Plume, a large gray cat. He is a Norwegian Forest cat, an expensive breed known for their very long hair, which Ms. Daughter had gotten at an animal shelter, along with several other cats.

Looking at Mr.Plume, I remarked, “Well, you seem to have an easy life. All you do is sit around all day, sleep, eat and other people take care of you.”

Plume looked annoyed and replied,“Excuse me, but I do a great deal for this house. Without cats, there would be no glory here.”

He then resumed licking his paw and added, “We were worshipped in ancient Egypt as gods, you know.”

“That was in the days of ignorant heathenism,” I replied and resolved to ignore the arrogant little furball. I mean, who was he to lecture me on ancient Egyptian gods?

But Plume continued, “We cats were known to exist in the Fertile Crescent as early as 9000 B.C. But we did not arrive in Egypt until the Middle Kingdom period, about 1500 B.C. The Egyptians honored us because we kept away the vermin who ate their grain. We were seen as divine protectors, and I remember it well.”

“You remember nothing of the sort,” I replied. “You are only 10 years old and that was centuries ago. He looked at me with some degree of contempt.

“Nine lives” he replied. “It’s a cat thing. You wouldn’t understand. Did you know that they had a grand festival in honor of Bast, the cat goddess, once a year at her major shrine at Bustabis on the Nile Delta? It was a three-day festival and free beer was provided by the priests for up to 700,000 of her worshippers. The pharaoh himself was always one of the priests. All Egypt stood in awe of cats and they drank until they fell over in pools of Henket, free beer.”

“Beer has nothing to do with modern religion,” I replied. But strange to say, at that very moment, I remembered 35 year ago, making illicit home brew with the other seminarians in the basement of my college at Oxford.

So I added, “And what is more, I am a Christian and a priest, and I do not worship cats. Cats have nothing to do with our faith.”

“Do you mean that you never heard about the Virgin Mary’s cat?” Plume looked astounded at my gross ignorance.

“The Blessed Virgin Mary did not have cats,” I snorted. “There are no cats in the Bible. I checked that.”

Plume then broke off a long phase of licking his leg and looked directly at me with sorrow and scorn.

“Look at the head of that cat over there.” Plume nodded at a striped tabby cat who was entering the room, one of several other freeloaders kept by Ms. Daughter.

“Between and above the eyes?” Putting on my glasses, I looked at Tabby’s head and there were lines that did resemble an M. Look up images of tabby cats on the internet and you will see what I mean.

“That comes from the night when Christ was born,” Plume said with great pride. “When Jesus was placed in the manger, it was a cold night and the swaddling clothes were not enough to keep the savior warm. So the first tabby cat jumped into the manger and cuddled next to the Lord to keep him warm. The Virgin Mary stroked his head in thanksgiving and the M has been there to this very day.”

“That’s not in my Bible,” I replied.

“Well, it should be,” Plume said. “Did you know that according to Jewish folklore, Adam, as in Adam and Eve, had a cat?”

I stared at the gray whiskered fabulist with growing disbelief and horror.

“Adam had a cat and a dog right after the animals were created in his very first house, but before God made Eve. But the dog and cat got into a fight, and Adam threw them both out. And that’s why cats and dogs do not get along to this very day.”

“That will be quite enough of that!” I snapped at Plume. But at that moment, a huge outcry came forth from Ms. Daughter in her bedroom. She was not happy at all, because she had discovered that one of the cats had dragged a piece of clean clothing into the litter box.

.I looked over at Plume to demand an explanation. “Bast’s will be done” he said.