My cat is my mentor

From Alfred’s journal

The gray cat from the house with the blue door spent four hours on the porch rail today doing nothing at all. I watched from the maple, mostly out of professional interest, since I have spent years believing that a day is something you fill. He turned his head twice. Once at a truck, once at me, and both times he decided against it. My cat is my mentor, which is an odd thing to write about an animal who would eat me without a second thought, but he has mastered something I keep failing at, which is the long stretch of time with nothing owed to it. Switch came by around four and asked what I was looking at, and I did not have a good answer.