Not so long ago, my house contained two cats: Sir Winston Purrchill and Benito Meowssolini. I don’t know if it was nature, nurture, or the way my roommate and I named them after warring leaders, but they couldn’t have been more different.

Winston, who is shy and sort of weird about keeping things clean, spends most of his time hiding under large pieces of furniture, trying to eat people’s hair, and unraveling toilet paper rolls because he thinks it’s funny. If I had my way, that’s what I’d spend my days doing, too.

Benito, on the other hand, loved meeting new people, chatting up a storm, and was not at all concerned about the amount of time he spent rolling in dirt and drooling on himself. We took him in after I’d watched him prowl our alley for a year, but once he was inside, all he wanted was to be outside again. He’d sit in the window for hours, throwing his entire body into the glass if a bird, human or fellow cat happened to come by.

Like this, only somehow more cartoonish.

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