猫　Neko

It is stretching.

The soles of its feet never leave the floor.
What moves is a wave passing along the spine.

Where the wave arrives, the chest sinks and the hips rise.
Where it has passed, the back rounds up and returns.
The head keeps almost the same height until the end.

The wave reaches from the head side toward the tail, late.
So there is no fixed shape anywhere in the body.
By the time the front is done the rear is beginning,
and the tail, last of all, curls itself again.

The fur grows short off the cross-sections and roughens only the outline.

Reduce the points and the fur goes first.
At six hundred and twenty-five, a dotted spine with the wave in it, and four legs, remain.
At forty, only the rhythm of the wave.
At one, the path of a point that was fur on the back, lifted by the wave and set down.

Cats are called liquid, but not because they fit the vessel.
Their shape is always in the middle of passing through.