I love how Benson uses a cat to illustrate his moods and their fickle changes.

  "Who does not know the frame of mind when life seems to have no point, and one is tempted just to let things slide; when energy is depleted, and the springs of hope are low. 

So it was with my soul; but that morning, somehow, the delicious sense had returned of its own accord, of a beautiful quality in common things. I had sought it in vain for weeks; it had behaved as a cat behaves, the perverse, soft, pretty, indifferent creature. It had stared blankly at my beckoning hand; it had gamboled away into the bushes when I strove to capture it, and looked out at me when I desisted with innocent grey eyes; and now it had suddenly returned uncalled, to caress me as though I had been a long-lost friend, diligently and anxiously sought for in vain. That morning the shape and hue of the flowers were full of gracious mystery; the green pasture seemed a place where a middle-aged man might almost venture to dance. The sharp chirping of the birds in the shrubbery seemed like a concert arranged just for my ear. There was no room in my heart for anything but the joy of earth and the beauty of it. What did the weary days before and behind matter?" Arthur Benson.