My cat, Jack the Cat, is looking a little worn.

He's 11 years old, and he's diabetic, and he was getting two shots of insulin a day, but he went into remission and there was great joy in the house.

Still, we keep an eye on him. In the last few weeks, he's had a glucose monitor attached to him twice and had blood drawn. Because of this, he has shaved patches on both his sides and his right front leg. He's starting to look a little moldy, a little like a carpet that's been walked on for decades.

Despite this, he's cheerful, and he's in no discomfort. At first, when he started to get the insulin shots, I had to hold him down by the back of his neck while my wife Deborah worked the syringe. He never swiped at us or tried to bite, just a lot of wiggling and a little "nyow" sound as the needle went into his skin. As soon as it was done, he'd be accepting pets or rubbing against my ankles. He's a very forgiving cat, if a cat can have the emotion of forgiveness.

I don't think animals are people, and I don't think they go to heaven or "cross the rainbow bridge" when they die. In that way they are better than humans, who have to sweat at least the possibility of an afterlife.

Jack the Cat is a tabby cat, gray, of no particular breed, no doubt the result of a brief collision beneath a shrub. He was born in the shelter, and not too many weeks into his life, I bought him.

I was told by both my wife and the women at the shelter that I had not "bought" Jack. They said I'd "adopted" him, but I had to give them money before they'd let me take him home. Anyway, I did a lot of my growing up in Missouri, in hog and cattle country, and we always said we "bought" an animal.

There are men, and they are a little too concerned about their manhood, who tell me that cats are for women, and that owning one means I am perhaps a little light in the masculinity department.

Nonsense. Jack the Cat and I are both covered in hair. We both enjoy naps, good meals and frequent snacks. We're as manly a pair as ever attended a boxing match. In fact, when Jack is riled up, he throws not just a good left jab, but a lightning-fast left hook. The left hook was my best punch when I was younger and trained in boxing gyms. It's not a punch for amateurs, who tend to rely heavily on a crude, straight right hand.

My retirement, or at least my semiretirement, is only partially going as planned. I have a wife. We own a home. We live in a nice suburb, where town government is currently embroiled in a huge battle over whether a new convenience store should be allowed to open on the north end of town. I have a few sources of retirement income. We're comfortable and my car starts when I turn the key.

As former lightweight boxing champion Willie Pep said when someone asked him how things were going in retirement: "Great. I got a wife and a television set and they're both working."

But things seem shaky, out there where the homeless people and the feral cats live, where everything's broken and you can't find a dry place to nap and there's not enough to eat. All the plants are poisonous out there, and the cops aren't kind.

I write about politics all the time, and I have since 1993, when I started as a newspaper columnist. I used to write about politics with a great sense of fun. Back then, it was a lot more like writing sports. Winners. Losers. Strategies. Now, there's the feeling that half the fans may riot and kill all the members of the opposing team.

Jack the Cat never leaves the house. His naps have gotten longer since he got older. So have mine. He is sometimes attacked by a veterinarian who comes to our house. Afterwards, he curls up somewhere and licks whatever part of him has been shaved.

He pretends everything is going to be all right. So do I.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.

Photo credit: Frederic Christian at Unsplash