From Milan Kundera ‘s Immortality:
One day when he came to see her, he was once again plunged in dark thoughts. She went to the next room to change, and he remained in the living room alone with the Siamese cat. He wasn’t especially fond of the cat, but he knew it meant a great deal to Laura. He sat down in an armchair, pondered his dark thoughts, and mechanically stretched out his hand to the animal in the belief that it was his duty to stroke it. But the cat spat and bit his hand. The bite immediately became linked to the chain of misfortunes that had been following him; he leaped out of the armchair and took a swipe at the cat. The cat streaked into a corner and arched its back, hissing horribly.
He turned around and saw Laura. She was standing in the doorway, and it was obvious that she had been watching the whole scene. She said, “No, no, you mustn’t punish her. She was completely in the right.”
He looked at her surprised. The cat’s bite hurt, and he expected his lover, if not to take his part against the animal, at the very least to show an elementary sense of justice. He had a strong desire to walk over to the cat and give it such an enormous kick that it would splatter against the living room ceiling. It was only with the greatest effort that he managed to control himself.
Laura added, emphasizing each word, “She demands that whoever strokes her really concentrates on it. I, too, resent it when someone is with me but his mind is somewhere else.” When she had watched Bernard stroke the cat and seen the cat’s hostile reaction to his detached absentmindedness, she had felt a strong sense of solidarity with the animal. For the past several weeks Bernard had been treating her the same way: he would stroke her and think about something else; he would pretend he was with her but she knew very well he wasn’t listening to what she was saying.
The cat’s biting Bernard made her feel as if her other, symbolic, mystical self, which is how she thought of the animal, was trying to encourage her, to show her what to do, to serve as an example.