Just yesterday, she shrugged my hand away with a swipe of her paw when I attempted to pet her velvety fur. I always forget: Daisy Mae hates it when I fondle her after her lick-primping regimen.

"What happened to you?" one friend or another inevitably asks. My hand, covered in a hatchmark pattern of puffy red scratches, is dotted in brown blood.

"Oh, it was just a little misunderstanding. Nothing, really," I say, brushing off their shared looks of concern. By now, I'm well aware of my friends' take on Daisy Mae. To put it mildly, they do not approve; they think I am in an abusive relationship.

In light of the most recent big-cat attacks, sensationally splashed across TV and the newspapers, my friends have become rather smug, reiterating that time-honored cliché: Domestic shorthairs are genetically derived from their ferocious forebears!

If housecats and tigers aren't all that different from each other, I wondered what I might have in common with other cat owners. Did my post-catfight wistfulness resemble Antione Yates' and Roy Horn's clearly co-dependent cat connections? Mr. Yates, after his Siberian-Bengal tiger mix, Ming, ripped the flesh from his leg, told reporters: "My leg is not the problem, it's my heart. I want Ming back. I love you, Ming." According to my friends, Mr. Yates is "an enabler," obviously delusional and distraught over his separation from Ming, who is now in Ohio, of all places, being "monitored" at Noah's Lost Ark, an animal sanctuary.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Mr. Horn remains in critical yet stable condition after the much-publicized attack by his 600-pound white Bengal tiger, Montecore.

Roy's first words after the attack? "Don't harm the cat."

I can just hear my petless friends righteously ranting in my ear: You're putting your abuser's needs before your own! You're enabling her to act out again!

I insist, to no avail, that Daisy can't clamp her tiny mouth over my head. My friends diagnosis me as "in denial."

It was an impossible situation. My friends would never accept my relationship with Daisy Mae. If they weren't willing to change, perhaps she and I could try to.

By chance, I discovered a continuing-education catalog in my mailbox, featuring a workshop on "Professional Pet-Assisted Therapy (PAT)." I registered for P.A.T. immediately, enamored as I was with the Saul Steinberg illustration of four cats stiffly posed beside the course description. My eyes brushed over the words, "Participants may bring a stuffed toy animal. If you bring a pet, please bring a towel." Other than that, I didn't read the fine print; P.A.T., I assumed, was a form of group therapy for humans and felines (in particular) to help them cease their negative communication patterns.

On the day of class, Daisy Mae, as if on cue, threw an all-out temper tantrum. I'd never heard her utter such gurgly, guttural grumbles before as I attempted to lower her into the "Cat Cab." I tried soothing her with the feline mantra ("We are not going to the vet"), but she wriggled from my arms and slid beneath our bed. Naturally, I was disappointed that Daisy Mae didn't want to experience P.A.T. with me, but I compromised by bringing Bun-the 32-year-old, bedraggled beanbag bunny of my childhood-along instead.

The class was being offered in Soho on a Sunday afternoon. When I told my friends that I wouldn't be joining them for brunch that day, they replied with a clinical coldness which I found surprisingly hurtful. In the background, I could hear them mumbling something about "staging an intervention."

Entering the class, I was surprised by the skimpy selection of pets: only one dog, an indifferent Boston terrier named Tiger Lily, who lay curled on its owner's lap, and a single cat, a black-and-white he/she that squatted obediently in its "cab." The woman next to me had a wire-haired-terrier stuffed animal wedged between her legs, with a bandanna wrapped around its neck.

I'd been expecting an unruly mix of animals and humans, all in obvious need of therapy-not these prim pets who were also mute and, in my humble opinion, rather one-note.

A middle-aged man strolled in holding the leash of a French bulldog that boasted a fantastic satanic overbite. It drooled enthusiastically while lumbering in front of the mesmerized student body-20 of us who, on the surface at least, appeared quite normal.

"This is Tiffany," said the man, forgetting to introduce himself.

The teacher, Claire, an attractive woman in her 40's with close-cropped blond hair and pearl earrings, stood authoritatively behind a podium and began lecturing us, as if P.A.T. were a classics seminar.

P.A.T., I soon discovered, much to my disbelief, was a prep course for pets to become what Claire called "therapists." Pet therapists, she told us, are particularly valuable for those in hospitals, prisons, psychiatric institutions and nursing homes. My good intentions had been misplaced. The idea of Daisy Mae becoming a therapist was completely absurd. How could she help others when she couldn't even help herself? The only institutional role I could see my cat in was as a sadistic Nurse Ratched-claws extended. Clearly, my assumptions about this workshop and what it could offer-a chance for Daisy Mae and me to understand, forgive and accept each other-were completely off-base.

Claire then passed around a Temperament Test to help us determine whether or not our pet would be "capable of becoming a therapist." I knew immediately that Daisy Mae would fail miserably. But I didn't care, I realized: I loved Daisy Mae unconditionally! A good many humans couldn't live up to the test's perfecting standards-and so, I ask you, why should our cats?

After class, I left the students to mingle with one another (boasting of the uncanny intelligence of their various animals) to return home to Daisy Mae. When I opened the apartment door, she was splayed out on the floor, winking up at me suggestively. Under her paw was a dead moth with its wings plucked off.

Sure, maybe some day when I least expect it, Daisy will rear her ugly genetic tendencies and take me out, too-I imagine both Mr. Horn and Mr. Yates at one time or another entertained this thought. But no relationship is perfect. I looked down at Daisy Mae and apologized for trying to conform her. Like those other fierce cats, she cannot nag, complain or yell when frustrated. For this reason, it's "natural" for them, in a more literal sense, to take our heads off. Daisy Mae's bites and scratches are her words; her ornery cat ways run in her blood.

The pleasures of relationships are never free: Some wives iron their husbands' shirts, some don't. You could say that I'm an enabler, or that I'm in denial. But that's the price I pay for companionship.

Now, as the quaint world of print pornography quietly shuffles through what many are calling its twilight, I look back fondly to the summer of 1988-the summer that I became Penthouse 's first (and, at the time, only) intern.

Every morning, my father and I would commute together from suburban Long Island. He'd drop me off at the Penthouse offices on Broadway and then head crosstown to his upstanding job at the United Nations.

My first day, I wore a pressed skirt and blouse, though when I emerged from the elevator into a corridor hung with framed posters of naked Pets on Bob Guccione's knee, I wondered whether the dress code was "Nothing At All." The editor in chief looked me over as if I were Snow White fluttering into his den of perversity. I was certain he could discern, with his pornographer's X-ray vision, that I was still a virgin.

Peter was middle-aged, with dark, thinning hair, though his strongest feature was his teeth, which were incredibly crooked, giving him a kinky menace when he smiled at me. He led me around the narrow banks of cubicles and introduced me to everyone on staff, most of whom were women. (To rationalize their work, they quoted the First Amendment constantly, with the righteous flourish of Bible-thumpers.) Some appeared indifferent to my presence, while others looked me over with concern, as if they were witnessing the conclusion of my wholesome girlhood.

Much of my time was spent reading the slush pile, which was composed of bizarre, poorly written short stories-usually sci-fi -where women's measurements were more amply described than character or plot line. Then there were the infamous Penthouse Forum letters-the sexual escapades, real or imagined, of "ordinary" men. Hunched over my desk, I found myself more than slightly aroused by my first-time foray into libidinous wordplay. My favorite was the well-endowed lawn boy who, with a few deep thrusts, defrosted the haughty housewife. I also liked the mailman and the lusty ladies on his route who licked his postage stamps (and more). The Forum editor was a smart-talking, gum-chewing, big-haired gal who wore spandex pants nearly every day. She crossed out sentences with red pencil between chortles and burst Bubblicious bubbles. At the other end of the spectrum was the prudish, tight-lipped copy editor who let me proofread every article except the Forum, as if this would preserve my fast-fleeting purity.

Sexual slurs, I soon discovered, occurred offhandedly between coworkers; no one seemed to realize how deeply the magazine's content had invaded our psyches. After one of his martini lunches, the editor in chief stumbled over to my cubicle and slurred, "Can I come into your box?" "Sure," I breathed, testing my burgeoning sexuality, "come." Later in the week, he gave me Susan Minot's story collection, Lust and Other Stories, as a gift. I smiled sweetly-this innocence of mine, I noted almost immediately, had a certain cachet around the Penthouse offices. My virginity was palpable; it was as strange and rare as a near-extinct animal, and seemed to leave everyone wracked with ambivalence on whether to preserve it or kill it. Holding Lust to my chest, I told Peter that I would read it.

Naturally, in this heightened atmosphere, I developed a crush on a co-worker. He was the mildest, most befuddled man in the office: Bob, the managing editor. I dreamed about him incessantly, imagining us in a variety of uncomfortable poses, usually involving his desk, the sharp edges of which poked with painful pleasure into my hips. Bob had worked at Penthouse for years, though he was still clearly uneasy with the magazine's content. When I would knock on his door to tell him that his mother or fiancée was on the phone, a centerfold inevitably lay splayed across his desk. Bob checked each photo for splotches and inconsistencies, but when our eyes would meet, his face reddened with shame. My crush was inevitably short-lived: I turned the page on Bob, as I had the numerous steamy scenarios in the magazine.

I brought the July issue home to show my parents. My mother passed over the centerfold with a nod, though her face revealed an expression of pure disgust. Clearly, until now, she'd been unaware of the magazine's actual content. Skimming the pages, she described what she saw there as "naughty," as if Penthouse were a disobedient child that needed her punishing. Flipping to the back, she settled on a sobering article of some sort. "Look how thick it is," my father piped in, adding, "A lot of advertising this month." I chuckled at my father's slip of the tongue, which my mother seemed not to have noticed.

After dinner, I stashed the magazine under my bed. Penthouse deserved a dark, dusty and secretive space, despite my parents' peculiar acceptance of porn. Every night I opened it wide to the center, exposing the three metal staples securing the pages. The Pets, with their perfectly feathered hair, seemed to coo in silent ecstasy, their parted lips revealing a bit of tooth or tongue. Their nails were long and perfectly painted, unlike my own bitten-down stubs that ran over the magazine's cool gloss, smudging the pages. Their breasts seemed inflated, like water balloons near bursting, and their pudenda were swollen and shaved to a thin swatch of heart-shaped fuzz. I was both disgusted and fascinated by this pornographic perfection. I attempted to mirror their droopy bedroom eyes and parted lips before I went to sleep in my twin bed.

At work, during my lunch hour, I began to paint my nails-"Lickety Split" and "Transpire," my colors of choice. I knew the feminists at my college went righteously unshaven and would consider me a traitor for picking up a razor, but I didn't care. I shaved, reasoning that their bookish beliefs weren't nearly as exhilarating as my smooth skin, which I groomed in preparation for the impending plucking of my petals.

On my last day at Penthouse , the editor in chief gave me a good-bye gift: an oval abalone pin set in silver that I still have, but never wear. "Here," he said, "let me put in on for you." As he sent the sharp pin through my blouse, I felt a small stinging prick as it hit my skin, and a pleasurable quiver as he rested his hand on my chest. I smiled demurely back at him. My innocence by then had an ironic, knowing edge. Later, when I took off my blouse, I saw that Peter's pinprick had drawn a small dollop of blood-not exactly the stimulating stuff of a Forum letter, but, I figured, it was a start.