"I think babies are perfectly capable of having death wishes," he contended, ignoring her glare. She wanted to get huffy about a kitten, that was her business. He couldn't be bothered to look ruffled about something so inconsequential as whether or not it had gotten its whiskers bruised by his boot. "I've never seen one take any positive action to protect itself. Probably little nihilists, the lot of them."

Don Juan was not much of a philosopher, as far as Dempseys went. He'd read some philosophy as a boy, under his tutors, and then had read more as a young man when his older siblings and occasionally his parents had cited someone or quoted someone and made him feel inferior for not knowing (not that he ever let on he was feeling inferior, and certainly not that he had read anything because of it). He liked to reference nihilism from time to time chiefly because it tended to irritate people who did read a lot of philosophy, and Don Juan found their irritation amusing.

---