Listening to Cats

In “The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture”, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas refers in some depth to her experiences with lions in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. Her family studied and lived with the Ju/wasi, a group of Bushmen, before their culture was pretty much destroyed.

The Ju/wasi and lions had a special relationship. Her brother participated in a hunt in which the killed animal was surrounded by lions. This didn’t deter the people from retrieving the animal. They spoke firmly to the lions to back off and threw clods of dirt at them. They were confident in their strategy and indeed left with all of the animal.

”Unlike the lions, who correctly understood, and even obeyed, the spoken and gesture commands of the Ju/wasi--words and gestures that were designed for other human beings and then merely applied to lions--we human beings were not able to understand the lions. Not even the Ju/wasi understood them, and they knew them better than anyone else.... Are lions better than people at understanding interspecific messages? Are people better than lions at conveying messages?.... It came to me that our kind may be able to bully other species not because we are good at communication but because we aren’t. When we ask things of animals, they often understand us. When they ask things of us, we’re often baffled. Hence, animals frequently oblige us, but we seldom oblige them.“

Sharon says the way she communicates with animals is to merge with them, and then translates this experience into language. They give her feedback if she is accurate. She has always had this ability, but since a near death experience, it became refined. It is my impression it is progressively refining.

In my most recent session with her, Puffer’s sensitivity to my thought patterns showed up. She gave Sharon the impression of my inability to focus for long as thoughts that ”are like a butterfly“. I’m guessing, but don’t know for sure, that she showed Sharon that image.

In fact, she had a lot to say--more than usual--about a number of subjects, including she doesn’t think the supplements I take are suited to my body, but the supplements a friend takes are suited to her body, and that I should plant sunflowers, lots of them, and wouldn’t it be funny to have kitty litter made of sunflower hulls because they would make a funny sound...?

How does she know these things? One could easily suggest she doesn’t, that it’s Sharon’s imagination. I trust these communications. And, many people report that their animals have communicated very private things that it would be unlikely Sharon would have a clue about no matter how attuned she is to the person.

Thomas writes, ”Cats are particularly inventive in communicating with human beings.... Our cat Orion, perhaps having noticed that at night I would investigate noises on the stairs, once jumped hard from step to step, and repeated the procedure so successfully that I thought the sound was being made by a heavy person, and I got out of bed to investigate. Orion had, I saw, been jumping on the top three stairs only, and when he got to the third step from the top, he would go back up and do his jumps over again.“ She concluded he wanted to go out, but she said, because of a coyote, ”’I’m sorry, but I can’t let you out.’ His eyes lingered on mine, as if he were taking in what I had told him and then he turned his head and went on down the stairs in perfect silence.“

Thomas, well-trained as a scientist, is skeptical but open. She seems confident in the potential of interspecies communication but baffled as to the how of it. Sharon has a clear gift and, through years of diligent practice, has the how of it down.

There is an intelligence here in these furred beings that is close to life, probably closer than our thinking intelligence. I don’t mean to disparage thinking, but I suspect it has gotten the upper hand for most of us. I’ll take my cue from the cats--more naps, more sky-gazing, complete enjoyment of food, and less figuring. Perhaps then my ability to listen will improve.

Moving Dirt

Because my house was sinking the workers were here to dig out dirt in the cellar and install steel beams. Along the north side of the house, a concrete swale was added to move rain water away from the back of the house, so more dirt was moved from there. I have three piles of nicely mounded dirt, two of them adobe. The other, although rocky, is closer to what gardeners and horticulturalists call soil.

The mounds of dirt have inspired me to make a garden. Also, the financial impact of the house fix has inspired me to stay home instead of taking trips to foreign lands.

Since I moved to New Mexico, I haven’t been inclined to garden. Other things have taken my time and energy, but now I find myself checking garden books out from the library and reading carefully ‘The Dyer’s Garden’ to see what is likely do okay here. And I own a copy of ‘Navajo and Hopi Dyes’ which lists more plants for the Southwest dyer’s garden.

There is a movement on to use natural dyes. They are surprisingly colorfast and have a vibrancy not found in procion dyes. Some plants require a massive amount to get dye, but others are surprisingly productive in a small space. I am curious to see what I can pull off in my small spaces and with so little water.

My neighbor-who-takes-care-of-cats had offered the use of his wheelbarrow if needed, so I took him up on it. He proudly told me, “This was my dad’s; he bought it in 1942.” It has clearly been well used. And, it’s a substantial thing. In fact, so substantial, it’s heavy without dirt in it. For a person (me) who hasn’t been working out for some time, it may be more than I want to start with. But it is a thing of beauty in a wheelbarrowish way. The handles are well worn and there is a hint of red on the wood, so I have wondered in my trudging if it were the original red wheelbarrow that inspired the William Carlos Williams poem that has moved so many people in its poignant simplicity. I will probably return the wheelbarrow to my neighbor and buy a lighter duty one, but I am glad to have had this poem come to mind.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Saying Yes

“Whenever a habitual no to life turns into a yes, whenever you allow this moment to be as it is, you dissolve time as well as ego. ...Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form.” Eckhart Tolle

I am tripping over a full yes to Monkey’s death. I have no doubt she is fine. Sharon reports that she sees her life here as long and satisfying. That fits my sense of her. But I long, still, for the form to be here, to be touchable, seeable, senseable. To play the Monkey Mouse game, to glance at her sleeping form on top of the cat tree, to experience again her full throttle run through the door when I call her.

No, I say, not this.

But this is here and resistance is futile. When I look closely, I can’t quite sort out what it is I miss. Play? Plenty of play around here. The fetch game? I know some dogs who love to fetch. Cat on the cat tree? Oh-Oh, TangaRoo, ZoZo, Felicity, and Rimpoche have all taken turns lounging in the places Monkey lounged.

“The many things that happen, the many forms that life takes on, are of an ephemeral nature. They are all fleeting. Things, bodies and egos, events, situations, thoughts, emotions, desires, ambitions, fears drama...they come, pretend to be all-important, and before you know it, they are gone, dissolved into no-thingness out of which they came.”

The one I think of as Monkey Gurl has returned to where she came from, where we all come from, even though there is no “from.” Or, as a friend said, she has “gone on ahead.”

It is Monkey's uniqueness, like Bonsai’s and Louie-Louie’s, that I miss--her uniqueness stimulating some experience within my experience. I would have liked more.

“Look for her in others,” Pamela suggested. On a planet full of so many billions of forms, surely the qualities Monkey exhibited are to be found in others. Or, perhaps it is the quality of clear-sightedness that I wish to find in myself. Her full engagement with life and full satisfaction with its length and breadth. And her confidence reported through another animal communicator that there is no need to touch physically when we already touch on the inside.

Tolle says it like this, “When you bring an inner yes to the form the Now takes, that very form becomes a doorway into the formless. The separation between the world and God dissolves.”

Even though Monkey was clearly embodied, I think for her, and perhaps for all these cat people, the barrier between form and formless is penetrable. My sense is it was an easy crossing when death of the body came and that, indeed, she has gone on ahead to show us how simple the leap is.

You must be able to do three things

"In Blackwater Pond" by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning,
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

The sweetest beings often make the shortest trips to earth........

Sharon wrote this in her email in response to the news that Monkey Gurl was killed by a car. “It feels as if she didn't miss a beat...just sailed right through to the Land of Amitaba.”

Besides being one of the sweetest beings I have ever known, Monkey was relatively uncomplicated. She was, as a friend said, “so herself.” She showed respect for all of us, including herself.

For a few days before she disappeared, she renewed her interest in the Monkey Mouse game. A little gray and pink catnip mouse was her favorite toy. She would bring it to me, I would toss, and she would retrieve it to me. She hadn’t been interested in the game for some weeks, so when she took it up again, I gladly spent a lot time playing with her. She also became more talkative, a voice half purr, half meow.

She had gotten more affectionate, too, rubbing against my legs, even tolerating with some pleasure head rubs.

On Tuesday, she didn’t return for supper. Monkey was not one to miss a meal, but I didn’t get really concerned until she didn’t show up for breakfast on Wednesday.

This morning, Thursday, I printed out some photos of her and another missing cat, Whiskas, and took them to the animal shelter to file a missing cat report. Whiskas is more shy and has been gone longer. I fear we may not see her again.

In the afternoon, I made up flyers with photos to take to neighbors. When a neighbor to the north got home, he called. He had a cat’s body, picked up off the street on Tuesday. He had put it in a bag in the garbage, but still had it. Indeed, it was our dear Monkey Gurl. A clean hit to the head, a swift good-bye, and off to the Pure Land.

Another neighbor came to help me lay out the body. She had Tibetan medicine to anoint the body, and I had anointment oil from Sharon. I found silk I had dyed yellow, and I got out gold papers to lay the body on. We cut orange and yellow roses from a bush she spent a lot of time under. Her mouse, which also disappeared for a few days, appeared again and I placed it with the body. A pearl and bodhi tree leaf from my neighbor completed the material. A small hand-woven rug she favored will go to the cremation with her too.

I have a candle burning and music playing, but she didn’t seem to want the chants so much as the dance music. Indeed, I sense that it was clean break.

I don’t regret my brief time with her, although I feel heart-broken. In the last days of not-knowing, I had come to celebrating the time we had. I don’t understand this coming and going business, but I do trust Monkey’s choices. I also trust that this time of cats-as-teachers is precious.

As Sharon says, 'She certainly came clothed in one of the most glorious cat costumes I have ever seen...." She was a delight, inside and out.

Dear beloved Monkey Gurl, may you fly free. Thank you.

Monkey Gurl, March 3, 2005 - May 2, 2006