title: The Cat
date: 2016-08-04T10:49:20Z
author: Wynn Wolf Arbor
One should live in a house like a cat, finding repose on almost every
surface. To the cat, the whole house is a shelter. Every table, every
sofa, every chair, every bed, indeed every floor is an invitation to
find some rest. Do we not find cats, again and again, in the most
unusual and unexpected places? We find them there, lying and sleeping
with a kind of lightness and peace as if they themselves had designed
that space specifically for them. We find them there snugly in a ball,
breathing softly to themselves and relaxing their claws.
Now, in this instance, they need them not. In this instance the whole
world around them, usually a cat's plaything and center of attention,
ceases to exist almost, as if they, in their peaceful huddledness,
transcended life and entered the realm of daydreaming. A human realm,
not an animal one. Of which things do they dream? Do they dream of the
mouse that eluded them in the existential battle for life and retreated
back to its hole, its own shelter? Do they maybe dream of the fields in
which they were kings and queens, unchallenged monarchs of old?
Truly there is something kingly about cats; a certain evolutionary
dignity. How is it that they live content with beings displaying even
greater hubris? Or maybe they just want to learn? How innocent, though,
in their pursuit of this. How unburdened, how free. Whom do they see
when they look at us? What do they feel when we talk to them?
Can it be that it is only instinct that drives them? They exhibit such
humanness, they exhibit an animal soul. It is a purer soul, a more
simple one, but it is a soul. What do they feel when we gently stroke
their fur with our hands? Do they feel the same kind of love? How is it
to live a cat's life?
I said earlier that cats lie down to repose anywhere. Like a human,
however, they have their favourite spots. Always these spots have a
distinctly human element. It is the small opening under our beds that
we so cherished as a child, dreaming of and building at the same time
a warm and safe den ourselves. It is next to our spot on the sofa, as
if we radiated a familiarity and comfort there even in our absence.
It is in the bags we use for our shopping, the suitcases we use for
travelling.
It is on our discarded clothes on the table, floor, chair or bed, as
if they wanted to absorb the fragrances of our lives and thus come
closer to our person. It is our smell that is home to them, our ``having
lived'' in something, on something, that is so dear to them. Maybe
they want to feel the pain that was inflicted upon us, or the joy and
happiness that was diffused through the clothes as we wore them. They
are not all without us, and while we are gone they are emptier inside
for the loss, seeking refuge, seeking a nest, seeking shelter from the
rain in the touched and transformed things we left behind. We are their
mothers and fathers to them, we are their family. This bond transcends
species, it is therefore something inherent in life. It is a soulful
longing for nearness, a longing for exchange of life, and what makes
life what it is.
My cats cannot comprehend what I have written here, but I believe
fully that they feel the same way. The cat hair on my clothes is their
attempt at sharing this warmness, this closeness. And when the cat
lies down close to me and purrs with all the excellence of beauty and
reverberation, then I feel loved in the universe and want to share that
love. Maybe in this simplicity we should look for love and give it back
with all our heart. Maybe in this simplicity we have found the core of
us and the dignified true expression of the animal, and of nature.
