It’s no secret to my friends that I am a cat lover. When I was a child growing up on our farm I thought my job in life was taming the many kittens that were born each spring. I spent hours searching out where the mother cats had hidden them and then hung around and played for hours with the kittens as they grew. They came to know my voice and would come running from all directions when I came outside and they heard me talk. Cats have been almost constant companions for me and my daughters (who both have cats) most of our lives.
The longer I live the more I realize that you can learn a lot from a cat.
Lessons from my cat
The first lesson is PAY ATTENTION. Gracie, my cat, notices any tiny change in the house immediately. It can be the smallest thing, like a book that is sitting in an unusual spot, but she notices and pays attention.
Looking at the birds in the evergreen tree outside the window
Second lesson is BE CURIOUS. Once Gracie notices something new, she goes to investigate immediately and is not satisfied until she has looked at new objects, sniffed them, and brushed her whiskers on them. She is endlessly curious.
And the third lesson is RELAX—A LOT. Paying attention and being curious is tiring, so every chance she gets, she takes a cat-nap.
Fourth lesson is YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL, JUST THE WAY YOU ARE. Gracie doesn’t look in mirrors, except with curiosity, wondering what she is seeing. And you can tell by the way she owns her space that she believes that she is the queen of our house. (And to tell you the truth, she is.)
Morning
Salt shining behind its glass cylinder. Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum. The cat stretching her black body from the pillow. The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture. Then laps the bowl clean. Then wants to go out into the world where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn, then sits, perfectly still, in the grass. I watch her a little while, thinking: what more could I do with wild words? I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her. I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.—Mary Oliver
And the final lesson for today from my cat, ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT. Though Gracie has no human language, she is very good at letting us know what she needs. She likes to plop at Jon’s feet belly up, asking for him to rub her belly with his foot. When she is hungry she meows and bugs me until I go feed her. In the morning when she’s hungry she jumps up on the bed beside me and stares at me until I get up and feed her. (She used to go into the master bathroom and slightly paw open a cupboard door and then let it go so that it bounced shut noisily to wake me up in the morning when she was hungry. Thankfully she no longer does that.) When she’s in my lap she rests her chin on my fingers hoping for a chin scratch. If cats are able to ask their humans for what they need without language, surely we humans can ask one another for what we need with words and gestures.
May you walk in beauty.
P.S. I picked one last luscious peony this morning. Here is the first photo that I made of it.
Yoga and exercise companion.
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