For several weeks we’ve been hosting a stray cat in our back bedroom. Last night we transferred Sam, a sweet shorthaired black tomcat, to his lovely new home with our dear friend Mike. Sam was the most recent in a long line of homeless felines who were initially attracted to the raccoon chow on the front porch but who, sooner or later, settled down enough to be rescued. Some of them took more than a year to tame, while others -- like Sam – essentially fell into our arms after a very short courtship. One characteristic common to all of the strays is that after days or months of being afraid and silent, a day comes when they suddenly decide that we’re safe. We always know that day has arrived when the stray starts to talk to us – never just a few words – speech pours out of them like a water over a waterfall – words, sentences, and paragraphs describing what’s in their hearts and their loneliness and their joy at having found friends to care for them. Little Sam will be very happy with Mike – he hadn’t been in Mike’s house for 10 minutes and he was already going to Mike for head skritches and comfort.
The good news is that we get as much from our animals as they get from us. Creatures teach us to love, to live in the moment, to have compassion, to live without guile. Two excellent very short and very funny books that express this truth from different places on the theological/philosophical spectrum are “Guardians of Being” by Eckhart Tolle and Patrick McDonnel and “God and Dog” by Wendy Francisco.
Today’s front yard critter count:
Deer: 0
Raccoons: 0
Towhees: lots
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