Life lessons from a cat
A playful take on the simple wisdom of our pets
It was a rainy and cold Sunday. I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking out of a large mug filled with English breakfast tea seeing if I could follow the splash of individual raindrops with my gaze. My cat was deeply settled into my lap, purring with no intention of moving anytime soon. In that moment, all was perfect. Then the doorbell rang. My cat bounded away due to his fear of pretty much everything. One of his claws got my thigh, and I spilled my tea. Things were back to normal. And by normal, I mean “mind-racing so fast it counts as cardio exercise.” An hour later, I found my cat curled up in his favorite heated cat-bed (yes, he has more than one.)
What did I learn? Claws and hot tea hurt. What else? I can be still without actively trying to be still. The mind quieted itself with the help of my sweet, little, neurotic feline. What else did I notice? My cat recovered pretty quickly from what must have felt like a life and death incident just an hour earlier. The emotional roller-coaster that he experienced, because a UPS person rang the doorbell, was now a distant memory. Was my cat a practitioner of mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a practice born from Eastern philosophy and spirituality. It is about being present and calm in the moment, while acknowledging your feelings and experiences. Perhaps running from the doorbell wasn’t a demonstration of a quiet mind, but his recovery was. Mindfulness can help us be more resilient. While we hold onto unsavory memories and stories about ourselves, we lose our chance to be present. Our pets don’t do this. Your dog patiently waits by the door for you to return. The sound of the key in the lock is enough to rile them up with excitement. For your dog, they don’t care that you left them alone while you were at work. They’ve moved on. It’s just the two of you in their Pixar dream-sequence of a dog movie.
The irony is, as I’m writing a portion of this piece, my cat is howling at me for his dinner, which is not very “mindful” of him. As he is voicing his complaints, he is also purring. Am I getting mixed signals? Sure. But am I also interpreting this behavior as him simultaneously experiencing hunger and companionship? Yes, and I’m sticking with it. In an hour, he will be fed, and he will have forgotten the hunger he felt. He might have more personality than a lot of people I know, but he knows how to live moment to moment.
We’ll see a cat taking a nap in a sunbeam-filled window, or we’ll come upon a dog carrying a stick it found (I recently watched a video of a peaceful tortoise eating an obscene amount of lettuce, but it was thrilled to do so.) Why do we love to see these things? We vicariously experience joy from these sweet creatures finding their own joy from these simple moments. But what if we modeled our behavior after them? What if we ate with the same presence and joy that our pets experience at mealtime? What if we take a moment on our commute to enjoy the winter sun warming up our faces? What if we pridefully find a six foot long branch and bring it home to our partner? I’m not suggesting you do all these things; I’m insisting you try.
