About This Cat

Miss Bossy Pants climbs onto my stomach, sits her bottom on top of my left forearm and softly chews at my zipper. It is cool, 61 degrees inside this house and 38 outside.  The season is slowly changing.  I like the gentle easing into a new season.  In Arkansas a string of freezing October nights may end in a sudden warm to 50 and on to an 80-degree day only to fall again when you’ve pulled out a few t-shirts. We’re all used to it.  We make jokes and change our clothes.

Her breath hits my senses and I perceive she’s just recently visited her food dish. It occurs to me that life is full of things like cat breath and thick socks and Saturdays. I am not off work like some in the world.  I will go into the little winery soon, punch my number into a time clock and continue to earn my keep. It’s odd for me to think I alone keep this cat alive, buying her food, paying for water.  She’s much too secure in this arrangement.  She has no idea who I am and how fragile I could be. She lives in my house and does nothing other than sleep, play, purr, eat and lounge. I notice stray stands of her fur on my black hoodie. She doesn’t care. I like her purring and the sense of her contentment even though it has taken me a long while to really like her. I have come to realize I like providing for her too, for something beyond myself, for something’s happiness, needs and wants.  Though sometimes I think I’ll give her away, today she sprawls purring, oblivious to how she impedes my typing and I put the notion off for another day. 

When I began to live alone for the first time in my life, a silly excitement was to have the control of a thermostat. That’s why it is 61 inside this house.  I was 56 years old last November when this milestone occurred, and I felt it with profound giddiness.  I wanted to discover how low the numbers on my next electric bill could go when it was very cold outside and all up to me. I dressed in layers, pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up, and found the thickest, longest socks in the drawer. I prevailed against the chill and saved a little money.  The following month, I turned the thermostat down even further and saved more.  Decisions with positive outcomes are exhilarating—at least they are to me.  The heat just kicked on.  Kitty and I are snug on our big couch. The brief touch of warm air is nice.

I have an old blog on Google that I had neglected to use or check until one day, a couple of months ago I made a visit and found that it was being read in large numbers by Singaporean folks.  It’s called Sunshine on Four Oaks Farm. You should check it out too. That same week my rare use of the television found me happening upon a documentary about centurions and blue zones, one being Singapore.  It’s intriguing how when I began to live quiet enough inside myself, I began to notice themes, and repetitions in life which hush me even more.  I want to hear what the quiet has to say. I’ve heard enough of the ruckus and cacophony.  I keep a journal and make my observations available to my forgetful self later on.  If I didn’t, I would forget 2000 blog visitors from Singapore and a TV show about them to boot. I’d forget how they showed up again in a magazine article. I might forget this warm, purring body lying across my arms at this moment and I might forget how this all feels to me now. 

Life is now and I’ve heard that life beyond this realm is better, intensely real life.  God says it is beyond the capabilities of our imagination, so I will be content to wait to see.  But sitting in this very spot on the big brown couch I’ve heaved the bewildered sob of the brokenhearted, screamed into the mattress at the heart slicing open, when shards of emotional glass cut deep.  Uncomforted, graceless pain is the worst pain and I’ve only experienced it at my own hand, by my own choices.  I’ve only experienced it in one long season and that’s when I stopped wondering how some people end it all.  Mine was over within a year, but others go on and on and on never finding their way out, never taking hold of the reaching hand up into the humble land of “help me, Lord”.  It’s not God’s fault. It’s no one’s fault.  We have the intoxicating power to choose and sometimes languish in the traps and bogs we investigate for one reason and another. Quicksand presses us slowly, we dissolve, degenerate from our former, vibrant selves and succumb, sand in our lungs, we stop hoping to run in fields of flowers and we lose interest in wholesomeness and real life. But that open-throated cry to God and willing surrender works for everyone, but not everyone is willing.  Sometimes we want what we want, we won’t let go and that always hurts us the most.   

I think no one is really happy or content without this silent surrender.  No one relaxes without the holy alignment of heart to God, heart to HOME, feet back in the Garden, destiny in God’s dominion. We need Him to take care of us. This cat needs me. She helps me understand it all. Oops, it’s time to shower and get on with the day.  If I go to work, I can buy this cat more food.  😊  Happy Saturday to you.