In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats.*

I took this shot of our cat, Feather, one afternoon in November. I was busy doing something in the bedroom and felt I was being watched. She has assumed this peeking pose throughout her life but I've never before gone for the camera to capture the image. Surprisingly, I found her in the same position when I returned to the bedroom with the camera. A cat thinking.

Feather will be 15 years old this coming March and she amazes us by seeming a kitten or young cat in so many ways. When she reached 7 lbs. in her first years she simply stopped growing. Where Shiva is obese and I am now having to monitor Willow's food intake, Feather eats enough to maintain her 7 lbs. and is content. Consequently, she can still run and play like a kitten and I think her mind is sharper too because she is in such great shape.

I would guess that 90% of all the posts here at Writerquake have been written with Feather in my lap for at least a portion of the writing. She is here now, sitting up in my lap so that her furry white head obscures my vision of the left side of the keyboard. As always, she is purring. When I wrap this up in a few minutes she will follow me into the bathroom to drink from the bathtub faucet while I get ready for bed. She will follow me into the bedroom and will find a cozy corner on the bed for some dreamtime. She will be there when I wake up in the morning.

Feather is the oldest of all our pets and is the only one who moved here to our house with us. All the others came afterward. She is truly the little mystic of the house. The hub of the wheel that keeps the works turning. The one who watches with huge eyes as the years roll by. A featherweight of a cat who has lightened the dark spots of my life more times than I can count. The pet who truly loves her mommy and daddy (yes, she does know those are our names) equally. A perfectly healthy feline. A cat being close to perfect. A cat being close. A cat being. Here. Now.



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* English proverb

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into the mystics

Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.

-Booth Tarkington (Newton Booth Tarkington)
American novelist and dramatist
(1869-1946)

I saw the quote above last evening and it's been poking my brain ever since. It's one of those times that I wish I could have a talk with this person from the past. Pick his brain and let mine stop feeling poked. If Tarkington had said Mystics always hope that science will some day validate them, that I could more easily understand. My sense of the root of his meaning at this stage in pondering the statement is that mystics are advanced beyond science in the comprehension of the meaning of it all. That mystics intuit and simply know, where science tests and proves.

I've known some true mystics in my life: cats all. If science would someday overtake the mystical cat life what could that mean ...... that my favorite cats through the decades would still be alive today? That they still would have died through the years but that I might easily experience their presence? That humans could follow cat gurus to learn how to become more cat like, i.e. perfect, according to the cat? That our first cat president born of a white, domestic short-hair mama cat and a black Persian papa cat would have to produce proof that the litter from which he came was the one mama cat had in the U.S. and not that other one she had while visiting Persia?
Ah well, those are enough crazy questions this early morning.......

As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.

-Carl Van Vechten