The Cats Who Are Teaching Me to Be

Every morning, I sit down to do my automatic writing, journal a little, and pull an oracle card.

It has become a ritual.

I slow down.

I become still.

I turn inward.

And apparently, this is also the official signal for all four cats to report for duty.

One by one, they settle in close.

Wywy. Deedle. Tippy. And even Poopie.

Yes. Even Poopie.

Poopie, who generally prefers affection on terms that have been carefully negotiated and approved by Poopie.

And yet lately, she comes close too.

So there I sit with my journal, surrounded by cats, and this morning I found myself watching them.

Really watching them.

They sit.

They look out the window.

They nap.

They groom.

They stretch.

They change positions because apparently the spot they have occupied comfortably for twenty minutes has suddenly become completely unacceptable.

Then they nap again.

There is no urgency.

No agenda.

No visible concern about whether they are accomplishing enough with their day.

No cat appears to be thinking, I really need to maximize my potential before lunch.

They simply are.

And I wondered:

Have they always been doing this, and I am only now becoming still enough to notice?

Maybe.

Because I spent a great deal of my life moving.

Doing.

Accomplishing.

Taking care of things.

Thinking about the next thing while I was still doing the current thing.

Granted, I also apparently never sat down long enough for an entire committee of cats to assemble around me.

But now I do.

And they come.

What the Cats Are Teaching Me

Perhaps the cats are not interrupting my stillness.

Perhaps they are supporting it.

Maybe part of their role each morning is simply to say:

Stay here.

There is nowhere you need to go right now.

Sit with us.

And frankly, they have developed a highly effective strategy.

Because when there is a warm, purring cat pressed against you, another curled beside your leg, one watching peacefully from a few feet away, and Poopie herself has decided to grace the gathering with her presence, it becomes rather difficult to leap up and start doing chores.

Those cats may know exactly what they're doing.

They are making stillness irresistible.

And as I watch them, I realize something else.

They do not seem to question whether they deserve to rest.

They don't earn their nap.

They don't complete three productive tasks and then reward themselves with twenty minutes in a sunbeam.

They find a place that feels safe and comfortable...

and they lie down.

There is such wisdom in that.

I have spent so much of my life believing that life happens in the doing.

But these animals keep showing me that an enormous amount of life happens in the being.

Connection happens there.

Love happens there.

Safety happens there.

Awareness happens there.

And perhaps belonging happens there too.

Have They Always Been This Close?

This is the question I keep coming back to.

Maybe the animals haven't changed.

Maybe I have become available.

I slowed down enough to notice who comes near.

I became quiet enough to feel the warmth of the body beside me.

I stopped moving long enough to discover how much companionship had been waiting for me.

And that connects with something I have been learning again and again:

Perhaps inhabiting my life fully means recognizing how much of my life has been loving me back.

Sometimes that love arrives through something profound.

And sometimes it arrives as four cats surrounding you while you're trying to write, one of whom is probably about to put her butt directly on the page.

Both count.

You May Be Wondering…

What if I don't know how to be still?

Maybe you don't have to know.

Maybe stillness isn't something you master.

Maybe you simply begin by staying where you are for a few moments longer than usual.

Notice what is beside you.

Notice who comes close.

Notice the sunlight.

Notice the sound outside.

Notice the animal breathing near you.

And perhaps, over time, you discover what I am beginning to discover:

Stillness isn't empty.

It is remarkably full.

Full of life.

Full of relationship.

Full of small things we miss when we are rushing toward something else.

And sometimes the greatest teachers of stillness are covered in fur, have absolutely nowhere to be, and have been quietly demonstrating the lesson in front of us for years.

I think perhaps my cats are helping me learn how to simply be.

And because they are ridiculously cute and cuddly, I am a surprisingly willing student.

May you see the world through the eyes of love, remembering that we are all part of one living, sacred whole.