A Green Hope friend from Atlanta wrote this week asking if there was anything she could do about her cat’s relentless hunting. She was weary of finding bloody animal corpses everywhere and wondered if there was some way to get her cats focused on some other activity. She asked if the Angels had any suggestions.
The Angels suggested she take Eyes of Mary. This wonderful Flower Essence helps us see life the way I imagine Angels see life: without judgment, with complete knowledge that all is well, with total acceptance about what is.
Both this Atlanta friend and I found this a funny and wise suggestion. Much as I would like to sit around knitting with my cats, sharing tips on intarsia style knitting or cutting a steek through a fair isle sweater, most of the cats I have known and loved have preferred to be cats. This means they loved to hunt. As the Atlanta friend quipped after she got the Angels suggestion, well then, I guess I just need to keep the carnage out of the house.
The three royal cats in our household are cats and live like cats. They spend most of the winter dreaming of big game.
Okay, so Mishka is actually looking like she is dreaming of getting away from William.
Now, with spring upon us, we see the cats at breakfast and then again at dusk when we make a concerted effort to get them inside and out of reach of the bigger game hunters in the neighborhood like coyotes and fisher cats. Plus, William needs his cat time!
The rest of the time our cat trio is out doing whatever it is that cats do. I see them tearing across the yard periodically or digging in the rose garden aka the outdoor litter box. They leave strange small organs on the front porch. They resist cuddling. No discussions about knitting.
Yesterday, there was a funny cat moment at breakfast. Mishka resembles a gently toasted marshmallow. There is no camouflaging herself in the greening gardens. Consequently, despite hours underneath the bird feeders, she has not caught anything. I must confess to being relieved by this. I usually stop feeding the birds when the cats start going outside after their long winter’s nap, but it was such a hard winter for the birds, I have gone on feeding them a little bit longer. I have been glad this has been safe for the birds.
Mishka, however, reached her limit of patience yesterday and took things into her own paws.
But if cats don’t like to knit, birds don’t like to be cat breakfasts either. Not even a chickadee visited the feeders while Mishka tried her new hunting strategy. Finally, completely miffed, she jumped down and Bella, the experienced huntress in the clan, came over to give her a pep talk.
Me? Just for that moment, I could see the dance of it all and felt like I was having an Eyes of Mary moment of enjoying the cats being the cats and the birds being the birds, even if Mishka was not!