In the Presence of Cats (Part 1)
Mindfulness Lessons From Our Feline Companions
This is the first in a series of daily pieces I’ll be writing about my experiences of being a hermit who meditates daily while living with eight cats. Our animal companions can teach us a great deal, IF we’re willing to pay attention to them. Mindfulness teaches us how to pay attention. It’s up to us to decide what we pay attention to, as our attention determines our direction.
Lesson to Learn: Distractions are temporary.
Taught by: Poppy
Poppy came to me at an interesting time. I was sitting in the passenger seat of my sister’s car, while she drove to Detroit Metro airport to drop my son off for his flight back to Las Vegas, where he works and lives. He and niece were sitting in the back seat.
As we’re heading down the expressway — leaving from my grandfather’s funeral — I get a phone call from my other niece and her uncle telling me about the kitten. It was a video call, so I also got to see this adorable little kittie. She was all alone, in a park, obviously abandoned, would I take her?
Mind you, my cat, Tilly, had just had kittens not long before. Six of them, after she’d snuck out and stayed gone for 24 hours one night two months before. So one more cat made eight.
They dropped her off at my house. Tilly was locked in my bedroom — she’d been trying to move her kittens all over the place so I’d put them and her in there the week before.
I came home after dropping my son off, walked in, and peeking out from under the couch is this little tabby kitten, maybe 4 months old at most. Her fur is rough and scraggly, though clean, and she’s skinny. I fill up a dish of food for her and let her eat.
Then decide that I might as well get introductions over with. I let Tilly out of the room, though I don’t let Poppy into the room with the kittens. Tilly freaks out, beats Poppy up, runs back to the bedroom, and Poppy hides for the next two and a half hours before I’m finally able to find her, huddled into a dark corner of a bookshelf, blending in with the beige of the antique books.
Looking at her now? You wouldn’t know her introduction to the household started in such a traumatic way.
Now? She and Tilly are like sisters, frequently falling asleep next to each other. The kittens are nearly four months old — I still have all six of them, each with a distinct personality. Poppy has especially bonded with Dude, a white and tabby male, but she can frequently be found cuddling with any of them.
Poppy is funny. She loves strangers. Anyone that ever comes over she immediately tries to befriend, regardless of who they are or why they’re there. Cable guy comes to check the line? He’s her bestie. Someone stops by for two minutes to pick something up? Poppy is all over them. She was hesitant about my landlord’s dog at first, but now they get along quite nicely.
With me, though? She’s content. She’s not pushy, though she loves whatever attention I give her. And her attention to me tends to be fleeting.
With eight cats, there is ALWAYS a cat around. Always. At any given time, there’s at least one cat in reach, usually more. If I sit in a particular chair, I’ll find myself covered in cats before long, and it was in that particular chair that I sat to meditate this morning.
It was Poppy that chose to be my first teacher this morning, stepping into my lap for just a brief moment, long enough for me to know it was her, but as soon as I allowed myself to be distracted and pet her, she was moving away, onto something else, leaving me to bring my attention back to the breath.
It was just a brief bit of attention that she gave to me, just enough to distract me from my focus on my breath, and then she was gone.
For just a moment, I was frustrated. “You little shit,” I thought to myself as she jumped down.
But then I paused. I breathed. I accepted the lesson.
Distractions are temporary.
Paying attention to them is a choice.
There are consequences for paying attention to distractions, and also, there are consequences for not paying attention to distractions.
Some require us to deal with them or they will become more than just distractions, they’ll become disasters.
But regardless of whether we pay attention to them or not, we must remember that paying attention — including when we pay attention — is a choice. It takes practice to be able to make that choice consciously and deliberately — this is why we meditate — but even unconscious choices are still choices.
I chose to be distracted by Poppy this morning. I could have chosen not to. She’s not a pushy cat. If she asks for attention and you tell her no or gently push her away, she’ll go on about her day. She doesn’t get her feelings hurt, she doesn’t make demands, she just accepts what is — another lesson to be learned. If I’d ignored her, she’d have jumped off my lap to pay attention to something else — just like she did when I chose to be distracted by her.
Some distractions are harder to ignore, though with practice, it can get easier to do that. But being too good at ignoring distractions can be detrimental. Avoidance can become a habit, and when we avoid what needs our attention, it can lead to very bad things.
Everything is a distraction. By consciously choosing what distractions we pay attention to, we begin to direct our life in a more deliberate way. Cultivating mindfulness can help us to also know when a distraction is just a distraction or when it’s something we truly need to pay attention to.
Ultimately, though, as Poppy teaches us, all distractions are temporary. Some last longer than others, but even those will eventually go away as well, replaced by yet another temporary distraction.
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