Why cats?

“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” – Albert Schweitzer.

One of my cats, Rafe.

It’s a sad day. I’m worried about some family members and have no power to help them, but it breaks my heart. I crawl under the covers and pull them over my head to wallow in my sorrow. After a minute, I feel paws walking up my side, and then the slump of a soft sandbag over my ribs. I’ve got you. You’re not alone.

My father was a cat person. A lonely teen who lived alone with his brother in an enormous house haunted by all manner of ghosts, including two of their brothers and their mother and other people who left them alone. One way my father coped was with cats. Late in life, he took up with llasa apsos, but a cat lived on his lap always.

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” ― Jean Cocteau

It’s a cold, blustery winter evening and I’m watching a movie on my iPad. A storm makes the windows breathe. A cat leaps on to the arm of my chair and creeps into the curve of my elbow, settles finally with a flop against my chest and stretches out a paw to touch my chin. He lifts his head in happiness, a purr sending healing energy into my body. As long as you are in the world, I am happy.

I have never lived without a cat in my entire life except that time when I basically ran away from a very young marriage and fled to California with some entirely unsavory companions. It was a wretched time, a reckoning with my own bad choices. One night, I found a pair of street cats, kittens, under a car. They were grimy and hungry, but not feral enough to run away. I scooped them up and took them back to my awful place. They were loving beings, one male, one female, infested with fleas and obviously starving, but I fed them and coddled them and knew that I needed to do the same for myself. I carted them across Arizona in the summer heat, in a car with no air conditoning, cooling them off by covering their carriers with wet towels. I drove with the windows down and the three of us collapsed on my parents’ doorstep. They made space for all of us. One died a few years later of leukemia, but I was back in college by then, living in a Victorian railroad apartment I adored. The other lived a long time, and I never could make him a house cat.

A busy morning, a million tasks, and I bustle into the bedroom to find a cat upside down, fast asleep, his paws over his head, his striped belly so inviting I have to reach over and stroke it. He twirps a tiny bit, but doesn’t wake. This is how to nap.

“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.” —Mark Twain

Many writers and artists loved cats. (For some great photos of arts and their cats, check this page out.) Hemingway, for all his many failings, was a cat lover, as was Mark Twain. Matisse loved them, too, and painted them sometimes. Julia Child was converted by a hungry street cat in Paris.

A cat is asleep on my feet as I type.

Islamic Law considers cats ritually pure and possess baraka (blissful energy), and allows cats to freely enter homes and even mosques.

I’m stressed out and sit down to meditate with an app on my phone. Airpods in my ears, low, soothing voice pours in, reminds me to breathe. A big cat leaps into my waiting lap and nudges my chin with his nose. I’m looking for stillness so brush a hand down his back, give him a kiss, go back to listening to the voice. The cat circles on my lap, and to encourage him, I place a hand on his body. So soft. So very soft that I move my hand, stroke his back. He cradles his head into my palm, and a quiet purr emerges. My shoulders relax. My breath slows. This is how you let go. Let me show you.

I had a cat for 15 years that was so skittish almost no one in my world had ever seen her. She was a tiny snowshoe Siamese my sister gave me, and the father of my children used to say, “That cat can hear your knees bend,” because she would instantly appear when I sat down.

When I met Neal, my husband, I moved to his home in a new city, bringing my cats with me. Esmerelda waltzed into that house, perched herself on his shoulder and instantly transfered her allegiance to him. Forever. He called her his parrot cat, and he was 100% converted to a cat person.

Neko, getting ready to headbutt me

A cat leaps up to my desk and bends in for a head butt. A deadline looms and I’m spending long hours at my computer. He purrs softly against my head, and my neck eases. I remember that I am loved. That this extraordinary being loves me, and maybe that’s the secret of everything. Be here now.

Do you have cats? What is your favorite thing about them, or about a particular cat? Let’s revel in our cat-love.