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Cats are magical, mystical, mysterious caretakers of their human charges capable of both intense loyal connectivity and seething resentment. Throughout the years, I have had many encounters with the smaller species of house or temple cats who still retain some of the more generic characteristics of catness (lions and tigers and panthers oh my!) despite their more diminutive size. When I was a little girl, I wanted a puppy dog just like all my neighbors and relatives, but my parents had lost a black cocker spaniel named Ronnie they had loved dearly shortly before I was born and they were not ready to replace her memory with another dog anytime soon. One warm summer afternoon when I was three, my father came home from work carrying a wicker basket. When he place it on the floor, a white angora cat with gold eyes quickly ran upstairs and hid under the day bed in the spare bedroom. I remember lifting up the bedspread and talking to her. Her name was Susie and she needed a new home because one of the women in her current home was allergic to cat hair. The karmic wheel turned and Susie came to stay that day and soon settled into her new role as household protectress. From then on she was on perpetual guard duty. My father built a special ramp for her in the basement so she could come and go whenever she wanted to from the small window. (Prior to this she had continually woken my parents up by jumping up and down from one window sill to another on her nightly patrols). From time to time, whenever one of my friends dogs had a litter of puppies I would ask if we could take one in but the answer was always no. Although Susie was a constant family companion and always stoically allowed me to tie festive ribbons around her neck during the holidays, I never felt that I was special to her. Most days she spent either snoozing under the tiger lilies in the backyard or perched on the special wooden platform my father built for her in a sunny corner of the white picket fence. She seemed to be equally happy snuggled in my father's, mother's or great aunt's lap, as mine. Susie live to the ripe old age for a cat of 22 before making the transition in New Jersey. Many years would pass before I was to find out just how much she cared.
Fast forward to the year 2001 to the Portland, Oregon area where I had lived in
the same condo type apartment for the last seven years. I am packing up and
getting ready to move to Florida. The retired school teacher who is in his
seventies and rarely exchanges more than a few words of greeting with me if we
cross paths coming and going from our apartments, leaves a box of Sees
Chocolates outside my door with a note telling me that he needs to give me a
photograph of his cat Dusty to take with me.
Dusty was a long hair male cat with a very pretty face who showed up outside the teacher's door one day and never left. If I were to describe how Dusty related to me I would have to say distantly friendly and aloofly affectionate with an undercurrent of resentment. Most of the time Dusty gave me these scolding looks from his deck which was downstairs and catty corner from mine. He seemed to be on guard duty most of the time and was dedicated to the task. From time to time whenever the teacher went away on holiday, Dusty would talk to me from behind the window screen as I made my way from the car to the stairs. He always made a point of asking me if I would take him in if the teacher died. The rest of the time he was very Vulcan adhering to his disciplined routines of vigilance. So enough stage setting. A few days before I left, Dusty told me telepathically that he was the reincarnation of Susie and that he came there to continue his guardianship of me. He scolded me for not bringing any cats into my home so he would have a chance to be with me again. He said that the teacher was the best that he could do, the closest that he could get to me. He told me that he needed to continue to watch over me, especially in times of trouble. Continuing on, Dusty told me that when I was growing up he had his hands full maintaining emotional equanimity in the household and the reason he sat on the laps of other members of the family so often was because he needed to transmute and balance their solar plexus energies so they would not harm me with negative thoughtforms and energy outbursts. There was more emoting and sharing between us and I thanked Dusty/Susie for guarding and taking care of me. After I agreed to once again bring a cat into my home sometime in the future so she/he could reincarnate and be with me once again after his journey with the elderly teacher was completed, harmony and peace between us was restored. We parted amicably in a way reminiscent of Merry Meet, and Merry Part, and Merry Meet Again. (Freya's cats stop by from time to time to remind me of my promise to Cat.) As I gazed at Dusty's photo, I wondered why I did not notice the remarkable resemblance to Susie before then. The color of the fur was different and the hair not quite as long but the facial features and golden eyes (the soul windows) were identical. A lot of the behavioral patterns were also similar such as spending most of the day perched on a wooden outpost in the backyard or quietly stalking the neighborhood from beneath the overhang of the garden bushes.
I remembered the time I threw some boiled ham over the balcony to the ground
below for the ever present bird community to feast on, only to be surprised when
Dusty suddenly appeared and literally inhaled all of it with great satisfaction.
He had obviously been on guard duty under the bushes. Susie always loved ham.
One of the most important items on Dusty's agenda was that I soul retrieve my
connectedness with Cat as guardian. Recently, I asked my body elemental who her animal totem was and she immediately
replied Cat. My mind's eye received the visual transmission of one species of
Cat after another from housecat, to tiger, to lion, to lynx, to jaguar, and
on... Since then I have pondered how I can arrange my daily routines to be more
compatible with those of Cat.
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