Zen and the art of kitty (or doggie) maintenance

As noted in the post below, our friend Brandy (who has now identified herself in the comments) started something. She planned and successfully completed a "Silent Saturday" devotional exercise. After she announced her plan, I read, considered and eventually linked this moving post by Sissy Willis, who misses her treasured cat, Baby Face. Sissy does a lot of especially fine Cat Blogging, and she was also interested in certain philosophical aspects of Brandy's "Silent Saturday" exercise. She responded in the comments. One thing led to another, and she expressed interest in Brandy's account of her Silent Saturday which connected Zen and her experiences with her cats.

Now Brandy has posted on The Zen of Kitties. One thing she wrote about was how the routine of caring for her kitties kept her focused on the present. Her kitties really depend on her. A bond of love develops. When I lived alone in Southern California, I couldn't keep a pet in the house, but I cared for a partly-wild "outside kitty". I was surprised how hard I took it when she died quite suddenly. I felt sort of lost without that daily connection.

Of course, since then we've had other treasured cats and dogs. Plus a banty hen, Henrietta Heartley, once the fearless, bossy companion of big, intimidating Sparky, who is a Husky/Black Lab mix. He's the only one of our dogs whose breeding "pedigree" we know. He was abandoned by our neighbor, who was cruel to his children and his dogs, perhaps due to meth addiction. All of our other animals have just adopted us.

We don't have a chicken any more. The first cat who adopted us in town, Wild Panther Mama, is gone. She was truly wild. Her sweet babies, Cocoa and Chocolate, are gone. Fluffy, the sort of dim boy kitty we thought was a girl kitty, is gone. So is Speedy, who retrieved lifesavers. Peter seems to have chosen to live full-time with his second human family. Charlie and Cloudy were just too rough. Now we have Darla and Thomas, who are "people cats", and Charlie, Brewster and Cloudy, who each have their own stringent rules for human involvement. But they all still need us.

David still thinks about his little princess dog Sula all the time. The little stray puppy in our side yard right now reminds him of Sula and her big, brown eyes. Troy the Giant Dog reminds him of Sula and her big, brown eyes. Lucky reminds him of Sula and Snickers. Maggie reminds him of Snickers. Dottie reminds him of Snickers. And we still have Sparky, from the time when we had Sula and Snickers. But he's showing his age. Even though our first two special dogs are gone, they're really still sort of with us.

As with Brandy and her cats, the routine of caring for our animals often helps keep us going and focused on the present when things get tough. But, as with Brandy, cats and dogs help us in other ways, too. When we have more than one, they have their own little kittie and doggie dramas, reminding us not to take our own dramas so seriously. They're fun to play with, snuggle and just watch. We learn to love them all. Even the ones who don't really seem to like us very much are endearing. The ones who really show their love for us - all of the dogs and about half of the cats - are really special.

Brandy reminded us about the benefits of adopting a cat. I like to see people adopt two kitties if they're young, so they can learn to express their "cat nature" appropriately. Here's Ben Stein on dogs.