I’m a creature of habit. I wake up early most days, feed the cats and dogs while I wait for the water to boil, and then sit down on the couch, sip tea, and mediate. I love the quiet of the pre-dawn hours; when, for whatever reason, I sleep past sunrise, I never feel as relaxed as I do on the days when I wake before the sun.
This morning, as I sipped my tea and got ready to meditate, I saw the shadow of a cat on the living room floor. I looked around, but saw no cat. The shadow was large, then small, and seemed to move across the floor independent of anything I could see in the room. My natural reaction was “we have a ghost cat” because of course it was. The idea of a ghost cat unsettled me more than a little; an indifferent ghost cat, I could handle, but I read “Pet Sematary” and knew how this would go down.
Anyway, my heart’s going full speed, and the last thing I’m about to do is get up an investigate and I didn’t need to because I knew – just KNEW, mind you – we had a ghost cat. The shadow of the cat kept twisting on the floor and I’m edging close to hysteria (why the idea of human ghosts don’t bother me this much, I don’t know) and then I see a flash of something.
In the chair, tucked just out of site under our bar, was Hobie Cat. I’d lit one of the those Christmas candles that make the house smell like pine and cinnamon, and it cast a shadow over her onto the floor. I couldn’t see her, of course, just her shadow.
Some may say she had no clue what she was doing, but those of you who know cats – specifically, Hobie Cat – know better.
Needless to say, I really needed that 15 minutes of Zen after that.