Jackie Branagan JD

Normal0

THE CAT WHO TAUGHT ME TO LISTEN!

It all began with Sam cat – that’s short for Samantha.  Oh, I had had many animal companions before
her, beginning with a husky puppy who ran circles around me to protect me from
other dogs when I was six months old. 
However, Sam was the first one to talk to me – at least that I was aware
of!

When Sam came to me I was newly separated and working on a
divorce.  It was a painful time.  My roommates and I discovered we had mice,
and I said I would really like to have a cat live with us.  They agreed that would be okay.  It seemed much preferable to traps (we’d
have to empty them and we also didn’t want the mice to have a painful death),
poisons (they’d poison us too!), or worse, the exterminator. 

A friend told me about someone who had two litters of kittens
at her house.  I went to visit and saw
this kitten eating.  She didn’t want to
stop even long enough for me to pet her. 
I wondered if she would be lonely. 
The woman, who had to dispose of two litters of kittens, encouraged me
to take two kittens.  I said I would try
it.

It didn’t work.  They
both cried all night long.  After two
sleepless nights, I took the other kitten back.  Sam then settled in nicely. 
She slept on my feet and played with my them every time they moved under
the blanket.

To the end of her days, Sam always was hungry.  Perhaps it came from being one of two
litters.  The mothers had stolen each
others kittens back and forth.  It must
have been confusing for the kittens, and I’d guess that not all of them got fed
every meal.  Plus, I think they were
weaned too early.

I always fed her. She always loved me. 

We had a narrow balcony, and we put her litter box outside
under the roof overhang.  The roof
itself was her playground.

So we got on for the first year of her life.

One of my early memories of Sam is her circumnavigation of
the bathtub when I was in it.  It was an
old claw foot tub, so the rim wasn’t wide. 
She nearly fell in a number of times. 
Once she was playing with the water in the toilet and actually did fall
in.  She couldn’t get back out over the
rim of the seat. I was laughing so loudly that one of my roommates came to
investigate.  She berated me for not
getting Sam out and sent me after a towel. 
Sam slinked away, studiously ignoring my laughter.  She ignored me for three days afterward.

Sam did not digest her food well in the beginning – she
farted frequently.  She also used her
claws a lot.  She would be sitting on
someone’s lap and then fart and dig in her claws.  I was always surprised. 
You might think I would get used to this behavior, but no, I did
not.  I always yelped, and Sam always
leaped down from my lap.  Finally, she’d
had enough of this and stopped using her claws.  Gradually, as she matured, she stopped farting as well.

When she was about a year and a half old, I moved.  For the first time in her life she lived on
the first floor and had access to the outside. 
She thought it was heaven.  I
lived, with roommates again, in a suburban condo with acres of green belt
around it.  Sam would disappear for
hours at a time.  She always came home
for meals though.

Then she had a bladder infection.  I didn’t notice it at first, probably because she went outside
instead of in a litter box.  One day I
came home to find she had peed in the middle of the bed.  We found a vet, and he diagnosed a bladder
infection.  I gave her the little pills
faithfully, with some resistance on her part. 
But the infection didn’t seem to get better.  Back to the vet.

He gave me stronger pills, and warned me they tasted bad and
she’d not take them easily.  I was
supposed to give them twice a day. 
However, Sam would disappear for 24 hours at a time.  She came back to eat, and I gave her a pill
and she disappeared again.  Finally, I
read a book about a human who rescued a cat. 
The author said that her gift to the cat was the rescue, while the cat’s
gift was helping her to see her patterns with her mother.   Aha! 

My mother was arriving soon.  Could this be it?  I sat
down with Sam and explained that I would deal with my feelings about Mom, and
she could focus on being a cat and getting well.  Immediately she went to the bathroom sink and started drinking
water.  And the bladder infection
disappeared.

The next time we moved, I had to choose between two group
houses.  I didn’t know how to choose, so
I took Sam with me to each place.  In
the first one, she sat down in the middle of the living room and howled.  I had never seen her exhibit such behavior,
though the potential housemates did not believe me when I said so.  I could see it in their eyes.

I was apprehensive heading toward the second house.  Sam and I came in, and there was a group of
six people seated in a circle in the living room.  I put Sam down.  She
calmly began an investigation of the entire first floor (which would become her
new home).  She stood in front of the
closet door and one of my new housemates opened it for her to explore.  Sam even checked out the wheat grass growing
in the dining room.  When she finished,
she crawled up on a lap and purred.

We moved in the next day.

The owner was Starfire, my first teacher on a conscious
spiritual path.  She lured me into doing
kundalini yoga by bringing me ginger lemon tea and singing me awake.  I began to open and unravel the chains that
bound me to the past.  As I did so, I went
through periods when my whole body pulsed and pounded with the energy, and the
roar inside my head was deafening. 
Whenever I was most overwhelmed, Sam would come and curl up on my heart
and purr.  She was always nearby when I
needed her, loving me.

It was also in that house that we had a discussion about her
hunting.  She had a cat “window,”
created by the household handyman, Charles. 
One day I heard a funny scratching sound behind my desk.  Since my desk was a six foot solid oak door,
it was not easy to move.  With Charles’
help, I investigated and found a scared little mouse, whom I promptly released
outdoors.  After a couple more times of
this, I decided I must talk to her. 
“Sam,” I said “You cannot bring mice inside.” 

There were no more mice. 
The next thing was birds.  They
were dead, and deposited on my grandmother’s hand-braided rug.  After a time or two of this, I knew it was
time for another conversation with Sam. 
“Sam,” I said “I know you are bringing me a gift.  I know this is in your nature.  I appreciate the sentiment, and I love you
too.  However, I cannot eat these dead
birds.  And you have not been eating
them.  You don’t need to eat them since
I feed you well.  Please stop killing
birds.  I will love you just as much.  Thank you.”

There were no more birds – at least until the next house.

When we moved, I knew it was time.  What I had learned and opened up was enormous.  Yet I needed to become my own self, out of
the shadow of my teacher.  We moved this
time to a well-groomed brick house owned by a single mom.  Her daughter and a young man also lived
there.  Just once did Sam bring in a
bird.  It was still alive.  Sam and I had another talk.  This time I specified no other beings in the
house.  And please don’t kill or torture
any living thing.  So far as I am aware,
she never did kill or torture another animal or bird.

As I grew and learned, so did Sam.  We were living in a ground level apartment, and she had access to
the outside through the "cat window" that Charles had made for her
years before. 

We moved a number of times after that.  Sam began to show signs of flea allergies.  There were no easy solutions.  When I found her bleeding from sore spots I
decided I had to keep her indoors.  I
used one of the new integrated pest management flea bombs to clean the fleas
out of the apartment.  Sam sat in the
window and looked out longingly. 
Finally I saw her leap from the window of the first floor apartment –
down about twelve feet.  She was fine,
of course.  Yet I felt her need to be
able to go outside.

We finally moved out of the city to an 18 acre parcel.  Sam spent most of the first months outdoors
in the tall grass.  I let her out first
thing in the morning, and had to find her to bring her in when it was dark
again.  There were other cats in the
household.  When the one cat that was
older than Sam finally died in her sleep, Sam became the Queen of the house.  She relished the role. 

I was adopted by another kitten, Misty.  Misty tried very hard to make friends with
Sam.  Sam would have none of it, and
made clear that she was in
charge.  They co-existed quite
peacefully though, and almost became friends. Still, Sam no longer slept on my
bed.  A year later I was given a very
large dog, Shama.  I talked to Sam about
it first, and she said it would be alright. 
Sam had been my spirit companion, teaching and loving me, guiding me and
pushing me toward my destiny.  With Shama,
Sam felt replaced.  She had agreed to
this, yet had not realized it would be so painful to let go.

Sam started sleeping in the spare bedroom. 

When my housemate moved, there was a big shuffle.  I moved to a temporary trailer, and a month
later moved a mobile home onto the property for myself and my companions.  Sam, now eighteen years old with joints
deformed with arthritis, did not like it at all.  There were stairs to negotiate and she didn't have her own room
anymore.  Even the bedroom was up a few
steps.  I looked at her and knew she was
thinking about dying and was scared. 
For six months I did my best for her, knowing that she was unhappy, and
that I really could not give her what she wanted.

One day, my friend and landlord mentioned that Sam had been
coming back into the big house through the cat door and they had been pampering
her. Since Fran didn't mind, I didn't think much more about it.  Then Sam spent the night there – in
"her" bedroom.  The next
night, Sam was back in my home, and actually curled up in her old favorite spot
near my head. 

I woke up crying, having had a very unusual dream.  In the dream I was left behind, while my
beloved person moved with her dog and the other cat.  I caught up with her, and then she moved again and I could not
find her.  I felt despair, terror,
loneliness and anger.  I realized that
Sam had "sent" me a dream, crying out all her feelings.  I felt guilty and anguished.  I told her how sorry I was to have caused
her so much pain.  And that day I pampered her.

The following night, Sam went out the cat door.  This was amazing, since it was about a foot
off the ground, and Sam found it a challenge even to walk on level ground.  The first time, I brought her back
inside.  The second time I moved the
stool from in front of the cat door so she couldn't (I thought) get out.  Finally, the third time, I went outside to
talk to her and realized she would not stop. 
I said goodbye and went back inside to cry myself to sleep.  The next afternoon, I felt her leave her
body behind. 

Jackie Branagan

(360) 789-9599

Tuesday through Saturday

11 AM to 6:30 pm Pacific Time

info@dragonflyessence.com