It’s Time for Another Post about Cats

I may be wrong, but the cat may just be the creature to get us through these times. Don’t misunderstand me, I love dogs. But dogs are too much like us—too focused on approval and affection, too emotionally vulnerable. They rejoice (we’re going for a walk!). They worry (you’re going out without me?). They mourn along with us (you seem sad, so I’m sad too). Cats, on the other hand, are more self-contained, and they possess in spades the trait that we all aspire to: equanimity.

Two of us in my little meditation group have cats, and when we meet in a cat-enhanced house, the cat always joins in the sit. In his funny and brilliant Guide to Meditation, the poet known as Sparrow says that cats are drawn to meditators because “they sense it’s a person aspiring to be catlike.[…] Meditation,” he writes, “is the closest humans come to purring.” I wouldn’t describe my experience while I meditate as purring, exactly, but I do try to pay attention to my inner cat.

People who don’t like cats say that cats are aloof, but I disagree. There is a difference between aloofness and equanimity. Aloofness implies coolness and separation between self and others, whereas equanimity is a quality of calm openness and receptivity that allows space for compassion.

Still, despite the mystique about cats and equanimity, my own cat, Telemann, loses his equanimity on a daily basis. He loses it before breakfast and dinner, when in agonies of starvation he lets out loud, nasal meows that he thinks sound pitiful. He loses it after meals, when for some reason he flies through the house yowling like a soul in torment (the vet says he’s letting out excess energy). And he loses it every single time my husband sneezes. But the rest of the time, when he’s not sleeping, he sits around Buddha-like, blinking slowly, and looking utterly at peace with the universe and with himself. If I could be at peace with myself and the universe except at mealtimes and when my husband sneezes, I would be thrilled.

Since I don’t have a real live guru with shaved head and saffron robes, I have decided to ignore Telemann’s lapses and consider him a guru of sorts—a very assertive guru, and often an intrusive one. This is most evident at night, when I’m in the habit of reading in bed before going to sleep. Telemann, however, thinks that this is the perfect time to meditate, so he waits until I’m settled on my pillows, book in hand. He enters the room, announcing his arrival with a melodious trill, and jumps on the bed.

I know what’s coming, so I grasp the book firmly and keep it as close to my face as my eyes can bear. But no matter how narrow the space between the page and my face, Telemann squeezes in there and delivers his opening salvo: a firm smack on the nose with his broad, he-cat head. Then he reclines on my upper chest, his paws around my neck, his face so close I can feel his breath on my upper lip.

I try to adjust the position of the book so I can keep reading, but this is difficult with an eleven pound incubus taking his ease on my thorax. Soon the purring begins, low and staccato. And then he gazes into my eyes. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a nonhuman creature looking unblinkingly into your eyes for minutes on end. It is beyond bizarre, almost mystical. As I stare into those green-gold spheres, my breathing slows in rhythm with his purrs, the book flops onto the duvet, and I feel like I’m falling headlong into those otherworldly pupils. And then, eureka! I notice that I am not thinking. Nor am I worrying, or planning for an uncertain future, or wringing my hands about the fate of humanity in this vale of tears.

Eventually I put the book away and turn out the light. My guru settles in the crook of my elbow, and we both sleep quietly through the night.