Several weeks
ago I posted a blog about taking in a stray cat. She has become a fine shamanic medicine teacher for me—although the lessons haven’t been easy on my ego. I think we humans have a tendency to think we
know best about almost everything concerning Nature and her creatures. At least I imagined that the sturdy nest box I
built and fitted with an insulated pad was just right for safety and
comfort. The Mama cat seemed to tolerate
being inside and I was so pleased with my being in charge of her family. And then our house sitter brought her
friendly but large dog inside one cold night and Mom and the kids promptly
decamped to the wilderness.
I was rough with
anxiety for their safety. What of the
wolves? And owls? And everything else large and carnivorous lurking just
outside the fence? When we returned I followed her after a morning food visit,
and came upon a pile of kittens in a hollow log. And isn’t a hollow log the
perfect wild nest with its soft, springy floor, rain-shedding cedar overhang,
and entrance ramp of powdery wood? But
again I meddled, imagining that I could add a windbreak, and move her food
conveniently close. And again she moved
her babies.
This time I was
rough with myself: full of self-criticism at my inability to get it. The only thing this wonderfully competent,
mostly wild mother needed from me was trust. I vowed not to go and look for her
new location—and managed a whole day of not knowing. But then I was returning to the hollow log to
move the remains of my interference, and up popped a Mama cat head. She had only moved the kittens to a ground
level room because presumably they were a few days too big to fit inside the
log which had now become a playpen. So
there I was, stymied again. None of this
was about me. This feline spirit of
place was just going about her day, making decisions for her family, full of
the rightness of her instinctual knowing.
This journey has
become another kind of oracle reading for me.
Now I just go watch the kittens play in the log while Losha and I sit in
companionable silence. And by the way, I’m learning to not bring anything to
fix her beautiful wilderness nursery.
