Home » Mind & Soul » Care of the Soul » The Thanksgiving Cat

The Thanksgiving Cat

© Thomas James Martin

A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats. ~Mason Cooley, US Aphorist

As I write this weekly essay for Suite101, I am watching our male, black cat, Ram, all curled up in a ball high up on the arm of the sofa. (Tap, tap, tap. . sounds of typing on keyboard), trying to write something profound about Thanksgiving, reaching inward, trying to go into the deep recesses of the soul, searching out original concepts, well-wrought phrases.

Tap. . .tap. . .how can he sleep so peacefully with such total relaxation. . .tap...tap. . .and yet wake up, stretch and destroy another vase so quickly, I muse, for the thousandth time. Tap. . tap. . .How did we wind up with this cat who is so adoringly beautiful and loving and so maddeningly independent and stubborn.

Tap. . .Oh let's just write an article about "that darn cat." He 's probably controlling me anyway in his catty dreams. Besides, he's convinced that if he's not God, he is at least the emissary of godhead on the planet.

I actually wanted another dog (having had many cats in the past), and Joyce did not want another animal at all, much less a cat. Being blessed and cursed with a world-class sniffer, she hates litter boxes and abhors feline aromas.

Then our friend, Patty, called from western North Carolina. Seems she had been driving back from Asheville to her home high in the Great Smokies when she saw a tiny black blur out of the corner of her eye playing in the median of the freeway. She pulled off the road and walking back along the highway, discovered, as she suspected, a black kitten playing merrily with twigs and shrubs as cars and tractor trailers swept by at 65 or 70 miles an hour.

To make a long story short, she rescued the cat, checked with animal shelters to try to locate the kitten's family. Unable to find its family and having a full household of adult cats and dogs herself and with a husband threatening divorce if she took in any more creatures, she called us.

Tap. . .tap. . .Why us?

"You only have a dog," she told us. And she added so very sweetly, "I know that you guys will give him a good home. Besides, you're such good people," she added in what I now realize was a shameless attempt to get us to adopt the rescued kitten and soothe her feline-threatened marriage.

The copyright of the article The Thanksgiving Cat in Care of the Soul is owned by . Permission to republish The Thanksgiving Cat in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.