My cat is missing.
Nov. 25th, 2002 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaOur cat Marco Polo has been missing since Saturday night. He has always fought to "escape" from the safety, warmth, and constantly available food of the house. Part of me can't blame him; the world is a bigger place and there is a kind of cruelty in caging an animal in warmth and safety. Part of me though wants to envelop him and protect him, and it seems like such a waste for him to have simply vanished now, after five years of companionship and the large role that he has played in our lives during that time.
He was among a litter of cats that we fostered for the Humane Society, so he wouldn't have even had those five years if were not for our willingness to take him and littermates in, and the sheer luck that they and not another litter were given to us.
Marco Polo was always resisting confinement, which was how he earned his name. He is an unusually smart cat who has an affinity for joining in whenever someone in the house is doing magick or meditating. Dee played a game with him where she would sing to the sun and he would accompany her with his meows. The cat was an esotericist, if ever there was such a thing. Like all good esotericists, he was never satisfied with the easy way.
His disappearance has me wondering about happiness. So much happiness depends on our relationships with other people and other living things -- yet these relationships always end, and so the implicit promise of "ongoingness" in a relationship is a lie. This is why the Buddha said "existence is sorrow" and why so many mystical traditions teach that the way to be liberated from the cycle of sorrow is to avoid attachment. But I wonder, if detachment is really worth it. Life is short, but perhaps life should be happy to the extent it is possible.
He was among a litter of cats that we fostered for the Humane Society, so he wouldn't have even had those five years if were not for our willingness to take him and littermates in, and the sheer luck that they and not another litter were given to us.
Marco Polo was always resisting confinement, which was how he earned his name. He is an unusually smart cat who has an affinity for joining in whenever someone in the house is doing magick or meditating. Dee played a game with him where she would sing to the sun and he would accompany her with his meows. The cat was an esotericist, if ever there was such a thing. Like all good esotericists, he was never satisfied with the easy way.
His disappearance has me wondering about happiness. So much happiness depends on our relationships with other people and other living things -- yet these relationships always end, and so the implicit promise of "ongoingness" in a relationship is a lie. This is why the Buddha said "existence is sorrow" and why so many mystical traditions teach that the way to be liberated from the cycle of sorrow is to avoid attachment. But I wonder, if detachment is really worth it. Life is short, but perhaps life should be happy to the extent it is possible.
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Date: 2002-11-25 08:18 am (UTC)I am all for living life to the fullest and am not trying to find a place of detachment. But I do try to be responsible for my own reactions to things. I can't control what happens around me, only how I h andle them. I try to dwell on the good and accept and release the bad.
That said, I hope Marco Polo comes home or is otherwise safe and sound. *hugs* I have lost one cat this year and am preparing to let my other one leave my life. It isn't an easy thin g.mi