But Wait! There's More

I put some more sardines out for the kitten this evening, in a fit of weakness. I looked outside but couldn't see it anywhere. Figured it must have gone back home. Sat down to watch a movie, and then got up to have a quick look outside. And there is kitteh, chowing down on sardines.

But wait. There's more. From under the house comes another kitteh. And another. There are three kittehs under my house. I really need to go talk to the people down the road. Check out what their kittens look like. See if maybe these are their cats who are traipsing down to the take-away joint a few doors down, or if I've got myself a couple more cats than I bargained for.

Edit: an hour and a half later. It is quite mesmerising watching scared-of-you pusses eating food. They battle between being scared of you and being unable to resist the smell of sardines. I sat almost motionless in the doorway for about half an hour. After a while I began to be able to distinguish between the three of them. Until the fourth one came along. The fourth one is more black than the others, less tabby markings. It must take after it's mum, who I saw at the very end. She came walking around the corner and bolted even faster than her kittens when she saw me. Looks a bit like she hasn't eaten for a while, too. I suppose the rest of the sardines are going to have to go out there, aren't they?

I don't think these cats live down the road somehow. I think maybe they live here. Aaaggh! Is this some kind of cosmic joke? I talk about my dislike for cats, then begin to consider getting one, and suddenly I attract an entire family under my house (which is an especially good house to live under, having as it does so many different spots for entry). I sat and watched them, how sweet they are. I can hear them banging around under the house as I type. I suppose I shall have to go door-knocking over the next few days, see if I can find out whose they belong to. I must confess, my mind began wandering while I watched these pusses. Do vets take discounts for group desexing? :)

As I sat and observed these kittens, in that wound-down way that comes with sitting and watching and doing not much else, I thought that if I kept watching them I would come to know them. That simply sitting and observing, without the distraction of beeping electronic things, draws you deeper into something or someone, into its itsness. Knowing. In the same sort of way I know my little wooden chair so much better now after I sat and drew it for an hour a week ago. Got so involved in it it almost disappeared. The deep knowing that comes, I think romantically, from living quieter, simpler, contemplating. The kind of knowing that astonishes you at times with the realisation that you have forgotten to see again the rare beauty that infuses everything.

This beauty is sadly so often exempted from our eyes simply because of the pace we are forced to live. I can feel it when I slip back into it, like slipping into something most comfortable of all, and I wonder how I ever manage to slip out of this relaxed alertness without realising it. It's the way I felt when I used to do yoga. It's the way I feel when I mould clay and, more recently, when I draw things. And it is so terribly easy to slip out of it that it bewilders me.

Nature is what draws me back in, slows me down, gives me peace. Enables me to gaze at the objects of my focus with the gazing it requires, lest I gaze too quickly and begin treating that object abominably before I even realise it ~ dismissively, like an enemy, as something not-of-God.

You are "within all things but not enclosed; outside all things, but not excluded; above all things, but not aloof; below all things, but not debased" (Bonaventure)