For a woman, a life lesson from two cats

Some of us are open to the possibility of learning life lessons from observing and interacting with our cats. In this instance, a lady in America moved to a new home in the country. She was quite a mild-mannered person who, perhaps, lacked a bit of confidence. She felt that she had been too subservient to assertive male cohabitees throughout her life. By “cohabitee” I mean a live-in boyfriend or husband. This subservience of giving way may have niggled her a bit but it was not in her nature to be assertive.

Soon after moving in to her new home, which I can visualise as being quite large and very pleasant, a female cat wandered into her life. It was the usual gradual process of a stray cat coming up to the house and eventually being fed. Then your new cat friend comes into the home and…voilà you have a cat companion. She named her charming new companion, “Alpha”. This was her first cat at her new home. Over time she added plenty of other animals.

Times were good. Then a male cat turned up. He was one of those alpha-type cats that have the confidence to march into a strange home go straight to the kitchen where the feeding bowls are and start eating. If someone turns up they just defend their “right” to be there.

And so it happened that this newcomer, whom she named “Mac” routinely ate Alpha’s food. What annoyed this lady was that Alpha cowered away in a corner and let him do as he pleased within her newly established cat territory.

It grated on her psyche. Subconsciously, she saw herself in her much loved female cat companion. She became annoyed and shouted at Mac to go, scram, get out of the house. This was her visceral, gut reaction and it come from her own weakness.

Then fairly soon afterwards a neighbour turned up asking for help. Her cat was ill and she didn’t know what to do. The cat was Mac and he was gravely ill. The lady falsely connected her shouting at him to Mac’s illness and this brought back sore memories of the last moments of her mother’s life when she had had an argument with her mother and those were the last words she had spoken to her before her mother died.

Alpha and Mac were tweaking the sore spots in her brain and it hurt. She cried bitterly when Mac died despite her untiring efforts to save him.

After Mac’s burial, she sat at home mournfully. Throughout the forthcoming days she was comforted by Alphas close presence. Alpha looked at her and jumped on her lap and in doing so calmed her and gently eased away the unhappiness she felt.

The lady looked at Alpha and said, “Both you and Mac have taught me a deep spiritual lesson. I will never direct anger at any creature, human or otherwise again. It is destructive and it can injure. Also, you have taught me to let others always choose their own actions and responses.”

Over the following days, Alpha’s presence gradually healed her tormented mind. Alpha’s acceptance of her reminded her that she was judging herself too harshly. She forgave herself for shouting at Mac.

She also learned from these cats that she must always be true to herself and her feelings. If that meant being more assertive with her human companion then so be it.


Have you learnt something about life from your cat or cats? For my part, my cats remind me to live in the present, as cats do. Don’t look back too much or forward with anxiety. Just live in the moment and make it as good as you can and don’t be too dominant with women…. 😉

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23 thoughts on “For a woman, a life lesson from two cats”

  1. this story is so true. I remember when i first starting having major depression my Tammy really helped me live though those first days. She was a female Alpha cat and she interacted with me all the time to remind me to feed her and it helped so much and i learn’ t alot. I can only handle a few friends at much only becomes overwhelming, my cats are my best friends and family.

    Reply
      • This is a great quote Michael – I am going to remember it.

        …there is no (c) becasuse if you followed (a) correctly you’d be gone in time to avoid anything further than (b) – lol 🙂

        Reply
          • For me it is the same and the reason is that you can only know so many people and it be satisfying. Otherwise you spread yourself thin. In London when I was younger I had too many friends. Now I prefer quality time with one, maybe two occasionally, people. It goes further. It’s more meaningful – for me anyway.

            Reply
  2. Hi Michael I see that POC doesn’t permit the uploading of videos so I will have to post it to you by E-mail. The difficulty will be to take an interesting one showing cats inter-reacting or doing something interesting. In the meantime I can send you an older video of two of my rescues Balkar and Feliz playing together and obviously very happy. The outstanding thing is to see that Balkar a nearly fully-grown male does not harm this small kitten in any way, whereas it is common knowledge that mature males can kill unrelated kittens. Perhaps that applies only to newborns but Feliz arrived when she was barely 6 weeks old and Balkar accepted her as family right away.

    Reply
    • Great. I agree that it is difficult to catch good moments. It can actually be almost impossible! But just day to day scenes are OK and you may get lucky in catching something that is a bit more interesting.

      Reply

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