for me, at 76, every single word you wrote is something i spend time thinking and doing (Boswell = cats Tilly and Buddy). i even talk houseflies into flying back out an open, screenless window in my kitchen. Or wave them thru it like i'm playing a game.
time on my hands, joy and sadness. touching lives, as many as i encounter, no matter how 'small'(?)/different, grows more and more a blessing and an enlightenment.
(Sometimes I find a finch that bounced off that same window, or the french doors, and put the body safe from the cats, and sorta wait and watch. Some awake and fly away. I swear it.)
Cats must also make this kind of thing come to mind a bit because they do mostly like killing things and it seems like appreciating that part of them must be part of loving cats.… Though I also have the impression that the moment you sort of want your cat to start killing things (mice infestation) is the exact moment they usually decide to adopt principles of non-violence.
One of my parents' dogs kills a lot of rodents and one used to but is now too old. Boswell on the other hand caught a mouse once and then dropped it partly because I made him and partly because he had no idea what he was supposed to do now that he had it.
I don't appreciate that about cats, but lately think (imagine that) maybe cats have a greater sensitivity/relationship to(?) pain and pleasure, maybe attributed to them being committed killers, expressed in their "sultry" body movements and reactions. (And they don't seem to 'show' being in pain very well to humans.) I dunno. Buddy, the old alleycat seems to me obviously a retired serial killer. Retired by arthritis. My thing with 12-year-old Tilly is that several times a day she wants me to cradle her in my arms like a baby, and she just goes limp for about 15 minutes.
for me, at 76, every single word you wrote is something i spend time thinking and doing (Boswell = cats Tilly and Buddy). i even talk houseflies into flying back out an open, screenless window in my kitchen. Or wave them thru it like i'm playing a game.
time on my hands, joy and sadness. touching lives, as many as i encounter, no matter how 'small'(?)/different, grows more and more a blessing and an enlightenment.
(Sometimes I find a finch that bounced off that same window, or the french doors, and put the body safe from the cats, and sorta wait and watch. Some awake and fly away. I swear it.)
Cats must also make this kind of thing come to mind a bit because they do mostly like killing things and it seems like appreciating that part of them must be part of loving cats.… Though I also have the impression that the moment you sort of want your cat to start killing things (mice infestation) is the exact moment they usually decide to adopt principles of non-violence.
One of my parents' dogs kills a lot of rodents and one used to but is now too old. Boswell on the other hand caught a mouse once and then dropped it partly because I made him and partly because he had no idea what he was supposed to do now that he had it.
I don't appreciate that about cats, but lately think (imagine that) maybe cats have a greater sensitivity/relationship to(?) pain and pleasure, maybe attributed to them being committed killers, expressed in their "sultry" body movements and reactions. (And they don't seem to 'show' being in pain very well to humans.) I dunno. Buddy, the old alleycat seems to me obviously a retired serial killer. Retired by arthritis. My thing with 12-year-old Tilly is that several times a day she wants me to cradle her in my arms like a baby, and she just goes limp for about 15 minutes.