~the story of my life in relation to the cats I’ve known to now.
I’ve loved cats, all animals really, since I was a wee one.
Kitties have a special place in my heart because I’ve lived with them more than any other animal. They are also both affectionate and independent much like me.
Whiskers, a butterscotch & white long-haired meow girl was our first kitty. She moved with us from my first home in Orange, California to our new home that backed up to undeveloped land in Woodland Hills. When she disappeared we believe she was eaten by the coyotes we heard howling and prowling in the night.
Our next cat was a white short-hair with large colored spots we called Patches. She came through to give us a litter of kittens and then moved along. We kept the one most like her, Sugar, a slender mostly white female with brown & gray markings on her back. We gave the others away.
Well, one white long-hair kitten had to be put down when mom accidentally backed into her coming to pick us up from school one afternoon. Snowball had been sleeping up on the back tire. Poor mom felt awful. My brother and I didn’t assuage her either. We both cried all the way from school to the veterinary office where they put her down. I still recall holding the kitten’s broken body on my lap in the rag mom grabbed when she realized what had happened. I was eight and my brother was six.
Sugar was with us through my parents divorce and came to live with my mom, brother and me when we moved to our Van Nuys condo.
She loved to play. I’d lock eyes with her behind the couch, bringing out her inner tiger.
“Ssssst, sssst,” I’d hiss. Quick as a flash she’d run up the back of the couch to pounce.
Mom was okay with her climbing up the back of the sofa, but she did not like it when Sugar took her antics up the 12-foot drapes to walk along the top bar and look out the window above the slider that opened out onto a small patio in front of our condo.
After mom remarried, Sugar was the reason one of my best friends had the key while we were away our first Christmas in the new house in Encino my freshman year of high school. This friend who was only supposed to come feed Sugar and water a few plants, opened up our house to big parties. Things got way out of her control.
For a week there were any number of kids partying, stealing things, sleeping in all our beds. The couch Sugar loved to pounce from got cigarette burns in it.
At least whenever a beer cap showed up of a brand my step dad didn’t drink, we could forever blame it on the party.
I was devastated in contradictory directions; part of me felt utterly betrayed that my best friend was so careless with our new house, while another part was super bummed I missed the parties.
Sugar died of old age when I was in college at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s.
I didn’t have another cat of my own until well into my eleven-year stint living in Italy and France after college, but I did have a highly memorable road trip with a friend’s cat during my sophomore year at Cal.
Sam, short for Samantha, was delivered to me on her human’s motorcycle for her ride down to LA with me and a couple of girlfriends. Her human assured me she was just like a dog and would get out of the car to do her business at rest areas and come back when called. I was very nervous about this since any cat I’d ever known would bolt and hide if let out of a car it didn’t know well with humans it had only just met. Yet true to her human’s word, Sam stretched and used the pet area at the one rest stop she got out at and came back to us when called. I was sad to learn that not long after that memorable trip back to LA, Sam met death under a car on the busy street she moved back to.
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My husband and I were the humans of choice for a black adolescent cat who followed us home on the streets of his small Sicilian home town when we were there for a visit for Christmas 2000.
We called her Sciascia after the Sicilian author Leonard Sciascia who lived much of his life in Paris.
The local veterinarian was unaccustomed to fixing cats but managed to operate before she came of age.
We then brought her home on our Lufthansa flight back to our apartment in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. The tranquilizers began to wear off before landing. Spunky, vocal Siciliana that she was, she began yowling and pierced the leather seat back with her claw through her cage.
Because it was the same pronunciation, out Parisienne neighbor thought her name was Chat Chat, Cat Cat in French.
When we moved back to Sicily the hot summer of 2001, Sciascia traveled with us in our filled-to-the-brim, no air-conditioning old Rover. She yowled at first, then got used to her bed atop a pile of our belongings on a towel in the back seat. She got to visit a nice seaside home on the Ligurian coast before arriving back in Ispica where she’d adopted us.
Though not as easy to let out to do her business as Sam, Sciascia also became quite the road trip savvy girl.
Sciascia moved with us to Modica and was with us through a year-and-a-half with our first baby boy.
Did she somehow know when she followed us that day that she’d get to live in Paris then end up retiring in style at the Villa where we’d had our wedding reception?
Despite her humble beginnings, she did not have to vie for food or attention with the 20 outdoor cats at the Villa. Sciascia received indoor privileges with their fancy Persians.
For two summers, she’d stayed the at the Villa only while we were in the US visiting my family. Once I was pregnant with our second boy, upon our return to fetch her, it was clear she preferred Villa life to apartment living with us, so the family of the Villa agreed to keep her.
There was a tumultuous eight-year gap between Sciascia and our next cat.
A few months before the younger boy’s second birthday in November of 2005, I insisted we move back to California. Our family went through major upheavals, then by 2010 we were somewhat settled again, though renting an apartment where pets were not welcome.
Writing memoir is both a radical act of self love and highly dangerous.
Painful emotions flooded in as I was looking back through photos to find exactly when La Miciola, Italian for “The Kitty,” joined our family. She was a beautiful rag doll I adopted from a work colleague my last month working in fundraising for graduate fellowships at UC Berkeley.
Looking through all the photos reminded me that just a decade ago I was trying so hard to prove myself in multiple arenas: parenting my young sons, putting back together a marriage torn apart by painful betrayal on both sides, leaving a budding career in fundraising for my alma mater to pursue my own business(es) as a conscious entrepreneur, keeping up my daily pre dawn kundalini yoga practice… Seeing the photos of myself in each of those arenas brought up so much pain.
I reached out to my beloved soul sister who I call my platonic wife to ask for some love as these feelings come to the surface to be felt, loved and released back to Life. We do this for each other.
I also spoke to my beloved who listened and encouraged me in his own way.
Later my beloved and I drove up to hike on a trail in the mountains and I was light as a gazelle trotting up up up the trail, speaking my joy to the trees and wildflowers.
Writing about my life is an act of surrender and trust. I ask that that no matter what arises from the past in my here new now, I will have the courage to meet it with lovingkindness and allow it to move through.
My prayer in composing my stories is that I may touch another’s heart with the reassurance that despite the pain that may have to dislodge from our nervous systems as we heal, only grace is reality. Each and every one of us is loved beyond our wildest imaginings exactly as we are right now. Nothing to earn or prove to receive the unconditional love and plenty of all that nourishes and supports all life.
Now back to La Miciola the beautiful brown, white and black rag doll cat whose name was Maude until we adopted her.
After she was dropped off by my colleague and his son, having been driven over to our humble apartment in a convertible with the top down in a box, she went into the back corner of the room where we placed her litter box and sat facing the wall. Anytime we approached or spoke to her she cowered there.
I’d never known a cat to go so quickly to a corner in a new place and not sniff around in the new surroundings. Our boys were away with my mom and her second husband so the house was quiet.
After a week of this we asked her previous human to please either take her back or find another home for her as she simply didn’t want to be with us.
The colleague who gave her to us went into hysterics saying he couldn’t take her back and if we didn’t keep her she’d be put down at the pound.
Slowly she expanded her territory from the corner of the back bedroom to between there and behind the curtains behind the fold out red Ikea sofa bed in the living area. Then one day, I went to coo at her and sit on the floor next to her hiding place to pet her and she purred.
My husband still wanted to let her go, saying she wasn’t a real cat. I felt she simply needed time and would be a sweet, calming member of the family. And, I left the final decision up to him. He could decide if she could stay or needed to go.
That evening when I returned home from work, there she was laying on the red sofa next to my husband purring away when he paused his work on his laptop to stroke her bunny fur soft white belly.
Our younger son had night terrors during which he was unconsolable. I learned the only thing that would soothe him was for me to lie with him and do my best to purr like a cat. Now we had a real purr girl to bring for him to pet and receive the calming vibration of a cat’s purr that is so healing for humans.
La Miciola became a sweet, beloved member of our family. Our older boy wrote for a school project that “my cat taught me it’s okay to lie around and do nothing.”
When I broke the heel bone of my right foot falling from a tree and was in a cast for eight weeks, La Miciola was so happy she finally had a lap to purr on most of the day. I recently researched the healing benefits of a cat’s purr and learned the frequency helps bones to heal!
Our only problem with La Miciola was her overeating and under exercising. She only liked kibble, refusing any meat or soft food, even tuna! I’d never had a cat refuse tuna! One time when we were away the two neighbors came and refilled her bowl multiple times a day and she became obese.
When we finally took her to the vet for a check-up, we found out she weighed 18 pounds and needed to lose six to be a healthy weight.
We tried everything to get her to play more, but she was quite the sweet sedentary lap cat.
It wasn’t until two-and-a-half-years after I’d left my husband that I finally was able to lease a home of my own with a new partner.
My sons were teens and my Wasband found our cat more of a nuisance than a companion.
Though my new partner was allergic to animals, he agreed to have La Miciola come live with us on the condition that I would vacuum regularly and she did not sleep with us in our king bed.
This partner also was key in getting me to transition La Miciola to an all raw food diet which took time, but several months in she was looking and acting far more like a cat than a lap doll.
She’d yowl if we took her all the way to the upper far back area of our 8000 square foot backyard, but she did get more comfortable venturing outside to watch birds & lizards when we were present.
She was a sweet companion for me the many nights I was alone while my partner was with his other sweeties. We were in an open relationship, but I had far less interest in having other lovers as he did.
Often I’d sleep in the queen bed I brought along to cuddle with her.
At the end of October 2017, we took in a friend of a friend with chronic fatigue who thought she’d be with us for three weeks. I gave up my queen bed and sleeping with La Miciola, but had another woman around.
La Miciola had begun eating less. Then I dreamed that she was with me in a car. I pulled over on a bridge. La Miciola leapt out of the car then off the bridge into the abyss.
By late November she was refusing food and my partner urged me to take her to the vet. When I did we learned she had a liver disease. We tried medication but she continued to decline and come next to the king bed and hide herself under the blankets we left for her to sleep on.
Now I was the adult who had to make the decision when it was time to let her go. Because we were having my younger son’s soccer team and families for a party the following mid-December Sunday, I decided it would be kinder to all of us to take her in to be put down before the house & yard were full of teen boys.
I still cry when I drive by the veterinary office where my younger son, partner and I went together to put her down.
The event was quiet. My younger boy was too upset to come in to the office. The first shot put her to sleep and the second stopped her heart painlessly. We brought her still, warm body back to the house to bury her in the earth near one of the persimmon trees.
I’m grateful to cry again now as I write this.
Though the relationship with that partner was full of pain, he was a good man to have alongside for La Miciola’s final months and passing. My younger boy and I cried a lot together before and after. My older boy spent time with her when he was at our house for a full family Thanksgiving. He chose not to come to see her off.
The friend who ended up staying with us for three months and was very challenging to have move on, was also lovely with La Miciola and a comfort during the grieving time.
We are complex beings.
I was still torn in many directions during that time and now ask forgiveness and forgive myself for attempting to take in and take on more than was sustainable.
Though I know in my bones death is but a doorway, I allow myself to feel and grieve.
I’m so grateful that at time of writing, coming upon four years later, I have grown immensely in the area of boundaries and understanding that my no is an act of far greater love than too many yeses.
I love and forgive myself for the pain I caused to myself and others to learn these life lessons.
* * *
Now finally to the inspiration for this piece! Ha, little did I realize when I first wanted to write about my most recent meow friend, I’d go back and include every significant cat from my past to get to the title story.
In my current relationship, my beloved Shaloma prefers to be the primary beast on his three-quarter acre veggie and fruit tree farm.
Because I travel often, I am ok with not having a pet of my own, and for Shaloma to be my resident animal. Smile.
When I’m here at his place, I am now blessed to have my own studio that I keep as a temple sanctuary.
This, as with all the projects we have going, both personal and together, took time to be ready for me to actually be in.
Shaloma is a self-proclaimed messy man so having my own space to keep as I desire makes it possible for us to flow harmoniously.
Since he and I got together and started our unlikely but oh so wildly good for each and both of us relationship described in detail in my full memoir in progress, he completed the studio so that I can have it as my own space. It was a carport, then an enclosed plant nursery, now a sweet 650 square foot studio with it’s own full bath!
This time looking back through photos from the past year to find out when my new kitty friend first came by elicited nothing but gratitude and joy!
Having a secure attachment with my partner is freeing up so much energy for creativity to flow.
By the fall of 2020 I was sleeping out in the studio.
I’d noticed plenty of cats wandering by the big windows that line the wall that look out onto our neighbor’s property, a little hill he built to park boats and trailers. When I called to them they scurried away, all feral.
Imagine my delight on October 28, 2020 when a beautiful meow boy with a white chest & belly and black & gray markings on his back & face came right down and in the sliding glass door when I called to him.
We hung out for several hours getting acquainted with lots of petting and purring. He curled up on my stuffed chair and took a long nap.
Then I didn’t see him again for months.
I had a story he was an indoor cat who had gotten out the day he came around and we became friends.
Because reality is often so much richer than fiction, I attempt to be true to events and dates rather than embellish.
My photo archive reveals after our initial visit I did not see him again until two days after my 51st birthday on February 20, 2021.
Again he came right in upon my invitation and stayed for cuddles, purrs, and photos of him in his beautiful thick winter coat.
Once again, I did not see him for several months.
On June 8, I planned a personal retreat/medicine ceremony at the Goddess Temple of Ashland and sacred Mikvah rebirthing pool.
I had prepared roses and my bags and was journaling with nervous energy the morning of my big day.
When I was ready but it was too soon to leave, who came by but my kitty friend!
He came in and was such a joyful reassuring presence before I set out for what would be a powerful day of releasing more of the “stuff” that gets in the way of me receiving all the love available to me.
After receiving yummy kitty love, I received amazing gifts from the land, the spirits of the medicine, and the couple on site who came to check on me, sing songs to me, smudge me and accompany me out to the Mikvah for my immersion into the seven spring fed waters.
On July 9, after participating in a powerful guided meditation to meet my high self, I decided to start up a daily early morning kundalini yoga practice. Though kundalini yoga is very different than the guided meditation, I knew my body, mind & spirit would benefit from resuming this practice that was an anchor for me for eight tumultuous years.
Though I loved the practice–yes even the cold outdoor shower I took in gratitude for the plenty of water flowing from our well in a time of extreme heat and drought!–rising up with my earlier morning alarm after years no alarm was challenging.
Imagine my delight when on the fifth day of my practice, I heard a sweet meow outside my open window exactly at the time I was to rise up.
For the first time I joyfully leapt out of bed, opened the sliding glass door to welcome my kitty and started calling him Sadhana.
Sadhana (Sanskrit: साधन) is a Sanskrit term used to refer to a daily spiritual practice. Sadhana represents a disciplined surrendering of the ego, in which the practitioner uses tools such as asana, pranayama, meditation and chanting on a daily basis.
Though he did not come daily to help me rise up, Sadhana did start coming more and more often through July until we left for a trip to the Oregon coast during which my beloved would meet my mother and her husband for the first time.
By then, Sadhana and I were having a full blown love affair.
We’d exchange loving sessions of purry petty rubbing up against each other for long sessions up on my bathroom vanity until he decided to settle in for a nap in the sink.
He started coming round and meowing to be let in or would be waiting for me outside Shaloma’s back door seeming to know our nightly schedule of dinner in his place and me heading out to my studio to sleep after our nightly episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
He even went around to Shaloma’s window-paned doors the morning we were leaving for the coast when he arose before dawn so he’d bring him to me.
We had begun talking about buying food and a flea treatment for him and taking full responsibility for his well-being.
Because I didn’t want him to be dependent on us right when we were leaving for six nights at the coast, we decided to wait until we got back to take action.
I missed him when we arrived at the beautiful home my mom and her husband rented for us.
Sweet mom even said I could have brought him along since the house was pet-friendly, but I didn’t want to be that presumptuous.
So I practiced feeling the big love he elicited and entrusting him to Life itself as I do my sons and all beings I love wildly but cannot control or know what is best for them.
Our time with my mom and her husband and their close family friends and kids was wonderful despite everyone but Shaloma and I leaving with covid.
The smoke in the Rogue Valley in southern Oregon was worse and worse as were cases of covid.
We returned home to extremely smoky skies but no signs of illness.
Sadhana came to visit the morning after our return. We had a joyful reunion as always.
He went out and came around shortly after to be let back in.
I was on the phone with a dear friend of mine from the SF Bay Area who is also a cat mom.
Sadhana seemed annoyed not to have my full attention though I was singing his praises to my friend and saying how happy I was to see him.
I sent our reunion selfie to Shaloma’s daughter and a couple other friends.
We continued to monitor ourselves for signs of covid but all seemed well except for smoke.
Sadhana did not return after that first morning.
We went for covid tests and were negative.
I planned a trip to the bay area to see my younger son who returned from his summer in Sicily where he was born.
I continued my daily yoga practice but got up later and later and left out the cold outdoor shower as the morning temperatures dropped and smoke persisted.
Still no kitty.
I disciplined my mind away from worry by loving my worried mind.
I gave Sadhana and my sons back to Life, thanking life for each moment of joy we had spent together.
I imagined him traveling through other dimensions of time & space as an Astral Cat.
After my trip to the bay, I stopped my yoga practice at day 50 because the kriya was hurting my right leg.
This morning, September 1, I woke up disgruntled by another smoky day and visualized Sadhana well-loved and cared for cuddled up in a close-by home in the neighborhood.
Almost immediately after having that thought, who did I see walking along the log atop the little hill outside my studio windows, but Mr Sadhana Meow!
I leapt up to open the slider and down he came straight in as if two weeks hadn’t passed since he’d last come in for a visit.
I cried with loving joy, sitting cross-legged on my rug with him on me like a goat then settling in for cuddles snuggled into my left leg on my lap.
Shaloma even let him explore his house for the first time. After several exploratory rounds in the man’s quarters, I let him out his front door. He had disappeared by the time I went back around calling for him.
I imagined he slipped between the veils again, walking on the Astral far away from our smoky skies.
Since that joyful reunion, Mr Sadhana kitty comes and goes with more fluidity again.
On smoky Saturday 9.4.21 I was called into my deepest dive yet with my mushroom medicine helpers.
I rose up early to pick flowers for my temple, needing an N95 mask to protect me from the hazardous air outside.
I ate 8.08g by 8:26 am (This is a very large amount of these sacred helpers. Do not try this without consulting with a trusted medicine-carrier. I am sharing as personal experience not a recommendation), then spent most of the eight hours of my meditation cuddled up in one of several cozy nests in my temple space observing the continuity of all life from a watery cathedral of sacred geometry, listening to the playlist I created for this day.
Despite being the largest quantity of medicine I have ever ingested, the meditation was quite gentle. No big emotional waves or lengthy bouts of physical discomfort. Primarily a confirmation of the integration of all the work I’ve done to allow love and only love to have it’s full way with me.
Sadhana kitty came in during the eighth hour. With my enhanced close-up vision, the flea that appeared near his third eye took on beastly proportions!
After the flea encounter I decided to post about her on NextDoor to see if I might locate his other human and get permission to treat him for fleas.
I believed I’d found his human and knew his given name, but at the time I’d wrongly though Sadhana was female, not a neutered male.
What’s more, my man is going out of his way to welcome him too!
This morning before greeting me with our usual long, luscious full body hug, Shaloma went out on the deck to be sure his gruff morning voice greeting hadn’t scared Sadhana who had walked around the deck with me.
Blessed be cross-species friendships throughout all dimensions of time and space!
After continued inquiries, we finally learned not only that Sadhana is a Mr Meow, but also that he is fed and given regular flea treatments by a couple on the farm next door.
I still like to imagine him walking the Astral and traveling between the worlds as he does between our farms.
