Miguel gently laughed at me when I suggested that the cats here needed to be fixed. In his 65 plus years, he had seen many people like me bringing their city ideas out to the farm. There was no discussion, no explanation of why no, Kari, there won’t be any cats traveling to the vet for surgery. There was just time. Time gave me the experience of observing cats in the wild to learn about the creatures they are meant to be. That’s what my heart has always longed for, its part of what makes me Kari. I want to see the original. Show me the way things are without any human influence. I guess that’s part of what called me here to this place, this farm. That’s how I feel about how I came to live here on this piece of earth. I was called. And I listened. Miguel’s mother lived here for over 30 years and she transitioned away from her physical body just a few months prior to my first visit. She found me and guided me here as part of the community that would continue her sanctuary work. Jane could also see that this place would heal me and that I was worth saving. So was her son, he was worth saving and she knew the two of us would save each other, support each other’s crazy ideas and work out the pain that was stifling our individual creativity and brilliance.
Cats were one of the first undoings I experienced here. There would be many along the way, with many more still to come, but the gentle, loving Universe began deconstructing me with cats. It seems obvious now, as I sit here having survived many of the undoings. From my beginning, cats have been a part of the life that needed to be undone. There are cats in my baby pictures, cats in my first apartment away from home. Cats have always been in my life and my life has always been in a town, deeply entrenched in human culture, very far from the original, the way things are without any human influence. That’s why I was never fully human before I came here, I wasn’t living my bliss yet. Humans need to live their bliss, which means they need to listen to their own unique heart, discover their unusual, specific bliss, and then follow it. That’s the simplest explanation of how I came to live in this wild place. Layers of socialization were peeled away until I began to hear my true heart louder than all the noise that had held my attention for so long. Hearing my true heart felt like truth and honesty and I began to listen. Listening felt like swimming in the ocean, freedom and vastness of space and wild. Listening to my true heart led me here to this wild place where more and more layers would be peeled away, revealing clear, beautiful music that was as new to me as it was ancient and familiar. This place began my undoing or re-birth, my heart revealing, with cats.
Wild cats. That’s what was happening. Just like everything else here, the trees and plants, the swamp and all its frogs, birds, and turtles, the night air with all the creatures calling, the wild, original earth. Wild, original earth and her wild cats. In this place, cats hunt. A young girl struggling with the wild cat project recently asked me if there was enough prey to support all the cats that had been dumped off. Yes, dear friend, yes. Abundance is mother’s way and this piece of earth is allowed to function in mother’s natural way so Yes, she supplies abundant frogs, crickets, cicadas, baby snakes, birds, toads, and anything a kitty would want to eat. Observing cats in this wild environment provided me with the confidence to speak to her clearly, to answer her thoughtful questions, and to radiate the truth that calmed her own experience of being undone. That’s what happens to people sometimes when they come to visit. A piece of them gets undone and they either fight or relax and allow a layer to be peeled away, revealing their humanness, opening up a space for their unique light to shine just a bit more brilliantly than it could before coming here.
Doula kitty arrived early on in my time here. Black and white short hair, sweetest cat you’d ever find, she appeared one day and stayed five years. Ivy the dog had just left her physical form when Doula kitty joined our strange little family. In the mornings she walked with us down the lane to get the cows just like Ivy had always done. There were already a few cats here and Doula fit in nicely, drinking milk in the mornings at the kitty pan in the milk house. Her life was a gift, a clear demonstration of how cats can exist and thrive on planet earth. Doula was friendly and I spent hours sitting on the front porch holding her and petting her while her motor purred lusciously in my ear. She prepared me to be a mother as I intently observed her mama behavior with the kittens she brought forth every year. Doula eagerly drank milk from the cows and never received any food from the humans here. I always just assumed she had come here from the herd of black and white cats that lived among the houses near the church about a mile and a half away. Seemed things got a little crowded down there and we had been blessed by this wonderful creature choosing to share space with us, drink milk, hunt, and provide us with kittens. There had never been store bought cat food available here but Doula came here and stayed. She was a wild cat.
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