Happy Caturday: orange cats acting as security guards.

I could blame the weather for stealing some of my precious minutes away everyday. I was persuaded by the sunny sky to sit on the veranda in the morning while enjoying my morning tea or coffee. That’s when an hour or two slipped quietly away, so the weather had tricked me into exchanging my time for sunshine and cosmic energy in the morning. That’s why my Caturday posts often appeared on a cosmic timeline instead of earthly one. Luckily, my orange cats haven’t learned to do intergalactic hopping yet, otherwise they would be tempted to visit strange looking cats on other planets.

Recently, orange cats have decided to work part-time as security guards at the farmhouse. In the evening, the big brother cat would climb onto the metal gate and find a nice spot on the wall to guard the entrance to the house. Then, the sister cat, Kwan, would gingerly follow her brother onto the wall.

I couldn’t believe that they had learned to climb the metal gate with their claws and that they could walk on top of the gate. They weren’t afraid of falling off the narrow path at all. These cats had such good balance and could stay calm even when I used the remote control to move the gate. They just stood still and waited for the gate to stop moving; smart-fat cats! Somehow these cats were grinning on the wall as if they felt the three stray dogs could no longer get close to them. They quietly sat there observing movements of passerby, other moving animals along the dirt road and running dogs along the river front.

This posture of having two cats sitting on the wall by the gate reminded me of some moments in past life. There were soldiers staying in the encampment on the wall of the old city; they had to be watchful for movements of enemies and spying soldiers in the night. I was quite convinced that these two cats used to be my soldiers or security guards in my past life almost three hundred years ago. Some soldiers became very close to me and we became good friends; I was always very grateful to their dedication and loyalty. Perhaps these two used to be my favourite guards whom I kept by my side during the battle to regain our independence.

Fortunately, orange cats couldn’t have past life regression to gain the knowledge of their past lives. They weren’t adept in meditation either, so they couldn’t acquire any psychic ability to know about the past and future events. Their past habits and instinct probably told them to sit on high places for safety in order to guard the house. In the past several soldiers would be taking their turns along the city wall during the night and by all the gates of palaces and military leaders’ quarters. This kind of setting seemed very familiar to me and I felt at home with security guards on the wall.

Nature is strange and puzzling at times, especially when physical and spiritual worlds come to meet and raise some mysterious psychic memories and long forgotten experiences. Life seems to have certain hidden purposes or destiny of our life has already been written in advance. So, I often wondered who these cats were and what they looked like in that particular past life. A friendly monk explained to me that people who were very close to each other would often come back to be together in other life time. Old habits died hard; some habitual traits would be already imprinted in our subconscious.

There was a funny story told during ancient time and got recorded in scripture. A learned monk became enlightened and known as an ‘Arahat’. The enlightenment monk behaved very odd and didn’t walk calmly as would be of an Arahat. So, some junior monks reprimanded this senior monk and reported the shameful behaviour to the Lord Buddha. The Buddha told these monks that this Arahat used to be a monkey in his past life. Whenever he saw a puddle of water, the natural reaction of this monkey was to jump over the puddle. That’s why the Arahat kept jumping over water puddles instead of calmly walking around these puddles. His robe flew in all directions making people laughing at this funny monk.

The Buddha told the junior monks that this Arahat didn’t act out of preconceived ideas or intention; but he acted out of emptiness (without the ‘I’ or ego). So, he didn’t do anything wrong against the monks’ rules. In Zen Buddhism they would often talk about ‘doing something’ without actually doing it! This kept me puzzled and confused fused for several years until I was into deep meditation later.

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So, somehow I feel very grateful to my orange cats for being with me and looking after the house for me. It’s my duty to look after them and repay their loving friendships and loyalty. I knew they trusted me without questions; I could pick them up and drag them around without any protest. They trusted that I would never harm or hurt them. So, it was very easy giving them medicine and a syringe of liquid. Life would have been much less interesting and lacking some life force if orange cats never appeared at my house. Fate or destiny has brought us together once again. I hope that I would be able to provide them food, good health and happiness for eternity.

Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.

Stay strong and cheerful.