There are so many reasons why we never had animals when I was growing up: I'm deathly allergic to almost every organic thing in Creation, especially cats, my mother had a panoply of mental dis-eases and no coping mechanism for life in general, and my father was from a corn, dairy and pig farm in Iowa, so the only time animals came INSIDE was after they were OUTside and then slaughtered and brought INside for dinner, to name a few.
Five years ago today, after many decades of miraculously surviving being HIV+, one of my husband's best friends passed away. His precious little kitty was left to my husband in his will along with detailed instructions on how Tigger should be regarded, as a precious and special gift from God. I felt so sorry for the poor fella because he had been alone in the apartment for weeks during his Daddy's last hospitalization, so after we watched and helped his Daddy pass on, we jumped in a cab to collect Tigger and bring him to his new home.
My husband was raised with all kinds of animals all his life (which probably explains how he deals with me so easily har har), they always had a dog and a cat, so this was all second nature to him. My learning curve was steep, but one thing I did quickly come to learn was that my mother had neither the capacity nor the gift to understand or raise children. Isn't that a strange connection?Tigger was nervous his first week here. He hid under the bed for a couple of days, but he was ultimately overjoyed by the increase in real estate: he upgraded from a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side with three rooms and two windows to our second-floor railroad in Queens with half-a-football-field's running space and 22 windows (and don't get me started on my husband insisting on rods and sheers for each one of those 22 windows) so he was TAH-RAN-TAH-RAHing with the cat crazies in no time.
Slowly, diligently Tigger taught me about God. Most importantly, Tigger taught me about how much God is delighted by me, something I never could have imagined had Tigger not come to live with us. Tigger taught me about God's care and concern for us, but also, God's absolute delight with our very existence.
The first time I realised the depth of God's unconditional love and care for us was about two weeks in. Tigger is the MASTER of knowing your EXACT footpath so that he can hurl a hairball at the PRECISE point on the rug where the ball of your foot is certain to come down upon it while you're tippie-tippie-toe walking in the dark on your way to take a slash in the middle of the night. The first time it happened I started to get really mad and I flicked on the light to chastise him, but I looked straight in to his face which looked back at me with the innocence of the angels, like, "Oh, whew, you found it! See? I put it right where you wouldn't miss it..." and he came up and rubbed himself against me in thanks for cleaning it up. My heart melted.
Then we bought these BEEYOOTEEFUL table flowers and Tigger, who NEVER climbs on the furniture, jumped straight up on to the table, inhaled them like it was a bouquet brought especially home for him, and proceeded to eat the leaves off them. In a former life, I would have exploded and thrown the cat against the wall, and screamed. Thing is, I knew Tigger by then. He's picky about food and he knows better than to jump up on the table. Whenever he screams because we're eating and he's not, I let him smell what we're eating and he's repelled or uninterested and is immediately calmed. But in this one kind of flower there's something about the greens in the leaves which he knows helps with his digestion, so he just starts chomping away and then will jump down, tip around, and regurgitate it a bit later. It's his own little carton of Activia ;-)
So, as I was pondering his anniversary with us and down on my hands and knees before work I thought, you know, Tigger has this litter box which needs to be cleaned each morning. Know what? I could resent that, I could bitch my way through it, but I want things to be nice for him because he brings my husband so much joy and comfort and, again, he is a guest in our home. So as I sift away I look for clues to see if he's healthy, and then my mind turns to all my friends who LOVE cats, and I say little prayers for them; I think of my friends who love dogs, and there's another set of prayers. I think of farmers and how they grow animals for our benefit, and there are a BUNCH of prayers there, and by then the box is clean and blessings have been disseminated.
Know what? Cats have to hurl fur balls or they'd die. It's in their very makeup. My cat doesn't know how to use the terlet, so I have to clean up the litter box. Know what? Cats aren't generally malicious; they are fun-loving creatures and Tigger, my dears, is a GENTLEman ... he's not at all capricious, he's loving and careful and deliberate. And know the most important thing? Tigger didn't ask to come live with us, God placed him here in our home specifically in order for us to care for him.
Which led me to start thinking about myself as a child. I had a glorious upbringing, please don't think I'm complaining, but it was weird and hard and my parents were older and there was a belt on the back of every door, and my father was a "go bring me a switch and pull your pants down" kind of guy ... you know ... Olden Times. My mother was not entirely mentally well in general and then, during my 7th grade year, her mother died and she sorta cracked. My sisters are 10 and 14 years older than I, so they were both gone, and this was not really the time a 54 year old woman needed a 12 year old gay boy in 1974 going through puberty on her azz, God bless her.
I didn't deliberately act out to hurt my mother; it was all part of my growing process. I didn't intentionally wear out shoes because I was careless, I was an active child ! and shoes wear out! I didn't outgrow my pants because I was glutenous; I was a growing child! But I was taught to believe I was a thoughtless, spoiled, fat, careless, wasteful, sloppy child, and I kept that definition close to my heart for many painful years. I defined myself through her pronouncements, why wouldn't I, she was supposed to be my guardian and guide. On top of all that, she didn't have the capacity to celebrate how special I was, and, most especially, she didn't have the heart to recognize the pain I was in generally, to realize the help and nurturing I needed globally, nor did she possess the ability to identify the pain she was inflicting upon me specifically, as she was in so much pain herself. I CERTAINLY didn't ask to be there or to be born in general ... I remember crying fits where I would ask God, "why did you place me here!" but in the end it was all perfectly planned, I know.
When we're centered in love it's so easy to give love but when we're hurting, all we do is hurt in return. "Hurting people hurt people," Joyce Meyer always says. When pain is the source of all emotion there is nothing else to dispense. When pain is the source of all reason we have no other recourse but to be unreasonable, there are no reasonable words like forgiveness or empathy or care in our lexicon. This was crucial to realise because I certainly never blamed my mother, I only blamed myself because she told me everything was my fault...I only punished myself for MY selfishness, for MY shortcomings, for MY carelessness because it's what I was taught to see. But none of these things was truly my bad...I was just going through the Going Throughs. Tigger blessed me with the realisation that I have always been delightful (Sloan Sabbith, THE NEWSROOM) and my mother had no talent to nurture life outside of her pain bubble.
So thank you God for bringing Tigger in to our home, and thank you, Tigger, for showing me concretely, profoundly, just how much I am unconditionally loved.
