So here I go again. This story surfaces in the still waters of memory in Summer although it began the January prior.
My mother who had hardly been sick a day in her life had just had her second surgery in five months. This surgery was an emergency necessitated by the surgeon missing in the first surgery the tumor pressing against her spinal chord causing major body numbness. Hospitalized for a week before entering rehab, I was vaguely aware Templeton my cat of many years wasn't eating. I chalked this up to her being tuned in to my stress from sleeping in hospital recliners and loosing the balance that I thought I could maintain.
It was after my mother got settled into rehab that I realized something was trul
y amiss with Templeton who had just months prior had blood work prompting the vet to say, "This cat will outlive both of us."Through the journey of nearly two weeks, Templeton did not eat or drink yet she taught me more about myself and love in a handful of days than I had experienced in a lifetime. She and I had a crash course on joy and pain.
Early one Sunday morning, I called teacher and friend Jean Houston's office to leave a message on her answering machine. Knowing she had beloved dogs, I wanted to tell Jean to savor watching Zeus her Airedale eat every Cheerioat during his morning meal.
To my surprise in the wee West Coast morning hours on a weekend, Jean answered her phone. I shared my message and of course, Jean the always teaching teacher likewise shared a message with me.
She asked if I wanted Templeton to return. I hadn't even thought of that has an option but the answer was a no-brainer.
Jean then suggested that I talk with Templeton about passing, where she was going and then specify when I wanted her to return to me if she were willing. I sat in the floor, Templeton across from me and shared the specifics of her journey to the Universal rehab where she would not only have time to recover from whatever was causing this loss but that she would regain her missing paw too. (Templeton and I found each other at the Parthenon as a student was giving away kittens in the early '90's. Being three pawed, Templeton was the last one given away. I held her not intending to get a kitten, but as I did a chorus of people surrounded me saying, "Look at how that kitten looks at her." In retrospect it was divinely staged.)
I gave her four months to recover and asked that she return around my birthday at May's end.
The final thing Jean said to me which I wrote and just found in a notebook was "You must first release her in joy."
I never dreamed I could be so happy as this dear cat who had seen me through so many lives in this life lived and died over the days ahead. I was joyful and at times sad too but when the heart is open even in loss the preciousness of each moment and our connections are front and center. As Rumi and others have written, I experienced the joy and sorrow that are one and the same.
May rolled around and this little voice in the back of my head said, "Remember Templeton." I hesitantly at first began to visit shelters and a local shop, hesitant because I did not trust that this whole return thing might actually work and I didn't know if I trusted myself to know when I had found Templeton though I specified she let me know 'it' was her.
As May proceeded, my anticipation and panic heightened. What if I miss her? I had specified my birthday week but forgotten this is often when we're out of town. What if she's on the Oregon coast looking for me and I'm in Nashville this year? I held kittens daily at one particular shop asking each one as it looked me in the face: Are you Templeton? Give me a sign.
By week two I finally confided my quest in a quiet whisper to folks. Instead of their thinking I was strange, I heard repeated stories like mine of people requesting their cats and dogs return. Only one person had not experienced success.
One day I just knew I saw Temp's face in a shelter ad in the morning paper. I jumped in my car to be there when the doors opened and suspected the woman in the car behind me at every turn was determined to get the same cat. I was so relieved when she didn't follow me into the shelter parking lot. The kitten from the photo I then learned was from a week prior. I still held each present that morning sensing not even the slightest connection.
Time after time, my fear showed its face yet I stayed open and kept searching.
My birthday came and I took the week off. I went to the cat shop every day but Thursday when instead I went to play golf, where of course I still kept watch for a kitten at the pro shop and on the fairways.
The next morning I went to the cat shop and looked again. It was a Friday. The week was winding down and still no Templeton. I feared she was roaming the rocky Southern Oregon coast.
That night I had a bodily sense of something kin to anxiety like I have never before felt. It was the strangest thing. I felt like I was on the cusp of missing Templeton yet I had just been to the cat shop that very day. It never occurred to me until this retelling (Thank you, Peggy) that maybe this new sensory experience was about my being on the cusp of finding Templeton.
I felt compelled to find her kitten photos. In her adult life Templeton was very regal. She looked a bit like a Maine Coon. I had forgotten that day in front of the Parthenon she looked like a tabby, a generic tabby without any hint of the fur to come.
The next morning before leaving town to hike as planned, I told Jerry that I had to get to the cat shop. Knowing the importance of this quest, he patiently waited for me.
I entered the shop that morning just after ten and on the door mat inside a little bundle of tabby with his butt facing me took my breath away. I can still feel it as well as hear myself exclaiming, "Where did he come from?"
Someone had dropped him off at the store's door on the busy street the night prior.
I scooped Whooper Jr. (now Bogeysattva) into my hands certain he was Templeton. But not only did he not give me a sign, he refused to even look at me. This was the first kitten that didn't look me eye-to-eye in this whole month's quest.
For the coming month, I left work regularly to hold Whopper Jr. and continue to search for Templeton. Some days I would lie on the floor in the back of the shop and hold him on my chest other visits we'd just walk and talk, me always whispering: Won't you give me a sign? And him always avoiding my eyes. How could I bring home a cat that wouldn't even look at me?
Then three years ago this week, I realized I had my sign. Just as Templeton opened the door to my heart in her passing, this kitten had done likewise in his arrival. Bogey who literally can open doors and drawers had opened my heart's door. I pulled out of my driveway that day realizing for the first time in maybe forever I was putting my heart's need first for a necessary change.
As for those eyes and the sign, upon arriving home he looked at me! Had this been a test to see if I could trust and listen to my heart without receiving a sign? Or was seeing and being seen coming full circle as Templeton saw me twenty years ago this time I had to see her/him.
Months later I came across a session recorded with my friend Maryann who had a vision where Templeton returned as a male kitten. She emphatically told me not to bypass getting the boy kitten I was to find, adding that he was cute and was boxing in the vision (something Bogey does regularly in his little cat tent). She may have sensed my mistrust as to whether she was actually seeing a male because she added, "I know its a boy. He's showing me little balls." I had forgotten this until later finding the recording.
So now that I've retold this story again during this the time of Bogey's three year anniversary. I realize both Bill Murray and Bogey are stories of magic, of missing the mystery yet Spirit persisting waking me repeatedly to my heart's path and the beauty of listening to life.
I'm also certain just as at the Parthenon that summer day twenty years ago, that this too is all divinely staged not just my finding Templeton again but our living in this Time of such potential for peace, love and awakening.
How does magic and mystery arrive in your life each day? Tucked in the layers of repeated behaviors and what may appear to be mundane hides Magic. Take it from Bogey, Mystery (cat 2) Templeton and Me.
Listen. See. Believe.
-Dawn, The Good News Muse 2 July 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com
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