Mindfulness lessons from the Cat

Since the New Year I have been pursuing an unwritten resolution to become more ‘mindful’ and enjoy the here and now. It’s often said that animals live in the moment. ‘Be more dog’ is a popular refrain. This week, the Cat set us a good example of mindful living. Kitty had not been her normal self for a couple of days, in fact nearly a week. In winter she rarely ventures outside, perhaps for half an hour or so to sit on the south facing windowsill if the sun is shining. The three local ferals: Stripey, Smokey and Kipper, have pretty much taken over her territory now, so Kitty prefers to sit outside only in the summer, when one of us is there for protection. Safety in numbers. We weren’t surprised therefore when she didn’t want to go out. She was still eating, drinking and clawing the sofa so spending most of the day asleep was not unusual.

Then, one evening she refused to eat her dinner, she didn’t even want to lick the jelly off – her favourite bit. Of course, this was good news for the Dog, who’s always ready to clean out anyone’s bowl. At first we thought that Kitty had a cold as she’d had a few bouts of sneezing, but then next day she didn’t move off the sofa. No pummelling the human’s tummies while they were watching the TV or games of ‘Dab the Dog’ with Bumble. Kitty’s coat was dull, she’d almost stopped grooming, something was wrong. I picked her up for a cuddle and she squeaked with pain. I quickly checked her over and found a horrible swelling at the base of her tail. Of course, these things always happen late at night, when everywhere is closed, so we set the alarm and planned to be at the Vet’s when it opened in the morning.

The next morning we couldn’t find Kitty. How can a cat disappear overnight in a locked and shuttered house? We looked under the sofas, in the bread oven, and behind the wardrobe. I was starting to panic. I’d read that cats creep away somewhere dark and quiet to die; where had Kitty gone? Eventually we found her in the darkest corner of the spare room, behind the suitcases, curled up.

Our suspicions were confirmed when the Vet diagnosed an abscess. It was too large to lance without an anaesthetic. ‘Give me twenty minutes’ he said. In the UK we’d have been signing consent forms and looking forward to parting with the best part of two hundred pounds. But by the time we had walked up to the Boulangerie and back Kitty had been relieved of sixty mls of pus and was sleeping in her crate, ready to go home. Sixty euros lighter, we were back home by quarter past nine.

Kitty’s recovery was remarkable. By lunchtime she was awake and wanted out of the crate. She staggered about the room, watched by an incredulous dog. As the grogginess wore off she clambered up onto the windowsill where her biscuit bowl lives – her appetite had returned. I tried to persuade her to sit quietly on an old towel, but after the few days of self-imposed confinement she was obviously feeling better and intent on exploring every inch of the house.  One minute she was on the windowsill, next climbing up the back of the sofa to wake up the dog. Up and down the stairs, under the table. It was a marked contrast to her behaviour of the past few days.

 

So, what did I learn from this? Kitty lives in the moment. When the present problem is a very painful tail, she hunkers down and allows her immune system to use all its resources to fight the infection. Once the abscess was drained she didn’t sit around thinking about the operation and what might have been. She went straight back to her normal routine, without a second thought. I compared that to how I would have reacted in a similar situation – say I’d just got back from Outpatients with a dressed wound. That would warrant at least an afternoon on the sofa, recounting the story of the injury to whoever would listen, reviewing the incident from different angles to see if things could have been different, or worse, or better. At the very least I would need a large cake or a bar of chocolate ‘to cheer myself up’.

As I write this Kitty has settled in her igloo at last. Curled up neatly, her head peeping out of the porthole. Perhaps she would like a few cat treats… just to cheer her up.