Both but Cats

Dogs or cats?

To me this choice is just another example of how humans create hierarchies of approval and embrace reasons to make choices. We have cats at the moment but that’s just how it worked out so far.

We were both raised with dogs, Tony was also raised with cats, and I suddenly decided I wanted two kittens when I was 27.

This was completely unexpected as I’d been attacked by a cat when I was about ten, and was terrified of them. Wouldn’t hurt them though, didn’t hate them, just froze if they came near me.

I knew I wanted two kittens, ex wanted a ginger tom on the grounds that they have great personalities, I said I wanted a girl with unusual colouring. I chose their names, Marbles and Gingernut.

When we went to meet them Marby was a torti (calico) and white, Geris was ginger and white. Marby wasn’t a random covering of bits of black, ginger, and white. Her colours worked around each other like a marble, she was either black, or ginger, or white.

Geris was a ginger nutcase, and the way he was neutered he still appeared to be intact. If you use the term nuts to describe certain parts of the male anatomy, one side was white, the other ginger. So Gingernut was highly appropriate. That always inappropriately tickled me pink. I do try to pretend I’m a lady!

The moral of this part is that although I adored dogs, had never wanted cats, and was scared, I discovered that I could love them unconditionally and they were simply, beautifully different.

We draw so many distinctions, too many. If we like something it’s good and if we don’t like it it’s bad. We decide on good and evil in a way God (choose your preferred name) never has.

I honestly believe that we wrote most of the bad into the good books because the ancients translated the messages at a difficult and conflict driven time in human evolution, when the physical strength of men created a patriarchal society based on protection of the weak which sadly became force. We really should know better now, and millions of us do. Thank God thank them!

All this from cats and dogs?

Yep. I can make something out of anything.

We live in a world where we’re constantly judging and finding wanting. Male/female, English/Scots/Welsh/Irish (what’s wrong with ‘we’ and ‘us’?). Divided by religion, by nationality, by skin colour, gender, birthplace, job, wages, who has the best dentist! Dogs, cats, gerbils.

However, millions of us do not want this. We want inclusion, peace for all, food and water for all, safety and respect for animals and the earth. We want a better future for all children and a world where everyone can be who they are. We want the killing to stop

We’re laughed at, called naive and deluded, and we’re right.

Cats and dogs

Animals have taught me unconditional love, you cannot make them be not dogs and cats, you have to accept them as they are. I owe them so much in the way of soul development it isn’t true. And laughter and fun.

I love them more than I knew it was possible to love because I don’t have to be anything but me around them. They give you the space to be just love.

I love them because upset them and they’ll let you know quickly, clearly, and get over it immediately. Marby was the funniest. If ever we went on holiday (leaving them in a better than 5* cattery) she would smack my ex once when we picked her up. Never me, so unfair.

When I met Tony she did it to him too. On one occasion I had to go and get them without him. It took an hour to catch her. She looked for him, climbed 15’ up the wire of the run, literally screamed and howled for him, as soon as we got near her on a ladder she jumped to the shed, and vice versa.

She was quite calm once I got her in the basket, perfectly alright once she was home. Mr Smugness came in that night, commented that at least in not being there he hadn’t been smacked, bent over to pick her up and she missed his eye by about 1/2”. But they were the only times that cat ever raised a paw, except in defence of her brother – a lover not a fighter.

So…

I hope this has come across as the slightly dressed up plea for love, peace, and inclusion, that it is.

I honestly feel that having animals has taught me a great deal about respect and my capacity to love. They may be the reason I turned to world peace as a thing, experiencing such love and watching children suffering at the hands of adults. Definitely that, but understanding pure love helped.

I always said I thought brown tabby cats were boring, didn’t want that colour. I fell in love with an 8 year old, abused and depressed, brown smudge thorough opaque glass. Saw that smudge and thought ‘that’s my cat’, adopted him without even seeing his face (he was so depressed he was curled in a ball starving himself to death). Loving him was never a choice, I already loved him, I just had to find him.

I already loved my husband, my oldest friend, my should-be-sister and her soft/stubborn Yorksher lad, my adopted daughter and her partner, and four beautiful honorary grandchildren, way before I met them, I just had to wait. I loved every friend I’ve ever had.

Why can’t we do that with each other? Forget everything but how a person makes us feel. Ignore the gift wrap (skin colour), and find out what’s inside. The one might not quite be what you expected.

I’ve lived such a lonely life in many ways I don’t care how you look, who you love, where you were born, how much money you have, and so on. If you like me I’ll thank the universe for you every single day. I am so grateful for everyone in my life I can’t tell you.

All – everything – everyone – everywhere – unconditionally

It’s a big ask to want humans to drop the fear, embrace love, send war packing into the past where it never belonged. To ask humans to take their training, filter it, and if it isn’t love, eradicate it.

We can do this, we are capable.

We just need to stop being afraid of difference and embrace it.

Stop fearing and work together.

Stop making unnecessary choices as to what and who are the best, in our pitifully small and unloving opinion.

Find that ability to love within you, and we’ve got a real chance.

Stop needing it all and to be the best and most powerful, and realise that the greatest courage we can demonstrate is the ability to love.

Imagine a world like that! I can.

To world peace for all, everyone, everything, everywhere. Unconditionally.

Deb xx