Cats

There is something about celebrating New Year's that always makes me think of cats. Actually, perhaps that's really not as peculiar as it sounds. After all, when you live with four of them, a great many things make you think of cats. Perhaps I've said this before, but cats are fascinating creatures. No one ever really owns a cat. The most a person can hope to do is share a room with one.

I think the best way to illustrate the difference between a cat and, say, a dog, would be to describe the sort of welcome each gives me when I come home after a couple of days absence. With the dog, the process begins even before I've entered the house. Drawing on what is probably a combination of sharp ears and pretty good guesswork, by the time I have no more than driven into the garage, the beast is already working himself into a frenzy. With no more than the sound of a familiar foot on the back step to go on, he begins to thrash about the room, breaking furniture with a joyful abandon. After all of that, you wouldn't think there would be anything left for the actual encounter. But not so. When I finally make it into the house, his zeal, if anything, intensifies. In a whirlwind of leaping, whining, drooling and quivering, I am led from the door into the living room. I can safely say that no human being I've ever met has ever been anywhere near that glad to see me.

Only after I've settled into a favorite and familiar chair does the celebration die down. He throws himself at my feet, rolls over on his back, and sighs contentedly, as a few moments of quiet stomach scratching reassure him that the world is once again rotating stablely on its appointed axis.

Well. If one animal is so moved what must be added by two more? Actually, not much. One of the cats are sound asleep, completely unaware that anything has happened at all. The other, drowsing fitfully on the back of a chair, raises her head, opens one eye, says something like, "Oh, you're back? I didn't know you had been gone", and returns to her meditation.

Dogs, they tell us, are good for the ego. Cats most definitely are not. The difference, I think, has something to do with dependence. The dog, you see, lives out his life largely on my terms. Whether he is happy or not depends on what I do to him, and for him. In a way, dogs don't seem to do much more than react to what is going on around them.

Cats, on the other hand, live very much on their own terms. They base what they do on what they hold to be true and good. Cats are creatures of principle. Dogs are much more pragmatic. Cats never surrender responsibility for the course of their lives to anyone. And should a conflict of values arise between the cats and myself, or even the cats and the dog, they can wait with great patience until the dim-witted outsider sees the light, they can offer reminders with a maddening persistence, they can beat a temporary retreat if that seems prudent, or they can give you a shot in the snout that would make any pup think twice before going after the Meow Mix again. But they never, never give up on the value itself.

Cats, in summary, take charge of their lives. They act, rather than simply react. With a cat, it's the principle that counts, not whether or not the execution of that principle is convenient, profitable or popular.

Believe it or not, there is a point to all of this. New Year's seems to be a time when a great many of us try, again, to do just that. In dozens of different ways, with dozens of different resolution, we tell ourselves that from now on I'm going to give a little direction to my life. I'm going to go on a diet, quit smoking, be nice to my in-laws, spend more time with the kids and so on.

In some ways, New Year's resolutions have become kind of a joke. And that's too bad really, because a constant effort to take control of one's life, to make principle the blueprint of behavior, is a pretty serious business. There is a sense in which each of us will be saved only when we decide that we want to be, and begin to act out that decision, quite apart from what is going on around us. No one ever stumbles into heaven. The only way in is to walk in on both feet, eyes wide open, because that is the way one chooses to go.

There is an exchange in one of the Gospels between Christ and the Pharisees that makes that pretty clear. It is what is inside a person, our values, our principles, and the color that they give to our behavior, that make us good or bad. To act on principle may from time to time mean some conflict between us and our surroundings. It may mean a parting of company with those who do not so act. But that is not important. We will never be judged on how popular our values have been. We will certainly be judged on how deeply and faithfully we have held to them.

Parents tell me that at one time or another in every child's life, the question arises, "Are there animals in heaven?" It seems to me that a reasonable answer might be, "Well, if there are any, there are certainly cats." After all, who's going to be foolish enough to tell them they can't come in?

From 1980 through 1982, Father Sandell served as Chaplain to the Bishop O'Reilly Council No. 3918,Grafton, North Dakota Chapter of the Knights of Columbus. "Scattered Thoughts" is a collection of essays based on columns originally written for the Chaplain's Corner, section of the Council's monthly newsletter.