Animal Dreams

I was over visiting with my mother for a bit this afternoon. It's only the second week of March, but the combination of warm weather and melting snow has me itching to get into the garden. Even the piles of dirty snow, dead leaves, and bare limbs of all the weedy bushes I failed to chop down last fall doesn't hinder that desire.

Visiting my mother's house means visiting the cats as well. Crack cat (see above) has mellowed so with age. At 12 years old, she's less high strung, and more likely to at least attempt to be friendly or curious, even if she can't quite get herself to go the whole way. It makes me wonder if like a lot of us, cats and other animals get tired of holding on and just let go of whatever crap they are hanging on to as well.

People love to think they know animals well, but most of us don't, and sadly we seem all to ready to slide into reductionist thinking about animals.

But we people are animals, too, lest we forget. And for all our skills and talents, we sure mess up a lot of things, don't we?



Even though animals are bound to fight, defend their territory, get lost in hunger and comfort desires, I sometimes think that the Buddhist animal realm doesn't really apply to animals at all.



While I am out stomping around in the muddy garden, trying to reconnect with an earth that's been frozen for over four months, Crack Cat and her orange buddy B.J. are hanging around the banister, waxing philosophical about those silly people in their lives. We can only dream what these guys are think about, we humans who can barely figure out our own heads.