My Cat is Missing & the Philosophical Implications Thereof

My cat Barbarella is missing. I’ve not seen her since last night and when I did see her under the huge Scorpio full moon she had a crazed look in her eye, like she was saying to me: “It’s my full moon and I’m not coming inside because I need to be wild.” I tried to be a responsible pet owner and catch her, but she just rolled around on the ground and leapt up and ran, making the cutest ‘whirring’ noise [basically laughing her furry ass off at me].

So I had to let her go... because you can’t control cats, and they teach us this simple truth every day. They say with every fibre of their being: “You can’t control me! I am a creature of free wildness! Ha ha ha ha!” Maybe that is why we have them in our lives, to teach us about chaos and wildness and the parts of ourselves that can’t really ever be tamed.

I heard a comedian the other day saying that something was as difficult as “herding cats”. I laughed. They are truly un-herdable.

So I’ve made a conscious decision to let her go. Trying to control this cat just got too stressful, she keeps wanting to escape into the night with every chance that she gets. It got me thinking about all the things in our lives that we try desperately to control that are actually out of our control.

And just as all this was happening re: Barbarella, my cat, I picked up a book [God’s Gladiators by Stuart Wilde]which is full of some juicy conspiracy theories etc. [love a good CT!] and this is what I read:

“Control is .. the imposition of your will on others. It is demonic. The fat controller of your mind decides to impose itself, intimidating some, cajoling others, attempting to control everything: how people look, what they eat, where they go, how they pray, who they have sex with, what they ought to do ... to give away the need to control is the first step in the divine plan. First, you stop dominating and attempting to control your life, you then offer the same escape from torment to those close to you... We are trying to let go and arrive at a place where things arise spontaneously from our collective joy...”

So I have let go of my cat, she is free to do as she pleases, I just hope she’s not lying flattened on a road somewhere, but instead basking in her freedom under the full moon within the collective joy... Ah, the dilemmas of cat ownership.