Part II ~ A Feral Feline Spirit of Love.
I tell a lot of angel stories in this blog, as well as experiences of baffling coincidence and spirits and Afterlife. This story is about an animal angel. It was told to me by Jill, who lives in Tennessee. Jill is a recovering alcoholic, in the AA Program. Her sponsor, Vic, died in 1999 after a short illness, and she hosted a reception for his family and friends at her house. At the time she had been trying to befriend a black cat who walked along her fence every day but who would jump off and run if Jill came closer than fifteen feet. He would actually hiss and spit if she spoke to him.
A word about her relationship with Vic. In her early sobriety her sponsor listened patiently to her “emergencies” and spoke to her often on the phone. He was more social than Jill, so much so that she sometimes felt pressured, to the point of wishing privately at times that he would phone less frequently or suggest fewer meetings. But she had difficulty setting boundaries. Then he was diagnosed with colon cancer. and all her boundary issues seemed insignificant. With his prognosis of death, she couldn’t spend enough time with him. A few months after his diagnosis, he died.
Once the funeral guests left her reception and she had finished rinsing glasses, she sank into an Adirondack chair in the backyard, overwhelmed with memories of her friend and his bon vivant style of sobriety. At once the black cat from the fence threw himself in her lap, purring, preening, demanding to be stroked. More than once he looked deep into her eyes and buried his head in her neck. Jill let him visit for half an hour – well past the point that she was ready to stand up, when finally she took his little face in her hands and laughed. “Vic, I get it. Cat, now I know Vic sent you, because you’re engulfing me.”
With that the black cat gave one final whiskery kiss, jumped back over the fence. . . and was never seen again.
Now comes Jill’s question? When she has an experience on this order, her rational mind kicks in: “Well, that hardly qualifies as an angel visit.” Maybe this cat just picked that moment to get acquainted. Maybe any meaning she assigned to the encounter is just the narrative impulse in a lifetime of writing and storytelling. “How can I trust my instincts more?” she wrote to me. Which brings us back to this discourse of agnostics or atheists as opposed to the intuitives with some semblance of spiritual insight. And back to the quotation from Goethe: “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
It is the function of the human brain to doubt, question, analyze, criticize, puzzle, hesitate, mistrust, disbelieve even what it sees or tastes or touches or hears. It is designed to be skeptical, suspicious. It is the function of the heart to love. But did you know the heart has its own brain? link That it is fifty times more powerful electrically and five thousand times more powerful magnetically than the brain in your head? Did you know that the heart has insight of its own? It is the seat of intuition and spiritual insight, which is first received with an empathic and loving heart, then passed on to the mind. . . which instantly begins to doubt.
We waffle always between the two poles. The choice is ours: to shut down one section of our being, in favor of the negative and suspicious view of life; or to dance with a joyful heart even if Time were later to demonstrate you may be wrong. I have to add, however, after many decades of experience, that love is never wrong, and intuition always right. You must always trust your intuition, even when it makes no sense. The more you trust it, the more guidance you will receive, for the heart has reasons Reason cannot know.
I hope you choose to open your heart and trust it. We stand at the cusp of an evolutionary period. Let’s take the dare. It can do no harm to have an open mind, and it will surely bring you greater happiness than dwelling on misgivings, qualms, fear, suspicion, skepticism and hesitation.