Dear friend,
We’re staying with Chiara’s parents in the North of Italy, amongst the vineyards of Piedmont, which translates as ‘foot of the mountain.’ We’re about forty minutes out of Turin in the curve of the Italian Alps.
It’s a beautiful house surrounded with over a hundred trees that Betty and Angelo planted over the years. Olive, cherry, apple, pear, pine, oak. The bugs can give you some trouble if you’re not careful to cover up or lather your skin with repellant. They have tiny little mosquitos here that bite and drink and never seem to be satiated, leaving your skin red, itchy and blotched.
The bugs are the only main downside of the place, and even they aren’t on the prowl all the time every day, so it’s a pretty nice place to be.
They’ve a tail-less cat who Chiara calls Tuxedo on account of his black and white colouring. No-one knows how he lost his tail, he turned up a year and a half ago, watching and hovering in the near distance, half starved.
At one point Betty and Angelo had three dogs and a cat, but time took them all one by one and the house felt empty. They did take in a cat that Chiara’s sister had unsuccessfully tried to re-home, but Nero was found dead in the fields with a small bite on the nape of his neck. No-one is sure what creature finished him off. The theory is he may have died of fright when he was ambushed.
Tuxedo started out watching the house from a distance, accepting the meals offered him, eating al-fresco from a pink plastic bowl on the balcony and sleeping on a folded towel in a cardboard box out of the winter mists and rain. He was skittish as hell, but slowly started to come into the house.
Last time I visited was about four months ago, and he’d run off if I so much as looked at him, but this time he’s a transformed character.
They call him ‘Carne Gatto,’ dog cat.
He’ll follow anyone who’s around and demand to be cuddled and petted.
He’s still getting used to me. My smell, the peculiarities of the way I move, the weight of my hand on the back of his neck. His eyes widen and he’s ready to scarper if I make un unexpected sound or gesture.
It goes to show though doesn’t it?
How many of those unfriendly faces you see on the streets of our cities, crammed onto trains and buses and tubes, or the unfortunate ones cast to the edges of society, numbing the pain, on the streets, how many of them are like Tuxedo?
Given time and patience couldn’t we all heal if our civilisations valued healing?
We’re chasing the wrong things when we seek material possessions and status for their own sake or for the prestige of them. To prove we’ve made something of ourselves.
Sure you can do that and for a while it’ll feel like it’s working out. It just won’t last without love. No-one’s saying it’s either or, just that love makes it all worth while. Materiality is not a substitute, even though our culture attempts to make it so.
You should see how sleek and beautiful Tuxedo is now that he’s properly fed and loved.
Imagine all the people that way.
Why not imagine?
Don’t you know how powerful we are.
We’re making this world with our beliefs, acting them out, creating the world according to the images we hold in our minds.
Of course it’s easier for a cat.
They don’t have a self image or a false self to deal with.
In the Christian tradition they call it ‘false idols’.
The images we make of ourselves that we try to live up to.
Our problem is the false self keeps shifting the goal posts, so you’ll pay attention to its needs and never be satisfied. Plus a human who doesn’t know they’ve made an idol will fight to the death to defend it.
It takes time.
Be gentle.
Kind.
Breathe.
Refuse to judge.
Learn to forgive.
Trust you are loved, supported, more than you can feel right now.
Here’s Tuxedo.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey
Cane- Gatto (dog cat) not carne-gatto …(=meat cat) 😂