Trail ride photos

A Cat's Change of Life

Early one morning, Tucson's eastbound traffic was slow through the busy intersection even when the light was green. In the northbound lanes, I saw a cat. It was running in a crouched position, weaving between the cars and trucks. I pulled the car over just past the intersection.

I jumped out, ran into the intersection, and tried to herd the cat toward the curb. I was murmuring,"It's all right, baby. Let me help you. Stop running honey. I'm just going to help you," and amazingly, she did. We were still in the road. I reached down and scooped her up. I grasped her back feet with my left hand and wrapped my whole right arm around her. I hurried back to my car. The whole thing hadn't taken any longer than the time it takes for the light to change.

The cat was a beautiful, mature, adult female Himalayan. She sat shaking beside me. I petted her head and spoke calmly to her as I drove off. I would have liked to keep her myself but I had a dog and he was all I could handle. Besides, someone out there already loved this beautiful cat. Except for her fear, she was in good shape.

I thought about the animal shelter, but they weren't open yet. Then I remembered my friend Sharron who lives a block from the SPCA shelter. I decided to see if she would be willing to take the cat off my hands and take her to the shelter when it opened. By the time I got to her house the cat had stopped shaking and Sharron said she'd take her.

Ididn't see Sharron for a couple of months. After we caught up on our news, I started thanking her for taking the cat to the shelter that day. She told me, "As it turned out, I didn't take the cat to the shelter. That weekend I was going to my Mother's in New Mexico ( a 300 mile drive) to surprise her on her eighty-second birthday. I decided to give her the pretty cat as a birthday gift. When I got there I carried the cat into the house, when mom reached out to hold her, the cat leaped to the floor and scurried under the sofa. Mom didn't see the cat for weeks. She named her Tiffany, talked to her, put out food, cleaned her litter box, but the cat didn't show herself until one day when Mom was knitting, she came out, jumped up on the sofa, and curled up on an afghan. She'd finally recovered from her change of life."

"Change of life is right," I agreed. "I don't know how many she's had, but we witnessed her transition into this one, didn't we?'

Prayer

Here is a topic I've had trouble with since my Sunday School days as a child. This is from the writings of Myrtle Fillmore, although it reads like something out of 'The Secret' or some other new spiritual thinking.

"Sometimes we pray to a God outside of ourselves. [but]

"It is the God in the midst of us that frees and heals. With our eye of faith we must see God in our flesh, see that wholeness for which we are praying in every part of the body temple. 'Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you? ... glorify God therefore in your body.'

"... We commune with God-Mind within our own consciousness. Prayer is an exercise to change our own thought habits and our living habits, that we may set up a new and better activity, in accord with the divine law rather than with the suggestions we have received from various sources. We do not prove that we expect our prayers to be answered by going on doing the things we have been doing.

"Prayer, then, is to change mind and heart so that God's omnipresent good may fill our mind and heart and manifest in our life. If we do not keep on thinking in accord with the prayers we have made, we do not get good results. For all thought is formative; all thought has its effect in our life. When some of our thought energy is expended in negative beliefs and feelings, and we show that we have old mental habits in the subconscious mind, we get those old negative results - even when we are praying daily and when others are praying for us."