October 12, 2020

JuJuBee and her brother Yangtze came to live with me in June of 2015. They were Siamese rescue cats, found in a field in North Carolina, living with a colony of feral cats under the roots of an old tree. I adopted them sight unseen, having lost my two old Siamese sister cats a few months earlier. These two siblings were young, and I wanted a bonded pair. 

The two cats had a rough introduction to my home, my fault entirely, but Yangtze as I named him soon settled into his new life. He is a very affectionate cat, one who seeks out my lap, cuddles next to my side in the mornings when I am in bed and reaches out his paw to tap my chin in greeting. His purring soothes me, especially in the isolation of this pandemic. 

JuJuBee is suspicious of the world. She is partially blind in both eyes. After five years with me, she now trusts me so that she no longer runs out of a room when I enter, but she is not a cat who wants petting, and I don’t think I have ever heard her purr. Perhaps once. She now will jump on my bed in the morning when Yangtze is there, and she lets me stroke her fur a few times. 

Stroking her fur is how I knew that it was extremely matted, and so this morning I launched the campaign to catch JuJu Bee and brush her. I have done this several times before, and although the catching part is very difficult, she never resists the brushing and combing…perhaps the brushing feels good. 

This morning’s campaign was almost a failure from a start. I have to shut all the doors in my small ranch house to narrow the catch area to the central part of the house, and the door shutting has to be done in a certain sequence or JuJuBee is forewarned. But I got all the doors shut and JuJuBee contained in the main living area, where she howled as though the world was ending, piddled on the floor, and fled for the corner windows of the dining area. 

In trying to pick up this almost fifteen pound cat from the corner windows, I pulled a muscle in my lower back, and I howled in pain, too. One sharp claw punctured my wrist. But I was able to ease her onto a nearby flat space, and sitting on a dining room chair, I brushed and combed her until all the mats were out. She did not struggle or resist, and jumped down only after I stopped stroking her and I myself stood up. 

And later I thought…this is what it is like to give with no expectation of receiving anything in return. JuJuBee probably will never be a cat who purrs or licks my hand. She has lived with me for five years and now is trusting me more, but I do not expect her to change very much.

And I had a glimmer—a faint glimmer—of understanding of what it must be like for those parents of children with severe disabilities of one kind or another, for those caretakers of adults who cannot say thank you for the simplest act of kindness. 

And so my question for you is this: 

If we can give without expectation of any return

does that expand our hearts and 

take us further along the road 

to our best selves?

Or do we need to be innocent of reflection also?