Cats and Equanimity

I still remember a scene from the movie Krull (now everyone knows how ancient I am) where the cyclops despite knowing his ultimate fate pursued it to the very end, which is to be crushed between two rock walls...

I wonder how that feels like... besides being painful.

A few cat lover friends told me that cats, even domestic ones, do not die in the house. Somewhat slightly more sensitive to their own mortality than human beings, as if in possession of the knowledge of their impending doom, they will usually disappear from the house and never return.

I guess cats, like old soldiers, do not die, they fade away...

I believe Buddha said that since death is certain and our time of death is unknown, there is no need to fear it, or to worry unnecessarily about it, or to make elaborate preparations for it.

But for a moment, let us assume that cats are slightly different. Being blessed or being cursed to be aware of the train they have to catch out of the material plane, or to be aware of an oncoming one that will take them from the material plane, they left the house in search of their demise, to meet their end and to fulfill their destiny.

I wonder how it feels like to leave a house, which is never theirs, or to abandon four walls that seek to suffocate the freigeist; or to desert a castle that is a poor substitute for safety of any sorts; or to escape a containment that provides security for one that does not need it; or to leave a spatial point of transit that one does not call home; even if in the leaving, one heads towards the end of the journey.... the end of the known.

Perhaps in leaving the house, they are once returning to their playgrounds since young, returning to the hunting grounds of their ancestors, it will mean having one's barefeet once again on the solid ground... it will perhaps be somewhat similar to the smell of the wet earth after rain... familiar yet, refreshing.

Perhaps to them, that would be home.

Perhaps for predators, anywhere with a sky above the head is home.

Perhaps for prey, anywhere with four walls is home.

I cannot answer for the world, but if I am to die, it will be at place where infinity lies above and below me...

... to remind me how little it all means, whatever it is.