About two weeks ago I noticed that we had some new cats in our parking lot. They were 5 kittens. They were not feral, so I suppose someone just dropped them off. I was concerned over this and at first did not know what to do. I really don’t want to relive the problem we had with feral cats in the past. We must have had about 50 of them living around the Retreat house. Both in the front as well as in the back near the rear entrance for the kitchen. They were a nuisance as well as a health hazard. They all died out rather quickly over a couple of months time period. I noticed one Sunday afternoon when the parking lot was empty (this was in 1992) that there seemed to be fewer cats lying around. I thought it was my imagination at first. However, within another five or six weeks time period they were all gone. A veterinarian who used to come here back then explained to me that since they were feral, and not inoculated they were prone to contagious diseases that were fatal. He thought that it was feline leukemia, or distemper, that destroyed the cat population since they lived so close to one another….even though I was relieved to be rid of them, I was still sad that they had to die that way. I would have much preferred that they found a home.
Things are different now. Mimi, a very nice, gentle, compassionate woman comes out and has them inoculated and fixed. The permanent squatter cats seem to keep other cats away. However they have accepted the kittens. So I talked to Mimi and explained why I could not allow the cat population to get any larger. So if she would please find a home for them. She said she would. Though some of our guest, if they find the kittens tame, will take some home with them; hopefully this will happen. I guess kittens easily touch the hearts of some people. I did say to her that if I needed to I would get humane traps and when caught take them to the pound. I told her this because I really don’t want to do that, since I believe most will be destroyed for lack of people to adopt. There are so many of them!
I do believe that some people really don’t believe that their pets have real emotions or awareness. They don’t take seriously the emotional turmoil that their pets can have when they desert them, like the owners did with the kittens. They do have awareness, they do feel pain and fear and they want to live, as all creatures do. So even though I am not all that fond of cats, I do feel for them when they are abandoned that way.
We can do the same with people. Abandon them to nursing homes and forget them, or we see old people pushing shopping carts down city streets. True some are mentally ill, yet the fact that they are ignored and passed by more often than not, shows that for many of us they are no more important than the kittens abandoned in a parking lot. The same for children as well as hard as that is to believe. There are cities in this world where very young children are abandoned and who can barley survive, living in sewers and even hunted and killed by the local law enforcement. Yet parents pass them by everyday, step over their bodies and continue. For them these children are not real, have no self awareness and nothing but vermin….all the while loving their own children. I can understand this reaction. I did the same thing when in the Navy and came upon the very poor…..otherwise I might have been overwhelmed. Yet when I allowed that to happen, I lost part of my humanity and had to harden my heart. I chose to shield myself from the suffering of others.
While it is understandable (though sad) that we can treat animals in such a callous manner, it is not so when we do it to people. If we understood that a small kitten has more going on within their minds than we can imagine, I doubt we would treat them so callously and just leave them off to fend for them-selves. To simply understand that should bring us into deeper appreciation of our fellow human beings, who, because of our deep self awareness and tendency to project into the future suffer even more.
St. Paul states that all of creation moans in anticipation of the coming of the Lord. I guess this means that there is a point to all of this mess and we are moving towards a place of completion. All of creations, means, yes 5 kittens, abandon in our parking lot, also on some level long for liberation of the sons and daughters of God. We live in mystery, something we can learn more about, but never get to the bottom of it. We like to blame anyone, anything for the way the world is, yet it is humanity that has created the world we live in, each of us must bear some responsibility for the way things are. Every action or reaction that we experience has ripple effects that are mind boggling I believe.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
