I shared an enclosure with a friendly 20-lb. female bobcat named Little Feather, who enjoyed lap time with purring.

In this recent post, dedicated to a good friend and Dharma Sister I invite her to write about her stay at Big Cat Rescue. The following piece arrived as a comment attached to my earlier post. It’s promoted to the front page because…it’s a must read and not everybody trawls the comment section so it might missed. I hope you agree that would be a great pity.

Cats and Cats
Margaret

Thank you for the lovely post, Reverend. It happens that two recent mornings when the alarm rang, I was dreaming about cats. One, Brutus the Maine Coon; the other, Suzy the Brown Tabby who will always have a place in my heart.

About zoos, I understand Angie’s comment. My last visit to a zoo was in 1977, when the sight of the caged black leopard, pacing, was too much; but that’s not to say that zoos are bad.

Some years ago I visited the sanctuary called Big Cat Rescue near Tampa, Florida, home to around 200 cats coming from show business, circuses, folks who fancied pet puma, until puma began spraying…. Although enclosed, these cats have room to roam, trees to climb and scratch, excellent food, medical care, and open sky.

At that time they offered overnight rustic accommodation amongst the cats, in fact I shared an enclosure with a friendly 20-lb. female bobcat named Little Feather, who enjoyed lap time with purring. Paying guests were also invited to participate in feeding time by offering raw chicken drumsticks through the wire fences. The technique was to hold the leg and offer the thigh to the cat, who would take it from your hand and eat it (without hand, one trusted).

My group of 4 or 5 others was accompanied on the feeding round by a worker. All went smoothly until we reached a hungry puma (cougar/mountain lion — a type of cat with which I’d had a previous encounter but that’s another story). A fellow stepped up, chicken in hand, but backed away just as the cat was about to grab. Anyone who has ever fed cats knows that they aren’t terribly patient with chow at hand, this is serious business. The man (not a cat-person I could see) stepped up again, this time with the cat snarling, and not only backed away but dropped the food on the ground outside the fence where the cat could see it but not reach it.

Now, with kitty quite agitated, the gentleman bowed out and the worker asked if anyone else would like to try. Something wearing my body stepped forward! This was one mad cat, did I really want to stick my hand through the fence? Fear was there with me (although cats aren’t high on my fear index); right alongside of it was a stillness — in a flash kitty was devouring the food and the worker was saying, That’s the way to feed a cat!

It was a wonderful 24 hours — drifting off to sleep to the sound of lions, and tigers roaring their night-time tunes, visiting with a lovely lady lynx who jumped on my shoulders, seeing varieties of cats I never knew existed.

As for the feline in my bed, the season is turning away from summer and he’s once again curling up under the covers right under my chin, where he purrs loudly for 10-15 min. and then departs for outside, in the vicinity of the knees. At feeding time, he behaves in a manner very similar to that of the puma described above, and loudly.

Thank you again, Rev. Mugo, for letting the cats out.

As a treat for ourselves, Sunday night is typically pizza and dvd night – anyone staying at the farm is invited to come and have pizza with us and watch a film. Sometimes we buy a takeaway pizza, more often we make our own.

On a recent Sunday I decided I wanted to make the pizzas. There were only three of us – an unusually small number for the summer. Anyway, it took me three and a half hours to make three pizzas and I have been wondering about this for some time since. Why did it take so long? well, I had to light the wood-burning stove and get it up to temperature; I milked the goats and made mozzarella cheese with the milk I got; I harvested, washed and prepared our home grown spinach, courgettes (zucchini) and tomatoes to go on the pizza along with the salad to accompany it; then I cooked the pizzas.

Now there are some people who visit us who think this degree of self sufficiency is idyllic, and there are others who think it is unnecessarily hard work and even downright pointless. For me it is a part of how I currently choose to live my life. And still there have often been doubts as to whether I could be doing something ‘more useful’.

These doubts frequently arise from the knowledge that some people who are really close to me think it is a waste of my talents to be spending large parts of my life in this way. This is something I have known for a long time and it has been a helpful challenge to my sense of what seems good for me to do; and yet it has until very recently been a continuing trigger of unease, insecurity and considerable self-doubt.

The reason this has been bugging me for a couple of weeks now, though, is something different. It is the difficult realisation that in our practice there is no possibility of justifying what we do. We can construct a rationalisation to justify a lifestyle if we want – but it doesn’t help. Sooner or later we have to let go of this deep need for self-justification, and for the seeking of approval of those close to us, and just do what seems good to do there and then – with no guarantees that it will still be the good thing to do next week, or even tomorrow. And sometimes there is a longing for an easier practice with a set of rules, or some authority figure that can say what is good and what isn’t – even if I know I couldn’t help but rebel at such authority. Reverend Master Jiyu described our practice as being one for spiritual adults; and sometimes we can still find ourselves craving not to have to be grown up.

I have had in my mind to write about my daily practise for some time so I am grateful to Rev Mugo for asking me to contribute. Despite the up-rush of feelings of inadequacy I find myself surprisingly enthusiastic and willing to share my thoughts. Having received the email and said Yes, OK, what seemed good to do next was to give my altar a thorough clean and freshen up. I spent a whole morning polishing, dusting and rearranging, using the process as an opportunity for working meditation with the recognition that, somehow, this request had acted as a catalyst for a shift in my practise.

During my conversations with Rev Mugo, both on the phone and via email, she has been very careful not to make me feel like I ought or should contribute…no pressure…yet here it is…a gentle nudge…an opening up to the possibility that putting pen to paper could be of benefit to self and other.

I have written about my Buddhist practice in the past, generally when on retreat at Throssel as an aid to clarify and reflect. But this has been a very private thing, not shared (far too scary), and rarely revisited by myself.

For all of my professional life my focus has been on helping others with their struggles to change and improve their lives. I have written about other people’s thought processes and behaviours in depth, and often. Something I realised a while ago was that my profession as a helper of others has helped me to avoid looking at myself. This, of course, is not a simple equation… it has been a great privilege to be there to support others during their crises and I have learnt a lot. However there has been an aspect of holding myself apart from others… I am the helper – you are the helped.

Revealing myself has been something I have avoided and could have carried on avoiding had it not been for someone else’s suggestion and my willingness to trust. What I do know is that in revealing myself I am not losing anything… there is nothing to be lost.

And still anything I write could just exist between myself and Rev Mugo and used as another form of my studies with her. What are the benefits of going public in this medium? The only way to find out is to do it!

So, kind readers, this is me…giving it a go…taking a risk and trusting myself to all of you that visit Jade Mountains, and perhaps connect with what I have to say.