With most of our family members’ attention focused on an ailing grandparent, summer vacation of 2007 wasn’t all that fun for my twelve-year-old – until he discovered the squirrel-cat. It took a few encounters with this erratic, furry creature before it was clear that it, he, really was a cat and not a squirrel. A very small cat; with a disproportionately long, spunky and permanently fluffed-up, vertical tail.
The cat, it turned out, belonged to the student tenant in the basement studio of the large, wooden 1924 villa with a slightly overgrown yard, which, whenever the squirrel-cat was out, turned into a wild, random combination of a circus and a jungle. My son quickly became intoxicated with this physical apparition of perplexity and wonder, for he could plainly see that there was no leap too bold, nor a stoop too random for the squirrel-cat.
Exquisitely captivating but clearly a most spasmodic of God’s creatures, the squirrel-cat to this day brings its spark, lifts our spirits and enchants our imagination; it has become a rare and valued treasure. During the summer of ’07, the squirrel-cat expressed the celebration and liberation of the spirit that had not been free to reveal itself inside a house of rules, expectations and challenging circumstances. We don’t know this for sure, but we venture to guess that the freedom of the squirrel-cat was the self-evident, God-given manifestation of
no memory
no obligations
no agenda
This, combined with limit-less energy and rainbow–colored glasses that see the world as a circus-jungle, was to be the gift of the squirrel-cat days of that summer. It’s not a recipe for life, but perhaps just something to dwell on for a while, every now and then.
May the spirit of the squirrel-cat be with you as we wrap up the month of many changes called May.
~ Marit.
