As the summer is coming to its end, I am reminiscent of all the sun flowers, tomato plants and dandelions that has bloomed in this years summer sun. But most of all, I can not help but to think that the most beautiful thing that has bloomed this summer is a very special love. That is, the love between a very little girl and her very little cat.
Our cat is but a few years old now and still pertains plenty of its youthful energy and appearance. Compared to other cats, she is small, but very quick, and she likes to keep mostly to herself. Chance has it that our 2 year old girl shares the very same characteristics, and I feel that I ought to have known from the very beginning that the two of them would once make the most wonderful of companions.
You see, with a two year old, a new love or obsession seems to occur out of the blue almost every season. This spring for example she was obsessed with collecting eggs and could barely wait for them to be done boiling so that she may peel the shells of. Also, she took great interest in the act of throwing pebbles in water, and we would spend hours on hours in the spring sun that shone by the brook or the forest lake, collecting rocks and throwing them one by one into the waters.
In June, however, she caught a new obsession: The cat.
As anyone with a cat and a 2 year old will tell you, this obsession was very one-sided and frankly very unbalanced in the beginning of the summer. On rainy summer days the child would chase the cat around the house, running after it, but never quite being able to catch its tail that it quickly would put just out of reach of her grabby hands.
When the cat had once again run away, jumped up somewhere where the child could not reach it, or dangled its tail in the child’s hands only to swoop it away as soon as the child would try to hold on to it, tears would build up in the little girls eyes and she would cry to me. “I just wanted to pet it.”
Now, I could not blame the cat for this behavior. The child would jump with excitement when she would see the cat, and she would shriek so loud that anyone in their right minds would get scared and jump away if they could. Let alone a cat that spends a lot of time outdoors, as our cat does, and is always on high alert, even in its slumber.
What I would do instead is show the child how to approach the cat, slowly, letting it sniff the hand before petting it, lightly, on the top of its head, never on its stomach. The child would try her best to replicate my actions, but would, as soon as she was allowed to pet the cat on the head, get overwhelmed with happiness and jump and shriek again. “I pet her! I pet her, mommy!“
We rehearsed this several times. I would approach the cat first and she would come sit by my side and pet the cat while I was there, always making sure that her excitement would not become too much or her actions too eager. Soon she was able to approach the cat herself, but there was one thing she could not leave alone: The cats tail.
So agile and always alluring for those little hands to grasp. I reminded her several times: “The cat does not like it when you grab its tail.“ But still, in the corner of my eyes, I would see her fingers near the cats tail, waiting in suspense to let her own better judgement and her mothers warnings go. One day I held my tongue to see if the cats reaction to her might make her not want to touch it again. She held the hand right there, she only needed to clasp her fingers around the sleepy and unaware cats tail and she would experience the cats true nature.
But she did not. Instead she let it linger there for some time and then, without reprimand, somehow decided against it and petted the cat on her head like I had taught her. A deep sound came from the cat in its sleep. It was purring with true delight.
In the warm and sunny days the cat would follow along to our walks in the forest. The child would at first try to tell the cat what to do, to run, to walk along or stop, but it did not take her long to realize: The cat would follow along to her if she just showed it the way.
After that she would run happily up the road, and the cat would set after her, surpassing her quickly and then stopping, sitting down and waiting for her to catch up. The child would pet the cat and compliment it on its running.
When the rain started to set in in late August, and the first cold breezes told tales of approaching autumn, the cat would stay indoors. Laying comfortably in the reading chair in our living room. The child would say to me: “She is here, mommy, she is here! She has come home. Home to me!“ But when she neared the cat she would be cautious, and slow in her movements, and she would not yell up or shriek.
It was one of these rainy days that I observed the following: When the child petted the cat on her forehead, the cat would tilt up its head and rub it against her hand in order to, in its own way, cuddle the child. And then this: The child observing the cats movement and replicating them, rubbing her own head against the cats in what I can only describe as an embrace across species.
Now that the first autumn storm has already rolled in on us I suspect we will see the cat more and more, and beside it, the child. Petting it, cuddling it or simply laying calmly next to it, relaxed and peaceful.
Read The Next Chapter of Our Homestead Journey:
The Arrival of Autumn
On the very first day of autumn we woke up to a chilly morning, and we were all bedazzled. Acting as if we had never known chill before. But we have. Last winter was the coldest in many years and the first in our 100 year old farmhouse in the countryside.