In the past few days I posted a few stories portraying the Master
Species of Cat to be not only our superiors (as we catslaves know) but
our object of veneration. But I do swear that cats seem to know the
sacred, and probably better than us two-legs.

There is a verse in one of the Sikh prayers which says in effect that
the mightiest of kings with all his elephants and gold are "not equal
even to an ant, who in its mind never forgets God." And so Louie and I
have always believed in this rather literally: that when we two-legs
attained reason over instinct, we also attained the ability to forget
the higher and more noble things in life.

The cats in my life have an uncanny sense of the sacred. One of their
favorite hiding places is behind a huge picture of all ten Sikh gurus,
which sits in the small room we want to make into a meditation and study
area. And when I read the scriptures of any faith (as a fiend for
comparative religion, I collect them) the cats all rub and purr on the
books far more than they do with my secular literature; none of them are
Dostoyevsky fans! And many years ago when I studied Wicca for a time, I
could not keep Fritzie out of my little solo circle. I just ended up
saying heck with it, he must want to talk to the Goddess too; and then I
learned about Bast.

Louie tells a story of his youth, that there was a mama cat and four
kittens in the house. His father had a religious room like the one we
want to make; there is a platform in there where the Holy Book is kept.
The Adi Granth is a huge volume and there are specifics of how to keep
it: it must be the highest object in the room, except for the canopy
which is suspended over it like a chuppa in a Jewish wedding; the reader
and any congregation must be seated on the floor except in cases of
physical disability, for no person may be higher than the Book, and the
Holy Book may never touch the floor. The kittens could not leave that
book alone! Father-in-law used to gripe continually about finding
kittens on, in, or under the platform where Granth Sahib rested. They
would lie there for hours and purr away until the old man chased them
off, and then they would come back while he read and sneak under the
platform or pounce on the pages. After one of the kids pointed out the
verse I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, he decided to leave them
be, for even the kittens knew there was something special in a place
that contains holy energy.

Blessed be,
Baha