Stretch

Stretch is the only name that has emerged for my white cat. He’s also gone by Little White Guy or Lank. Something Egyptian seems appropriate. He’s majestic yet unpretentious. He likes it when I purr.

Stretch wasn’t always like this, comfortable on my lap. He was feral as a kitten. When I first got him he wouldn’t be petted. He’d slink away from touch. But he’s since figured things out. He even mimics the meows I make to him, trying to talk in my cat language.

Stretch doesn’t know of all the anxiety out there these days. In the photo’s background, he’s between the Green Tara (a female Bodhisattva) and Gaia (our earth home), innocent of both. He doesn’t know of Covid collapse or saintly beings or the precious, precarious ecosystem that is our only home.

Stretch wouldn’t know our alleged president wouldn’t invoke the Defense Production Act to speed up the production of masks, ventilators or tests for the deadly virus, but he did tell the meat industry to get back at it despite the closed, damp quarters for infected workers processing dead meat.

Stretch doesn’t realize how crazy and evil our crumbling empire is becoming. He doesn’t know almost no one reads his guy’s (my) words. Like for most of us, it’s all beyond us. I speak and write in loving gratitude for Eden and our lives in it, hoping we’ll come to love it and each other before the ruination get even more apocalyptic.

Stretch doesn’t know. He does know when it’s dinner time, and meows accordingly. So I feed him, grateful for cat food and cat company. That fearful wariness he once had? Gone. Would that our country and humanity come to security, peace and friendly relating as well.