Gray Cat

Here is a picture of Maris with our cat, Stormy.

Demetria told us she had a spiritual message from Maris that she could not interpret. The message was: "Pet the gray cat."

We have a gray cat. Actually, she is a pastel tortoise shell cat. her fur has all the colors of a strong storm--gray, orange, white. She is storm-colored, so I named her "Stormy."

Stormy is irritating. But it is not her fault. She was taken away from her mother too soon, and it may have addled her brains a bit. Maybe she is even depressed.

Our little neighbors from down the street rang our door bell back in 1993, with a box of kittens who needed homes. They said their mother threatened to drown the kittens in the river if the girls did not find homes for them; so they were motivated.

I picked Stormy up because I liked her fur. I had been hoping to find a brindle cat because I had heard that witches used to own brindle cats. Well, Stormy is not exactly a brindle cat.
and i am not even sure from where that tradition stems. But when I put Stormy back in the box, she immediately began meowing loudly, and tried to claw her way back to me. The girls said, "Aawww....she is already used to you!" So we kept her.

She had teeth, but was very tiny. Do kittens' mothers stop nursing them when their teeth come in? We tried feeding Stormy from baby bottles but she chewed up all the nipples. She did not seem to know how to eat solid food or drink milk from a saucer. We were afraid she would starve. We fed her from the bottles for a few days, and went through lots of nipples until we felt she had figured out how to eat solid food.

The food seemed to have a bad effect on her insides, and she was so tiny she could barely reach the edge of the litter box. She used to race for it as fast as she could, but then she had to heave herself up over the side of it, which was very hard to do, if there was no one around to help her into the litter box. So she had many accidents in spite of her best efforts, and unfortunately she git used to having accidents. This did not make her very popular around here.

Stormy routinely used a corn plant as a litter box. Why? had she developed an aversion to the litter box because of all her negative experiences with it? Ray was convinced Stormy was just too lazy to use the litter box. Pretty soon we began keeping Stormy in the basement as much as we could. If she had accidents in the basement, it was not as troublesome as having them in the living room.

This was a very dysfunctional arrangem,ent. But we could not figure out another solution that would not somehow involve expensive treatments or euthanasia.

Stormy experiences neglect and misunderstanding because of her unsavory habits. She has beautiful green eyes, and is extremely affectionate. So when Demetria said something about petting the gray cat, the message resonated with me.

The gray cat did not refer to Stripes, who is a spotted tabby. Styripes used to sit on Maris's lap for hours on end, and sleep on him at night. She sits outside of his room now and waits forever for him to open the door.

The gray cat is the neglected one, the misunderstood one, who falls constantly through the cracks, who fell in love with me when I picked her out of a box of kittens destined for the Chicago River, who waits patiently for attention, who makes no demands and has no expectations, who has a sweet and gentle disposition and who has some accidents now and then. Her heart is breaking with loneliness but shhe sits at the top of the basement stairs hoping today we will let her come up.

Maris's spirit surely identifies with Stormy's sorrow, and he wants us to be kind to her. He wants us not to punish or judge her for something she may have no control over, whether it is genetic, or the result of early and unfortunate experiences. He wants us to heal Stormy, and he wants Stormy to heal us. He wants us to expeprience the giving of unconditional love to a creature who is completely ordinary and deserving of love. It will make us better, kinder people to pet Stormy. It will make our planet a better place if we can heal Stormy's heart.

I have to admit I can never trust Stormy. We recently allowed her to come up, and sure enough she still has her bad habits. But she is what she is, and she needs to be loved, so I hold and pet the gray cat every chance I get and I think of Maris and I start to cry.