Caterpillar

I don’t spend very much time on social media, but I do check out our Nextdoor app on a regular basis, to keep apprised of what is going on in our neighborhood and to get good recommendations for repair people and the like. Often, people post pictures of their missing pets on Nextdoor, and almost always, before the end of the day, the pet is found and everyone posts kind words of relief and happiness that the fur kids are back at home, with their beloved families.

Recently, a woman posted frantic requests for help to find her cat. Days and days went by, and everyone posted words of encouragement and hope for the fraught lady to find her kitty. Finally, after twenty days, her precious kitty was found and reunited with our neighbor. The relieved woman wrote a post thanking everyone for their love and concern and for sharing her joy, in the cat’s safe return home. She posted, “Don’t ever underestimate the power of prayer!”

This experience reminded me of Caterpillar. Caterpillar was my cat, growing up and he was a legend. We called him Pillar. Pillar was a huge, long-haired, grey tabby cat. Retrospectively, Pillar probably was a Maine coon cat, but back in the late 1970s, cats were just cats, and we got Pillar by responding to an ad in the local Pennysaver, from a lady whose cat unexpectedly had kittens. Still, Pillar was a gorgeous cat and he totally lived life on his own terms. He was an indoor/outdoor cat, as most cats were back then. From his outdoor adventures, Pillar often brought us “presents”, alive and dead, and we had to chase live birds, their wings flapping frantically, out of our home, more times than I can count.

Pillar adored my sister and she adored him. Although, my sister had terrible allergies, she wore Pillar around her neck, like a slinky fur stole, as she went about her day, playing with her toys. Pillar slept with my sister every single night, right on top of her head. To this day, my sister is a “cat person.”

Pillar followed us around wherever we went. If we went on a walk, before you knew it, out of nowhere, Pillar would pop out of the bushes, to show you that he was along for the adventure. When we would go sled riding, Pillar would chase our sleds and little ice balls would be attached to the back of his furry legs, because we would stay out in the snow, all day long. And Pillar stayed with us.

Pillar cemented the idea into my head, that cats truly do have nine lives. As I said, he lived life on his own terms. Once we took him on our vacation and he wasn’t happy about being at a lake house far from home. He camped out under the lake house, and we ended up spending half of our vacation looking for him. Pillar liked attention. Once, when my dad sold our boat, and the new owner, having driven the boat home, several hours and hundreds of miles away, called us, to let us know that Pillar had been a stowaway on the boat. Sadly, one year, Pillar almost died of a urinary tract infection, but our vet was so taken with Pillar, that our vet spent his Christmas, with Pillar at his personal home, nursing him back to life. That was the one of the best childhood Christmas presents we ever got. Pillar lived!!

Memories about Pillar came up for me a lot, these past couple of weeks, following my neighbor’s daily posts, asking everyone to keep an eye out for her kitty. You see, one time Pillar disappeared for a very long while. Pillar disappeared from our lives for days that turned into weeks and then into months, nowhere to be found. Despite our desperate shouts and long “hunts” for Pillar, he didn’t come home. I remember clearly, one day, my mother stating to me that it would be best for me to accept that Pillar was “gone” and that he probably wasn’t coming back. I was probably around 10 years old at that time.

That day, I remember so clearly and vividly, climbing high up into a big old apple tree that shaded our yard. I climbed as high as I could go and I cried. I sobbed. And then I prayed. I’ve stated before that I don’t consider myself a religious person, but I am a deeply spiritual person. Luckily for me, my intense faith has been with me, ever since I can remember, and my faith has never wavered. I have always had a very personal relationship with my Creator. After I cried and I prayed, I felt that soothing, regulating, peace and calm, that only my Creator can give to me. I climbed down from the apple tree and I went about my day. Pillar came home, a few days later.

Pillar lived to a ripe old age. I was already married and out of my parents’ home, the day that he died. My mother said that as Pillar took his last breaths, he reached out to try to catch a fly who had landed near to him. Hunting was always Pillar’s greatest passion.

We have all been suffering gut punches left and right, since practically the beginning of this year, which we (not so fondly) call 2020. When my memories flooded back about Caterpillar, our childhood cat, these past few days, I was reminded of my friend who has been texting pictures of the cocoons that she has been watching carefully in her well-tended butterfly farm. She has released several gorgeous butterflies into the world these last few days, and it has been so much fun to watch the progression, through her pictures, which started with snaps of striped caterpillars chewing on their leaves. Interestingly, towards the end of the cocoon stage, the cocoon gets so translucent that you can make out what the butterflies will look like. You can see what the butterflies will look like, before they even know what beautiful creatures, they have become. I think that we are all in the cocoon stage these days. We are sometimes hanging on by a thread, like I felt that day in my childhood, clinging to the branch of the apple tree, crying out to our Creator. Yet, we are being protected in our cocoons, and our Creator can already see the marvelous transformations that have happened and are still happening to us, during this difficult, transformative stage.

Let’s hold on to hope, friends. Let’s know the power of prayer. Let’s just try to rest in our cocoons, for now. Let’s visualize our cocoons surrounding us with the energy of Love. There is nothing stronger than Love. And it’s protecting us. Fiercely.