Scrumbles the Cat: A Tribute

I can't believe I am posting cat pictures. . .

This post is not about scapegoats, or religion, or war and peace. Instead, it is a tribute to Scrumbles, our 14 (or maybe 15) year-old cat, who died peacefully last week.

We often told Scrumbles that she was “the luckiest cat in the world.” She started life as a barn cat on a dairy farm near Ithaca, NY, the runt of a large litter. Our son and his then-girlfriend adopted her, and she spent her first several months cooped up in a second-floor apartment in Ithaca. The one time she escaped to the outdoors, she climbed a tree and couldn’t get down, and had had to be rescued by the fire company.

Alas, her humans broke up; she got the apartment and he got the cat, and subsequently moved back with us. A few months later, he took a job in Rwanda (where he still lives), and Scrumbles was ours. She quickly established dominance over Frodo, our elderly Corgi, and settled into the good life as an indoor/outdoor cat. She loved exploring the yard, hunting (and occasionally catching) small rodents, and sitting in the sun, especially at the end of the driveway, where she could watch the cars go by and harass the dogs as they walked by, sitting just out of reach of their leashes.

Scrumbles had several months of slow decline, losing weight and at times seemingly confused in her small world. But she still enjoyed going out to sit in the sun, and even a couple of months before her demise she was still catching mice in the house. Last week, she declined rapidly over a couple of days, but did not seem to be suffering, and died peacefully in her “happy place,” on a pillow in front of the fireplace.

For many years now, it has been my practice to rise early each morning and spend the first hour or so of the day sitting at my desk, my “time of retirement,” usually for some spiritual reading, journaling, and a time of centering prayer. One of Scrumbles’ endearing habits was to join me, curling up in my lap and taking a snooze. I sometimes wondered if all my efforts toward spiritual enlightenment might be better spent aspiring to simply be more like the cat in my lap.

The main point of this post is so I can pass on to you one of my favorite poems, which I received twenty five years ago from Deborah Shaw, when we were students together in the School of the Spirit. May each of us aspire to simply curl up like a cat, resting in the lap of the God of all Life.

Pax

by D.H. Lawrence*

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house,
with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

*D. H. Lawrence wrote “Pax” in 1928 or 1929. It was published posthumously in 1932, in a collection called Last Poems. These days the poem is available in several collections, for example The Selected Poems of D. H. Lawrence.