Praying Cats.. A little Boy's Encounter with Truth



Posted: Saturday, February 06, 2010

by Michael Angelo Massa, J.D.

Praying Cats..

When I was a little boy, my Italian-born mother told me something that both surprised and intrigued me.

As millions of others, we had a cat. She was a lovely American Short-hair with an affinity for purring. She purred all the time. She was a very happy cat and noticeably so.

One evening, I asked my mother why the cat was purring. My mother non-chalantly informed me that the cat was "murmuring her prayers". "Her prayers", I had asked? 'Yes", she responded, "her prayers".

It struck me as odd that such a sweet-tempered but simple creature was capable of even acknowledging, let alone praying, to its creator. I suspected that it was something cute that a mother would merely tell her child- and her mother had probably passed the same notion to her years before. My naivete, as a little boy, would eventually evolve into wisdom.

It wasn't till many years later that I had learned that scientists have been studying cats for centuries. And what they've found is that a cat's purr is simply a soothing response, actually, an auto-response emitted either when it is content or full of stress. Actually, it seems that a cat not only purrs when it's happy, but it also purrs strongly when it is in pain or when its death is imminent. What a curious thought in creatures great and small.

A famous French writer once opined that "God created the Cat so that Man would know the pleasure of caressing the Lion". Maybe the cat is filled with the Wisdom of Soloman, maybe not..but is certainly a living creature worth noting.

We as humans, frequently forget to curl up and look inwardly, to murmur our prayers, when facing the inevitabilities of our lives.

It seems that the endearing Cat knew the Truth in something we humans frequently tend to forget yet should frequently remember.... that our Creator is always nearby to commune with, in our moments of joy as well as in moments of profound pain, and closer than our very own breath.

This Article has been viewed 198 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.