A glimmer: Ambush at dawn

This morning, in the wooly dark of predawn, I watch my cat stalk his brother. I wake when he tenses in the soft nest of blanket he builds each night on the bed beside me. He is suddenly on all fours, ears erect, eyes wide, haunches high, his white fur glowing from the street lights shining in through the windows. I hear his brother’s soft padding somewhere beyond the bed; mine and my husband’s sleep-soft bodies a rumpled mine field between the two.

Lately, Steve and I have been talking about discipline and commitment. We laugh a lot too, by the way, just so you don’t think we’re this serious all the time. Just last night, in fact, I straddled him on the couch and combed his long, greying fringe of eyebrow hair with a mascara wand. I had been obsessing about it ever since his brows seemed to have a growth spurt this spring, and after dinner I pinned him down and attempted to style them like a summer stock Puck. But in the end, they resembled the stiff flocked feathers of an 80’s girl band and for the rest of the night he wiggled them at me just so that I would snort from laughing.

We argue about the difference between the two—commitment and discipline—but ultimately agree. Commitment is doing whatever it takes to reach your goals; discipline is adhering to a regular practice that helps you reach your goals. Either way, in my opinion, having goals is fucking exhausting. Unless, of course, you can find joy in the the practice. Of just going through the process.

I am thinking of this as I wake to my cat’s shenanigans. I have the benefit of being half asleep—a faux Beginner’s Mind—and I find myself in the rare awareness that I am both observer and participant. As my cat prepares to launch his ambush, I start to anticipate the pain of his claws when he sprints over me across the bed. But then I stop myself, and instead admire the glow of him in the dark, the muscles taut beneath his short white fur. I realize I can’t do both at once—that is, prepare for the inevitable discomfort of being heedlessly clawed, and truly observe the moment. I must choose, and, perhaps because it is easier to do nothing when one is mostly asleep, I fall into the act of admiring him fully—this animal that is at once wild and dangerous, and my living teddy bear.

Meanwhile, his brother is oblivious, having commenced a loud tongue bath somewhere beyond the far off crest of my blanketed toes.

And then it is suddenly over, the two cats now wrestling somewhere in the dark, the field of blankets undisturbed by the weightless pounce leaving not a mark on our shining skin.