Pearlie, my service cat by default

There comes a time, maybe it’s due to getting older, I’m not sure, but there is that time when we simply have to accept our defects, they are so glaring. And, instead of trying to hide them inside of our passions or passionate ideologies, we have no choice but to realize, yes, I do this. Maybe because they are sort of mild I can accept them, or maybe because I share their acknowledgment with most of my family and even my pets, they have become an integral part of who I am, and without them, I would not be me. And I’m not even talking about any nasty habits that seriously affect the other members of my family, like smoking or spraying scents around the room that some of my kids are allergic to. I don’t do these things, so I am not on that particular tract of causing unnecessary harm. But I do other things, and my cat Pearl has let me know she is well aware of it.

I have this unusual habit of walking out of the kitchen or the bathroom when the water in the sink is still running. I have had this tendency for years. My kids and others in my family who have noticed this are never hesitant to reprimand me in a very kind but exasperated way that, once again, I have left the water running. It’s not a harmful type of a thing – I’m not going to set the house on fire with this and most of the time the water is running into an empty sink, so I won’t cause a flood, but it is just a reminder of a negligence, and where you have one negligence, there can be others. It may be a sign.

So, thankful to say, I am trying to keep myself abreast of this and remember to turn off the water after I use it, both in the kitchen and the bathroom. In addition to wasting this precious national resource, I most definitely increased my water bill upwards of tens of dollars, something I hardly can afford to do, and it is all a waste. Years ago, I left the water running and left for work, a 9 hour stretch until I again got home. You can only imagine the expense and waste of that. Thank G-d, the water ran continuously down the sink and there were no blockages.

And then there’s Pearlie, my tiny fluffy ball of love that I have had since 2006 when she was born from a stray in my yard … she looks like a pearl … white with grey swirls of fluffy fur …. And pink ears …. Her lineage must have Siamese, because she looks so much like a Siamese cat except for her chubby round face.

Pearlie has been with me for over 10 years, and she knows everything that goes on around the house. She is strictly a house cat. I once tried to let her out only to discover an enormous welt over her eye – she almost lost that eye from being attacked by another street cat – so that ended me letting her out, and in the house she has stayed since, over the past 9 years or so now.

So it is not by surprise – although it was a tremendous surprise to me when it happened – that Pearlie would be aware and alert to my defects, particularly this running water issue. And it happened just last week that I was washing dishes with my usual cold water (I am grateful that my water issue doesn’t increase my hot water bill – I only use cold water for everything except when I take a shower ) in the kitchen sink and my phone rang in the other room. Loyal to my water issue, I simply walked away from the sink, unaware that the water was still running.

The phone conversation took me into the living room and then into one of the bed rooms and onto my computer, where I had to look up something and it was quite a while until I was able to stop. What actually caught my attention was Pearlie, making unusually distressing noises from the kitchen. All of my cats have their own noises and ways they call me, and Pearl makes this particular noise when she has used the litter box and is alerting me to clean it, and also when she has caught a palmetto or water bug or a gecko and is calling me to come and look (I love gecko’s, and usually rush very quickly to see if I could save it from her …usually she has not done much harm and is in the early stages of attacking it and is calling me to see what she caught – if it has not been harmed, I quickly grab it and set it outside to reclaim the rest of its life). But this day when I was on the computer after my phone call, Pearlie was making this noise and I thought she might have caught a gecko so I was very quick to come and see ….

And she was simply sitting in front of my kitchen sink, making this distressing urgent type of noise …. She caught nothing …. She was simply letting me know that I left the water running ….. 

I cannot describe the feeling I have of gratitude to these tiny creatures that really do look over us. Even when we feel we are so advanced and capable, they are there to fill the void, to correct the hidden and embarrassing flaws. It is amazing to me how they cover for us.

Over the years, I have given myself credit continuously for things that I consider remarkable – even to the point of haughtiness. At 61, I still mow my own lawn in the Florida heat and work completely online as a registrar for a virtual college, something that many of my friends of this age cannot even fathom to do. Even mowing my own lawn and creating butterfly gardens, spending hours in the yard in the Florida heat scares even my own adult children. I now live by myself with my cats and a rescue chicken and manage to keep my house in one piece – and keep myself functioning as well. And then I have additional private victories that I have become so arrogant about, personal accomplishments to gloat on - even in private. But all this self adulation just crumbles when your tiny cat calls to you from the kitchen that you left your sink water running. How fantastic is that? How truly helpless am I without something like this?

Of all the things I am passionate about, protecting animals probably tops the list. Not only because we have such a remarkable mitzvah in our Holy Torah not to harm animals, but because so often they are our helpers, sent from HaShem. I used to think that that saying ‘G-d couldn’t be everywhere, so He created mothers’ was very true, but now I realize that mothers cannot even hold a candle to some of these remarkable creatures He created to help us. When we least expect it, we are given creatures that befriend and care for us, even unaware.