Yes, I know today is THE Epiphany, but I want to share a personal epiphany I had just yesterday, when I sat, for the third time in as many weeks, in the cat room at the South Pacific County Humane Society, getting my “cat fix.”
Under ordinary circumstances, I’d say that was a strange place for “a sudden, intuitive perception of, or insight into, the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”
But as I allowed myself to be inundated with various assorted and sundry feline vies for my attention, I suddenly realized that although my life was certainly much simpler without committing myself to sharing space with another living thing, that maybe, like in The Little Prince, it is only through being responsible for another that one obtains the full richness and quality of life.
All of which led up to the moment when I looked the orange tabby curled in my lap straight in the eye and asked, “So—You wanna go home with me?”
To which he replied, “Meow.”
So despite all my worries, concerns, misgivings and hesitation, I found myself with the courage to take another risk with a cat, and put my heart on the line once again. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”