Trusting the Wisdom of the Four Foots

Cats and dogs and the space for surrender

I have no idea when I subscribed to

Tom Cox

’s newsletter, The Villager. I wish I knew who to thank.

Presumably, many of Tom’s unread messages languish in my inbox, but pure serendipity caused me to open one with subject: “The Ginger Man.”  Well, serendipity and my own natural affinity for redheads.

At any rate, this was a week in which I clearly needed to read about the gastric adventures of an English feline. 

Having a new puppy will drive you back into the arms of the cats, it seems. 

“The Ginger Man” describes an orange cat named Jim who crunches upon mice bones a scant few inches from the author’s head. Seeing as this is an essay about remarkably revolting, yet somehow endearing animal habits and about sleep deprivation, it’s small wonder the universe moved my mouse hand to open this particular newsletter.

We lost our beloved elder cat, a white and ginger confection named Big Love “Dingle” MacLir, in late September. I’d been losing sleep due to this beloved creature for months and months before his grace-filled exit.

 Once he was gone, I was briefly high on well-restedness, honestly more grateful for the uninterrupted slumber than crippled with grief. 

But, alas, Dingle’s younger brother Little Dude MacCool (a slightly more orange fellow who rings in at an extra solid sixteen pounds) was an only quadruped for a scant six weeks before we welcomed in a golden retriever poodle mix named Fionnuala Hazelwood.

Elusive sleep, caught by Nuala and the author on a beanbag chair in the living room, shortly after dawn.

(Nuala, as she is known, looks so unlike the golden doodle you’re imagining, I hesitate to invoke the phrase, even though it is well within her puppy dog rights to claim the title of “designer dog,” albeit from a shelter in Kentucky.)

More than a few humans (myself and Tom Cox included) are willing to go irrational seeming lengths to accommodate the so-called domesticated creatures who share our homes and our beds (and our beanbag chairs). Now, I’m not only awake at all hours of the night, but I am also outside for several minutes of those hours. 

I’ve been chatting with Orion and Cassiopeia and wondering if they have any sort of relationship after all these years gazing at one another across the starlit autumn sky. It’s important I remind my star struck self that I need to look down to see if Nuala has actually pooped because I am not out there to commune with the heavens, but to get her emptied out before another three hours of puppy sleep can be achieved.

All of this is to say, I haven’t much of any worth to say about mythology or culture or writing or storytelling this week. My grasp of dog training is south of rudimentary and I have yet to master the art of selecting the perfect chew toy, so I’ll save you from my thoughts in those areas.

This lull was inevitable, even if I hadn’t thrown the family into the full catastrophe of very young dog adoption.

The first part of Season 4 of KnotWork Storytelling wrapped last week with my story, The Last Sovereignty Goddess.

Since writing Mythology is Political last week and seeking to explain to my international audience what inspires the deep connections between Ireland and Palestine, I find myself empty of words.

Part of me wonders at the timing of all this, the way I suddenly filled the tiniest bit of white space on my calendar and free territory in my mind to the exacting care of a canine infant. Am I afraid of the luxury of rest? Do I feel I can only prove my value in the endless hustle? Am I just slightly insane?

When my head is clearer, I assume I will remember all the feminist writers who speak of the silences that come from creatives who are fully subsumed with care-giving.

But then, a wiser part of me already knows why. 

In the midst of bombs and death abroad, school violence and the endless fear that this American way of life just can’t last, I needed a chance to plant my feet in the ground and set my mind on the path of the stars. The surest way to do that is to walk beside the four-footed ones and see the world through their senses, for as long as you can in each twenty-four hour day.

I surrender, for now, to sleeplessness, to short walks that take a very long time, to training and guiding and slowing the pace to accommodate a brand new life.

And with that, new stories and new strength will come. Trust me.