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The Other Cat

Have you ever had that feeling that a stranger is or has been in your house? Things just seem out of place or the air has a foreign quality to it. It was around three or four am when Rainie began walking on my slumbering form, a tactic she used to communicate her desire for the morning feeding. Rainie usually didn’t bother me until around Five AM, but I had been staring at the clock on and off for an hour anyway, and was more awake than asleep, so I got up and a started in on breakfast.

The routine usually consist of a third cup kibble, and the same amount of wet food in a separate dish, followed by a generous amount of treats.I was still groggy and half asleep when a the distinct sound of an animal coming through the cat door happened behind me. I turned around in time to see a gray blur sprint into the home. Our clients told us the neighbors had a cat named Chewy that was burgling Rainie’s food, but the audacity to do it when I was right there was almost unbelievable.

Melissa was sound asleep with the bedroom door cracked, and it was her birthday. I wanted to let her sleep, but Rainie was letting me know that the fat silver-gray aka Chewy, was not supposed to be in here. So here I am half done with preparing Rainie’s morning feast, Rainie is at the bottom of the stairs occasionally spitting out a low growl directed up the stairs where the burglar lay at the top step, not sure how to get himself out of the pickle he currently finds himself in.

I walk up the stairs shaking my finger, “You’re not suppose to be in here, Chewy.” I tried to say it with force without giving it to much volume, which only made it sound like I was hissing with Rainie.

Chewy, was plump, bordering on obese, and was wide eyed with terror. The heat from this caper was getting to high and with another burst of speed the grey tom zipped down the stairs with a growling Rainie in tow, insuring the cat burglar kept pace during his exodus.

Since then Rainie has been more vocal and interactive. I guess she feels like I chose her over the other Chewy. Rainie isn’t known for her affections, but that morning she made a point to snuggle up with Melissa and I. It was a great way to begin my wife’s birthday, a tale of two cats, a caper, and a high speed pursuit involving two felines and an unsuspecting sitter.

I wonder how your day started? For me, It was an adventure;Rainie and I thwarted a high stakes caper of kibble, and the promise of what is to come is still pouring forth. Have a blessed day and revel in how your day unfolds. In being grateful for the little things like this there is no end to what the day may bring.

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Looking for Home

A time-capsule of fierce happiness

What does that mean to you, looking for home? I think I have been looking myself. There is a quality you look for in the environment, an intangible sense of gain; everyone extending the bounty of richness to their neighbor. I personally believe that is how true wealth is created, by sharing it and therefore increasing that wealth as a community.

I have learned that the only way you get anything in this world is by a complete willingness to give it away. The people here, for the most part, have this intangible wealth and I want to be apart of that. This community has a real opportunity to become our home.

Woodworking expressed

The house we are sitting for is unique, the floor plan custom, and even the airflow from the central heating and cooling flows differently then other places we have stayed at. Craig and Jane were very welcoming; Jane took us on a grand tour of the the surrounding area; Craig showed me his craftsman side with his talent for making wooden bowls, sculptures and even a high fluted goblet meant more for sipping something potent or rich than regular fare.

The craftsman’s trophies

It’s only day one, but Rainie, our charge, is regale in demeanor, and has been willing to share space with us and the next morning she visited us in bed for first contact petting. Rainie has her own chair, that Jane and Craig have also allowed to become a makeshift scratch-post. Say what you will, it works, none of the other furniture is ever bothered with. That’s surprising to me because there is an abundance of wooden furniture throughout the house. Rainie also distinguishes herself by having thumbs that are in fact functional.

Rainie

Even on my first day, even with the introductions, which can be clumsy at times, I felt at peace in Jane and Craig’s home. Bookshelf’s are found throughout the house, with a wide variety of topics. Pictures too; Jane has this collage of Craig and Jane’s lift tickets from all the years they skied, and by the looks of it, they have been doing this most of their life. Craig felt Jolly in these various screen shots of his life, and Jane had this fierceness in her eyes.

During our tour of the local neighborhood, I noticed the people here seem to have good shoes, and equipment, and it’s more rare to see an obese person than not to. All in all Bend Oregon seems a good fit for balanced purposeful living.

What gifts they extended to us! When you receive little gold nuggets like that, how can you not be tempted to settle down and add to the community? We don’t have to live in a constant state of competition, We can choose to live by extension sharing everything, including our intangibles, with everyone else.

I will be walking through some fear and doubt; questions of how to practically generate income while also fulfilling this need for freedom. I want to make a living writing because I love doing it. I have some serious doubts that haunt me, but that’s not going to stop me. Jane has given me some pointers on where to start and I am going to give it a real go to become part of this community. I remain hopeful that faith and Love will overcome any obstacle, including fear and doubt. I just met these people, and what a gift they have given us. I know what happiness and fierceness is and I learned it from a couple we met in Bend Oregon. I was looking for home, and think I just found it.

If you have never traveled house to house, place to place, you might not even know what home really feels like. Without contrast of experience I’m not sure you could honorably describe home. We have been to many locales and all of them had elements Melissa and I are looking for, but this is the first place that feels like an old pair of worn in jeans. It just fits. We tried leaving before, moving to other pet sits, but here we are, again, and we didn’t force it either, fate or God has been guiding us, and it has felt as much because of that effortlessness.

The Desire For Commune and Self-Sufficiency

I feel it, a need for a different kind of freedom, and it has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with self-sufficiency, as a community. I would love to see the world as my community, self-sufficient, working in harmony and in a commune, but the reality I see is not the case. We have been divided with ill intent.

Never the less I feel this pulling inside me to be a part of something great, and beautiful. So I look for something smaller: a tribe, a commune, like-minded people who also feel this pull. Are there others? I can’t be the only one feeling this hunger. The desire to sever oneself from this cancer that operates out of our reach yet has unrestricted access to the fruits of our labors.

Are you out there? Can we meet? Are you willing to combine resources, create a refuge, where our fruits are enjoyed by our efforts, and not sapped away from those that would strip us bare? Is it not interesting that tribal life, around the world, was eradicated no matter its form? Was it because that way of life could not be divided, isolated, and harvested? Were those circles too close-knit for the education devices that operate in our lives currently?

I personally just want to be apart of a citizenry that relies upon the shoulders of the ones that stand next to them: a commune. Perhaps one day that commune could be embraced on a global scale; even if that were the case, it would be a world of tribes, small circles, interlocked, with a common interest to thrive.

In the dark corners of our minds, there is a voice that says you will never have peace. I stand defiant, ready to take the first steps away from that lie. If we all were self-sufficient, within our small circles, we would not need this big unwieldy apparatus we call government. Our government could be a small circle of elders that once a year gathered with other circles of elders to talk about larger issues. Circles within circles.

We can have peace, but we must first want to truly live within a world that can provide for everyone. This peaceful planet has no place for the gluttonous; whatever the form the wealth takes. There is a reason the meek shall inherit the earth. There is enough to go around, there is enough land, enough food, enough skill, enough love…

The empire that operates before us, has grown on secrets, divisions, hates, and fears. I am tired of that way, it does not serve us. If we banded together and lived on small communes like the one I discovered in Virginia we could rediscover self-sufficiency. We would know that we only needed each other, and not this mythical beast we call government, which has done nothing but steal our self-sufficiency.

This pyramid of reliance, from local to state, state to federal, has created the opposite of what our forefathers have dreamed of. The dream of bottom-up representation has been co-opted, which on its own is not damning, but when you incorporate that with the governments’ vehement desire to keep the people’s very survival in its hands, you have a recipe for disaster of untold proportions.

Maybe it’s my survival instincts kicking in. Is it too late? Can we still band together despite the declaration of war this government has brought down upon its own people?

Our towns and cities would starve if the trucks stopped bringing the food. Should people be so far divided from their source of food? Convenience and safety have blinded us; We have given away the knowledge to take care of ourselves. I say its time to take that knowledge back. Industrial farming is raping the earth of the minerals needed to feed the food we would grow. We must take back the land used for this purpose, redistribute it into manageable communes; growing and feeding locally.

If we did this, you would all see the monster we have created; it would snarl and attack, but we are this monsters lifeblood and the will of the people cannot be thwarted for long. You might be tempted to say that we have outgrown the need for such communities, but I assure you nature is going to bring this current way of life to a screeching halt, despite what the pundits claim, it has very little to do with pollution, and everything to do with cosmic cycles.

Our world is about to undergo drastic changes, due to our star. If we don’t do a 180 from the way we do things now, millions of us, the ones that do survive the initial catastrophe cycle will starve to death. This cycle is being covered by a group of citizen scientists, namely the Suspicious Observers. Check out the playlist that covers this topic in great detail here.

There are millions of reasons to do this, you have just been blinded to them. Wake up and smell the disaster brewing. I want to do this for the freedom it would engender, but there are other, very serious reasons why we as a people should change.

Open Heart; Open Spaces

Today began like so many others; we fed Snook the dog, Oscar the cat. After which, we sipped on our customary two cups of coffee waiting for the sun to crest the horizon.

The time gave us the space we needed to acclimate to a new day. We practically do the same thing every morning, but the quiet space we hold each day sitting beside one another is the beginning; un-rushed, patient, and silent.

We more times than not report on our dream experiences, how we slept, and any other out of the ordinary experiences we have during the night. We talk about what we should eat for breakfast after Snook’s morning walk, and if one of us is struggling, we haggle over who does what, especially if it’s the other’s turn to clean the chicken coops.

Today during our walk Snook spooked a couple whitetail deer, giving chase; he was soon out of sight and I was about to call him back when I thought better of it. It was the space that gave me the freedom to just let him be, had we been in a more confined space, say a suburbia of sorts, I would have been frantic to control Snook. I would have screamed myself hoarse trying to reign our furry friend in.

The space we allow ourselves and each other attributes to our perspective of freedom and is directly related to our overall wellbeing.

Is city life even necessary? Should we spread out, give ourselves the space that would allow our minds to relax so we wouldn’t need to hold on so tightly?

Snook eventually came back when the deer outpaced his interest, and I wasn’t trying to control his every action. It was peaceful and wonderful to watch the whole thing unfold without needing to control the outcome.

Just a thought, but maybe we need to abandon the idea of city living, spread out in small sustainable communities, and allow ourselves to relax the white knuckle grip we tend to have on every aspect of our lives.

We could give ourselves the freedom to breathe and be. We don’t need to cram millions of us so close together. Something as simple as a dog walk diametrically changed me just by the spaced that was allowed. I can’t imagine what else would change if we as a species decided to spread out; we have space, we just aren’t using it effectively.

Just think the about it the next time you or someone you see is frantic, because of how close we are to one another. We could solve so much with just spreading out.