Teacher

     "I want to tell you about my cat, my Buddhist cat."

    I nodded, and tried not to smile, or, rather only smile and look receptive. She was old, quirky old, and Mother had told me--ordered me--to be patient with her which, in those days, I interpreted as "Keep your mouth shut."

    "He practices walking meditation," Nanny was saying. "First thing in the morning, he rises, stretches, walks the perimeter of the bed, then the room, slowly now because he's old, like me, but he is mindful."

    "Mindful?" I had to ask--mindful must mean full of mind, or something like that.

    "Yes," Nanny said. "That old cat is mindful--first thing I noticed about him when he showed up at my door. He was slow, took everything in, step by step. He smelled, he touched, he stopped for a second before moving on, the most Buddhist feline I've ever known."

    I remember now that I almost laughed at that. Buddhist feline!? Luckily, I held it in, and said just the right thing. "Tell me more."

    So she did, this grandmother of mine, my oldest relative, a woman with an occasional crack in her voice but, in my memory, a gift for eloquence, patience, and love.

    The cat, her cat, the cat she named Teacher, knew himself, she said, accepted himself, accepted himself as a cat with the power of smell and consciousness. "I know Teacher would like to be outside, in the fresh air, but I can't let him out because of the birds. His feline instinct would take over."

    "Feline instinct?"

    "The hunter in him. Birds are food, so he sits at the window . . ." she pointed to the window next to her chair, "and watches, is mindful of his ancient instincts. He watches, and I watch. We are mindful together.

    "That's it?" I said, I hope without showing my incredulity at her romantic account of an old cat.

    "Yes," she said. "It's enough."

~

    That was more than 60 years ago, but the memory still soothes me, slows me down, calms me every morning, and makes me grateful for two of the best teachers in my life, Nanny and her cat.