In the ninth century, an anonymous writer in Ireland—most likely a monk—wrote a poem about the tranquility of working with his cat Pangur by his side. This summer, I was able to relate to this monk not only on the level of sheltering from contact with others but also on the level of feline companionship. Here are just a couple verses from the poem and vignettes revealing what I learned from quarantining with nine cats.
I and Pangur Ban, my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
At the beginning of the shelter-in-place order, my family welcomed a stray, pregnant black cat into our home. A few nights after we welcomed in our shadowy guest and she had settled into our laundry room, she went into labor. From my seat just inside the doorway, I listened to the first mews as they broke the dark stillness. We peered into her nook to find six little kitten bodies, three black and three spotted, silently squirming up against her to nurse. Completely blind and deaf, they had no way of perceiving the darkness that surrounded them; they could only writhe toward the warmth of their mother and do their best to stay as close as possible to her. Are we not, in some ways, like the kittens? The way forward is dark; the next week, the next day, the fall semester are obscured from view. Yet, how differently do I often react to this blindness? I wander blindly into the darkness, trying to stretch my plans beyond my own feeble ability to see. The kittens, on the other hand, squirm towards their mother’s warmth, abandoning themselves to the providence of their mother. Christ’s words come to mind: “Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?” (Mat. 6:26). Even more so, the words of the Prophet Isaiah resound: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15). To paraphrase in new terms: if fragile kittens so faithfully cling to their mother cat, how much more ought we to faithfully cling to the warmth of Our Father in Heaven when the way grows dim and our eyesight fails?
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will;
He, too, plies his simple skill.
The kittens, for the next two weeks, plied their “simple skills”: nursing and sleeping. Meanwhile, we went about our day-to-day activities, but not as usual. While researching kitten care, I discovered that a mother cat who thinks her surroundings are hostile will eat her kittens. In my frantic attempt to ensure that this did not happen, towels were laid on the stairs above the laundry room, voices were lowered, and footsteps became tiptoes. I continued to go into the laundry room and sit next to their nook, bringing reading, midterm papers, and even Zoom classes with me. The quiet of the laundry room—and the whole house—was not one of stagnation, but of continued yet transformed productivity. Hospitality requires a sacrifice from the host. Having extended to us “the spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8:14-15), the Divine Host makes room for us in His family and sacrifices His Life for us in the process. Do I allow him to enter into the mundaneness of my life? Do I set aside space for Him, walk a little more softly for Him, lower my voice for Him? Do I acknowledge the ways my life needs to change when I say like the centurion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof…” (Mat. 8:8)? If I can allow the arrival of some cats to change the way I go about my daily business, how much more ought I to allow the Presence of God to change the way I live my life?
So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.
Four weeks after the arrival of our furry guests, two more were added to their number: a total of nine cats, outnumbering humans by four. A block from our house, we found two very skinny spotted kittens crying loudly, and we took them in. Isolating them in our bathroom, we hurried to buy kitten milk replacement and began learning a whole new level of kitten care. We settled into a routine of visiting the kittens every two hours to clean and feed them, stimulate their digestion, and kill any fleas we found; this meant tiptoeing into the bathroom at midnight and feeding the kittens dropperfuls of formula by nightlight. This peculiar type of quiet came at a time that I had been missing both the still quiet of the Church during Adoration and the full volume of the Church during Mass, and at the same time had grown tired of the stifling stillness of shelter-in-place and was craving the busyness of business as usual. Somehow the quiet midnight feedings were a peaceful oasis, and even prayerful. I later learned that my little brother had prayed a rosary for the kittens in those first few nights, but more so than this, the quiet was prayerful because, in it, I drew close to Love by sacrificing some sleep and caring for the kittens. Through this little taste of sacrificial love, I gained a new respect for my parents, and all parents, who sacrifice so much more sleep than I did in those few days. To love a kitten is easy, but to love a human, not so simple. It was easy for me to love that kitten, and even to draw near to Love Himself by loving one of His creatures. In a similar way, Christ makes it easy on us: we don’t start out standing all night at the foot of the cross, but sitting all night at the manger in Bethlehem. In The Way, St. Josemaría Escrivá writes of Jesus Christ, “He has become so small—you see: an infant! —so that you can come close to Him with confidence.” How often do I draw near to the Child Jesus and learn to love by loving Love Himself in the person of a gentle child? How much more would my heart’s capacity to love grow as I practice the Presence of God in this way?
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade ;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning Darkness into light.’
“Practice every day has made” Max and Nike perfect in their trade… as I write this, the two kittens we have kept are sprinting back and forth, alternately tackling one another and springing a foot in the air to pounce as their mother naps in a corner. Nowadays, the cat count in our house is back down to three, and the other six cats have gone to a no-kill shelter to be placed with new families. In the weeks that cats outnumbered humans, I cannot say that I succeeded in “turning darkness into light” as does the author of Pangur Ban, but I can say with confidence that God turned our darkness into light, at least in a little way, by revealing His Identity—Love—through the most unexpected, feline vessels of grace.
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