let's make a little room

We just learned that zoo baby births increased by 25% over the past pandemic year because the lack of human visitors put the animals more at ease.  

Good things happen when we humans get out of the way.  When our impact lessens everything else – the air, the water, the animals, the environment in general – recuperates and flourishes, as we saw so immediately last April.

We need to shift our thinking from I to We and consider the bigger picture, the benefit of the many versus the personal benefit to just one person, then we all profit.  Let’s make a little room for the rest of Nature so we can all thrive!

valuing our resources

Trash and waste, whether in the form of pollution or garbage, are leftovers in an open linear system, a system which is unsustainable in the long run and no longer viable.

When we honor and respect our resources and acknowledge that all raw materials ultimately come from the earth and are finite one way or the other, we become more vested in how we use them.  Shifting to sustainable and circular systems leaves less waste, preferably little or none at all (here an earlier post on zero waste).  This is where recycling with its Reduce-Reuse-Recycle tenet comes in, and the various ways in which we can apply those principles.

One of our most essential resources is water because the total water amount on earth is finite, while our population and water needs have grown exponentially.  In a linear system wastewater is considered waste.  But in a circular system it is reused after having been cleaned and purified.  Israel, a desert country, has put regulatory government mechanisms in place over the past 70 years that have made it water independent with surplus (!), and an agricultural force to contend with.  Israel’s agriculture shifted to water conserving drip irrigation, the country desalinates sea water for drinking, cleanse its wastewater for reuse in agriculture, puts a price tag on water by charging for its consumption, and swiftly detects and repairs over 90% of its water leaks to prevent waste, as described in Seth’s Siegel’s Let There Be Water.   Israel is a shining example and pioneer on how to value and manage resources responsibly, something all other countries must learn to do swiftly. 

On a related note, we are just starting to come around to managing better the trash from the stuff of our material culture (here an earlier related post).  This is how the Repair Café and Fixit Revolution, thoroughly researched and entertainingly narrated in Repair Revolution: How Fixers are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, arose in the past two decades, a counter movement to the post war effort of ramping up production and consumption via built-in obsolescence.  Buying it cheap and throwing it away when it no longer works, and products such as single-use plastic bags and containers, have left us with enough trash to drown in.  Besides reducing, reusing, and recycling, we now need to add repairing to our Rs in becoming more conscientious and responsible consumers.  Repair that lamp, replace that zipper, bring the shoes to the cobbler.  Just fix it!

In our shift to a more sustainable culture with more sustainable consumption patterns let’s keep our beautiful planet earth in mind that provides us with everything we need to exist as long as we care for it.  Our earth is all we have.  We must nurture, not trash it, so it can be beautiful and healthy for us, so we can be beautiful and healthy.

they are our teachers

As a child I only had guppies and hamsters as pets and couldn’t find a connection to them.  Much later in life, when our kids were young, my husband found a tiny cat by the house by the road by a tree trunk.  He brought it to the garden, and after much lengthy negotiation – I was very reluctant – I agreed that we could keep him.  Well, lo and behold, that little cat taught me so much, and eventually we even got a companion for him, and when our first cat died prematurely, I was the one who agreed to fill the void and get our third cat.  Now I’m hooked - and changed.

I’m sure the universe sent our first cat to us.   He opened my heart to all animals, not just him, to how intelligent, communicative, loving, perceptive, even wise, and endlessly patient with us two-leggeds they are.  

You know how an animal looks you in the eyes with such faithfulness and trust?  How it looks at you deep and long, with so much adoration?  Any animal, not just your dog or cat.  The look is authentic, transparent and loving.  No strings attached, no return gift expected. Animals don’t judge, talk back, withhold love, or pull off any of the other emotional manipulative shenanigans people do all the time. 

That’s why we love them so much. They stir in us what we’d like to see in each other.  They model what we strive for, show us that ideal of unconditional love, which we have difficulty achieving but know in our hearts is the way.  When you return that gaze a bit longer, you’ll go a little deeper in your connection, and see a little more of its soul.  Its’s there. Animals have souls. Now I know.

psychic cats

Our cats are psychic. But then telepathic communication is nothing new to animal communicators, who communicate with animals on our behalf when we think we can’t.”  Internationally known animal communicator and author Amelia Kinkade writes in The Language of Miracles, “Everybody receives nonlocal information.  The real question is how much you pay attention to the signals you get.”

Our fish loving cat Peter Pepper comes running, making his very specific fish meow, every time I go towards the pantry to get a can of tuna, or open the fridge with the intent of pulling out some fish.  No fish scent needed.  

In the evening, when I get up from the couch to get ready to retire for the night, Peter Pepper looks at me with his soulful eyes and seems to ask, “Is it time?” Then he follows me ritually into the bedroom, even though the cats are not sleeping with us, walks around once or twice, then I kiss him goodnight and tell him I’ll see him in the morning.   

My daughter has developed an understanding with our cat Mieze that she can go outside without a leash if she stays within a safe zone and refrains from going under the porch (it took a few cold hose sprays to reinforce that rule).   With our daughter off to college, Mieze still expects her daily outings.  When she reaches the end of the safe zone I call out her name, and she knows and turns around.  When she has had enough dust bath, grass munching, and insect chasing time, she usually runs back towards the porch door on her own.  

Previously, I have written about our fledgling animal communication attempts – see link here.  Do you hear your animals talking to you?

friend or foe?

Nature is reestablishing itself on our property after all the construction, landscaping, and upheaval before our move here almost four years ago.  Small trees are coming up and filling in where trees came down or were taken down, the land is settling, and wildlife is moving in again.  

Two days ago our daughter came home and showed me a video on her phone of two long black snakes slithering into the rock wall as she came up the stairs.  Wow!  They looked quite impressive.  We had never seen anything bigger than a garter snake in our garden.  My husband quickly identified our new garden companions as harmless black rat snakes. The next morning both slithering reptiles were out sunning themselves, but quickly disappeared into their rocky home when they sensed my footsteps. Later, one of them visited the herb garden.  But they are shy and run away from us.

My attitude was ambivalent about these two new garden buddies.  Should I be scared?  Should I mind?  How to share my private paradise with what would send many a friend to flee?  But these two snakes found a perfect home in the chunky rock wall, they are not dangerous to us, and they attest to the fact that nature is healing after all the upheaval we inflicted on it.  

I have decided to make friends with them, share my garden with them, appreciate that animal life is moving back into this wooded territory we so rudely disrupted for our own purpose.  They have moved in for good and will undoubtedly keep the chipmunk population in check.  I look out the window and see if they are out sunning themselves.   They can have the garden when we're not around, and they willingly cede it to us when we want to be outside.  We will coexist peacefully.  After all we need to learn to live in harmony with nature again.

in awe

           I am always in total awe when I see big creatures out there in the wild. Seeing a bear (two days ago at lunchtime out my office window), a fox (same thing, out my office window), even a deer, a flock of turkeys, or a moose (last year in Alaska), seems not only exotic to me, but twists my reality back into place.  These magnificent creatures show me how awesome nature is, that we must respect their magnitude, their sheer force and power.  There is always a bit of incredulity at their sight, maybe feeling privileged that they show themselves, and awe that we are part of the same environment that sustains them too.

            It touches something deep down in me.

unconditional love

Why do we love our pets so much?  Or why do we love animals in general so much?  Look in the eyes of these animals - the wolf, the fox, the raccoon.  I think we love animals so much because of their unconditional love.  Animals have no hidden agenda. 

Wild animals may not show their love in the way our pets do; nevertheless their eyes convey a genuineness, a certain innocence, a truthfulness, a vulnerability, a transparency we admire because we don't necessarily see it in ourselves and our fellow wo/men.  We humans are so much more complicated.  We interpret, we judge, we evaluate, we question, we wonder, we manipulate, we doubt.  Why can't we be a bit more like animals?

holistic healing

                 About two months ago we were surprised to find a nickel size open wound on our cat's upper neck.  It looked raw and nasty.  We remembered that we had felt small scabs in that spot earlier.  The holistic vet said to put some coconut oil on the wound for a few days and see.  It didn't improve, so I took the cat to the regular vet.  He prescribed an antibiotic, a cat collar and antibiotic ointment.  The cat collar was a disaster for our poor cat; she hit herself everywhere, couldn't reach her bowl and eat properly and became dejected after two days.   The collar came off, and the holistic vet paid a house visit for laser treatments on the wound, reiki and acupuncture.  The wound was still the same, but our cat ate well again and became her usual self, although she diligently kept scratching the wound open and licked off the antibiotic ointment as best as she could.   

               I am no longer impressed by the Western healing model.  It is useful, and even lifesaving in many instances, but powerless in many others.  Often therefore, either a combination of Western and alternative methods, or an alternative approach altogether, work better. But finding the appropriate treatment method can be like navigating a dark hallway at night and tapping the wall to try to locate the light switch.

            I decided it was time to speak to the cat directly to get her take on the situation - unlike humans, animals are amazingly aware of their own condition.  We contacted our local animal whisperer, whose help we had previously enlisted (see earlier blog post).  It seems that the broad spectrum antibiotic did not eradicate the particular bacterium that lodged under the cat's skin after a simple scratch wound and affected her nerves.  This made the wound feel deeply itchy and hot.  The cat communicator recommended mixing three homeopathic remedies, one in particular for nerve damage, in water and dripping a drop several times daily on the wound.  The results were still not convincing because our poor cat still scratched when the cold water drop hit the wound, and after another two weeks I heeded our holistic vet's further recommendation to try Noni lotion, made from the Hawaiian Noni fruit, which is antibacterial, full of healing antioxidants, and inoffensive when licked and ingested.  Finally, success!   It has been a long and very winding road, but the wound is almost healed.  In the end we will never know what caused the turnaround, whether any one remedy did the job, a combination of several, and whether our persistent intent played a role.

poor bats

       Our bat house is an important conversation piece even though it is still uninhabited.  Bats are in as dire a straight these days as bees.  Many of them have died off due to white-nose syndrome (a fungus disease), while bees have succumbed tocolony collapse syndrome en masse.  Bats are important insect population regulators and can eat their weight in mosquitos and other insects on a daily basis (wow, I would need to eat 130 pounds of food each day).  We like to give afflictions fancy names.  But what is the real cause behind these massive die offs?

            Why do we humans become so sick in later life with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease?  Many signs point to diet, toxins and a stressful unnatural lifestyle.  Studies into white-nose and colony collapse syndrome have also indicated that toxins aka pesticides aka neonicotinoids may weaken these small creatures' tiny immune systems.  Our toxic agricultural practices are upsetting the apple cart aka ecosystem balance.  Not only is it likely that our pollinators and insect population regulators are dying for those reasons, but their die offs are causing further ecosystem imbalances down the line because we'll have trouble pollinating our produce and the insect population will grow out of whack (watch out for Zika and West Nile).

            Luckily many bats live in the cliff next to us.  Bats flutter around at dusk on warm summer nights, when most birds have settled in for the night.  Have you seen any bats lately?

how you treat animals

             Mahatma Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."  He has a point.

            More of us need to know how the majority of animals raised for human consumption is treated - it's dreadful, and maybe this term isn't even strong enough (read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals if you really want to know more).  It also says something about us that pharmaceuticals are tested on animals kept in captivity and subjected to potentially harmful side effects.  And that kill shelters exist is a horror.  Betta fish are routinely kept in solitary confinement in minuscule bubble tanks.  Thank goodness big game hunting is on its way out, the ivory trade also (they kill the whole huge elephant just for the tusks and don't even bother eating the meat), almost, and shark fin soup popularity is down (see an earlier post on that).  But people still wear fur coats and the Chinese still illegally trade animal parts they believe have healing properties.  Nevertheless, zoos treat animals much better nowadays than say a hundred years ago, providing them with habitats that resemble the places they came from, diets as close to their natural diets as possible, and distraction and exercise in enclosures that are much smaller than their natural territory.

            I believe that we are unable to harm an animal once we look it deeply in the eyes - because then we connect with its soul.  When animals are kept in pens under anonymous conditions we don't connect with each one individually.    That's why people have no qualms about eating supermarket meat.  If we all had to look our steak in the eyes, work in a kill shelter, spend a week in a slaughterhouse or a pharmaceutical animal testing lab things would change very very quickly.