And We're Starting at the End

i have access to powers and locations that he cannot access independently; he needs my help to navigate the world i've brought him to

i simply found him outside and abducted him one day

there are many cats in the world, but this one is the best and my most favorite. why? because he was available to abduct that morning and for very little other reason.

i have a much greater understanding of this world than him, but he has unshakable confidence in his ability to figure it out and i find that really cute

the power dynamic is fundamentally unbalanced, but i let him have a little audacity. a little combativeness and sass. as a treat.

some humans are needlessly cruel to cats or take them in for a short time before neglecting or abandoning them. but i have chosen to love and guard this one with my life. because i think he's neat.

You could give him divine treats at any time that taste so much better than food it might drive him a little mad wanting more. You do not give them to him on any schedule he can discern.

You can lay a dry powder on the ground which causes him to lose his mind a little and behave differently for a short time should he inhale any of it. Sometimes this is inside of his entertainment for the day, and he becomes your entertainment.

You create illusions on flat surfaces that look like prey or other things, illusions that move and sound like they are real and yet when he touches them he finds only cold, flat walls.

You give him prey he cannot eat, prey that are bright colors and make strange sounds and may look nothing like real prey and yet he is enticed to chase and kill, especially the small, uncatchable red dot.

You sleep in a nest of impossibly soft material, and allow him to share this space to sleep beside you, and even to sleep there when you are gone.

Sometimes you disappear and he can find no way to follow or escape in your absence. You create and destroy openings in solid walls at your convenience.

the Holy Spirit is a sleek black cat with a deep gaze, sniffing its dark little nose in the grass by the Crucifix of the local parish church near my house. it is dark and i am exhausted, and telling my friend about my Beloved over text, about how dearly i wish to just collapse into his arms. i walk around the block in the dark, and the black cat emerges from among the parking cars. we share a gaze before and after it crosses me. this time i know for sure i am being watched.

the Holy Spirit is today's reading from Isaiah. "As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you." it is the pastor as he speaks about the healing power of an embrace and me as i stare at the ornate ceiling before burying my head in my hands. it is the sentence: "Let us give grace for the person, the object, through which God shows us His comfort." and i did. i always will. if for nothing, then for the sole reason God keeps proclaiming him to me.

the Holy Spirit is a pigeon in the sun. the Holy Spirit is a cat among the cars. the Holy Spirit is smiling off the ornate ceiling of my parish.

It's also how we know that most dinosaurs had round pupils. It's pretty common for people to depict dinosaurs with slit pupils, probably because of Jurassic Park, mostly because it looks really cool, but nope, they were round. There are very few, if any, birds with slit pupils, which is further evidence for round pupils. And most extant animals with slit pupils are on the small side. Many people think of cats having slit pupils, and they do, but it's the little ones. Lions and tigers have round pupils, because slit pupils are most useful closest to the ground and they actually sacrifice some of their visually acuity for the sake of being better at judging distances in low-light conditions, and most animals with them are ambush predators that jump out at their prey. You ever seen a video where someone throws or bounces a ball towards a cat and it bops them on the head and they seem surprised? That's why; they struggle to track where the ball is going, especially horizontally. So for anything over a certain size, slit pupils are a detriment, especially if they chase down prey.