A cat-skirmish

This is the second occasion. A month back similar thing happened. Milk packets usually the man puts in the bag and immediately or sometime afterwards I take it. But a month back, I found one packet near-fully leaked down and made a puddle of milk at the entrance. Other packets were safe. It was some work in the morning, half sleepy, half awake, resembling perhaps my poor spiritual state of mind. After cleaning all out I took a decision never to let that happen again. The milk vendor and the people around were telling me it should have been the work of a cat that was strolling around in the early morn. Never mind a creature like cat sharing my milk, perhaps too presumptuous without my permission. Ok I can take it as a lesson in my ahankara-mamakara tyaga. But the messy work in the morning, oh.., perhaps there is some meaning to it also. Who knows? But why me as if chosen pointedly? 

First time it was so unnerving. Now I have become graduated and I take it with a wink. But my surprise, both on the first occasion and also now is the deft way in which, if it is the cat, pricks a hole in the packet without disturbing any other set up. The bag is not torn. Not the packet handled in a nasty tear. Just a neat small invisible hole put from the underside does the trick and the milk drips soaking the bag's underside and falls dropping. The cat is irresponsible enough to leave the rest of milk pooled down and goes away perhaps. I feel amused with the cat and am thinking just what it tries to teach me? Is it my own irresponsibility in not being mindful and earnest enough towards Atma-Jnanam? Just like another animal I am mindful of only my eating, sleeping and whiling away the time, without any real progress towards self-realisation? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But my reactions are to this effect. Yea the morning tea was delayed and slow just like my understanding and adhyatmic progress. What to do? Willy-nilly one has to live one's own life, in the way one happens to find it or miss finding it. But tea is good for all that.
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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