If you see a whole thing—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives … But close up a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
Sakari lies perfectly calm and still, gracefully poised on the uppermost branch of a barren eucalyptus tree. I can almost imagine she’s no longer alive, one of those taxidermic leopards on display in a natural history museum, if not for an occasional twitch of her tail, the steady rise and fall of her chest, and a barely imperceptible flare of her nostrils with each breath. Her chin rests upon her paws. Her eyes gaze forward in my direction, casting their hypnotic spell—drawing me in, urging me deeper—now and then blinking, but lacking expression … vacant … empty … almost lifeless.
My heart leaps into my throat, and in its wake swells a rush of tears. Before it overwhelms me, I hold off a welling wave of sadness and draw back farther into the shadows. Brushing a stray tear from my cheek, I lean against the rock wall and settle deeper into the crevice. Watching. Waiting. Searching her body, her facial expressions for even a slight hint of change in her features.
Sakari first came here five years ago along with her mate and companion, Mufasa. Though they had lived together at their former zoo, their history before that was oddly vague. From what I could gather reviewing old records, as part of an active breeding program, they were brought together from different litters and introduced as young adults. Once together, they stayed a pair throughout each move from zoo to zoo.
Almost since their arrival here, life for the pair seemed beset with troubles. Both cats faced an unsettling stream of medical issues, one after another. At first their problems, though frequent, were minor (a bit of hair loss, a few lacerations, short bouts of refusing to eat); but then through the years their issues progressed till both were diagnosed with renal disease. Mufasa’s kidneys failed alarmingly fast, and he passed within only a year of his diagnosis. Though Sakari’s disease had progressed much more slowly, it clearly was taking a toll on her body. And aside from her keepers, since her loss of Mufasa, Sakari lived entirely in solitude.
Native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and southern China, clouded leopards live their lives in seclusion, rarely—if ever—seen by man. By nature they are arboreal and so well adapted for life in the trees that Malaysians call them harimau-dahan, the “tree branch tiger.” Historically found from Nepal in the west to the coast of the South China Sea in the east, and south to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, they’ve adapted well from life in the trees to a range of terrains, from grasslands to swamps. Now, however, they are regarded as “vulnerable”—an inconspicuous way of saying that they easily could become extinct. Loss of habitat from deforestation and being hunted for their bones, meat, and fur has led to few leopards still surviving in nature outside of protected wildlife preserves.
Between the mainland and the islands, two discrete species evolved, but both share in common a skull and skeleton different from those of any other living cat. Dubbed modern-day saber-tooths because of their enormous fangs, they’re as skilled at hunting monkeys and deer as were their prehistoric ancestors. Yet, they’re equally as talented at stalking wild pigs and birds.
Born in litters of pairs or triplets, the kittens nurse until they are roughly five months old. And by the time they turn two, they are living fully on their own. Though little is known about how they breed in the wild, when captive they form pair bonds for life, which means Sakari has been mate-less for three years.
A fly hovers around her face, lands on her nose, and then buzzes away. She blinks and sighs, but still stares off into some faraway dimension.
Where is she?
I scan her enclosure for changes.
Once again, her caretakers have already left the morning’s enrichment. A fresh pile of bamboo leaves lightly spotted with brownish flecks—I suspect sprinkled enticingly with clove, nutmeg, or cinnamon—once would reliably stir Sakari to rub and roll in blissful fits. Now it sits unnoticed in a corner. A large block of ice has been placed at the base of the tree. Mottled with dark patches and tinted with a blush of red—no doubt a meatsicle seductively laced with horse meat and blood—beckons Sakari to sniff, lick, and gnaw at it. Instead it melts neglected in a slowly growing puddle. Not far below her, the pelt of a muntjac deer dangles from another branch and down to the floor. Shunning these offerings, which would easily enthrall most other cats, she lies on the branch unmoving and indifferent.
Sakari’s enclosure leaves little to work with: four flat concrete walls adjoined in a simple rectangle, fifteen feet deep and thirty feet across. A row of massive plate-glass windows runs the length of the viewing wall while the painted back and side walls depict a hackneyed jungle scene. At best, the illusion is vague and weak: winding tree trunks; dangling, knotted vines; a bright green canopy above fades to muddled leaves below; deep brownish moss and a few ferns shroud the jungle floor; and darkened shadows between it all—a two-dimensional picture for visitors with nothing of interest for a cat. The eucalyptus, though long dead, reaches upward from the floor with branches spanning two of the walls. Up above, a green mesh screen overlays the entire exhibit, masking several banks of lights and the ceiling just above. And below it all, smooth concrete floors slope backward toward a grated gutter, so the pen can be easily swept and hosed.
The walls and floor surrounding me differ remarkably from Sakari’s habitat. The floor beneath me is uneven and gritty. The walls where I lean, though formed from concrete, look and feel as if they are chiseled from rock. The ceiling, roughly arched and domed, comes smoothly down to meet the walls. A few canned spotlights here and there replace the rows of fluorescents above. The effect is impressive. With lights cast on the blackened walls and dimmed to a faint, amber glow, it looks and feels as if I am hiding in a cave. Yet, the contrast is painfully stark to me. Between the crevice where I sit and the eucalyptus tree, utility replaces form and ambiance yields to function.
I worry about priorities. A zoo without a steady flow of visitors cannot survive for long. Yet, focusing on patrons before the needs of animals betrays a zoo’s essential purpose.
Sakari jerks me back from my thoughts. Her eyes are now focused. Her gaze is clearly alert and direct.
Is she watching me? I hold my breath.
She lifts her head from her paws and stares. Still as stone. No twitch of the tail. No flare of her nostrils. I can’t see even a hint of her breathing. Watchful. Intent. Instincts in place and fully engaged. I envision her perched in a kapok tree tracking a dusky leaf monkey as he swings lower from the canopy above.
Relieved to see her mindful, at least for the moment, I dare not move for fear that I could jinx her, once more, causing her to withdraw into some far-off state. I breathe again with absolute silence, each breath carefully shallow and slow, as if she were the hunter and I were her prey.
I sit. She stares. Each transfixed by the other. Several minutes pass. Then as instantly as I came in her sights, she shifts her gaze and licks her paws; long, steady, casual laps at one foot then the other—first front, then rear, then on to her legs … her thighs … her tail. I dare, at last, to shift a bit, just enough to follow her movements.
That tail.
The tail of a clouded leopard is unlike that of any other cat. Though their bodies are smaller and lighter than other leopards’—somewhere in size between a bobcat and a lynx—their tails rival those of most any lion or tiger in length. That massive tail is pivotal to their lives in the jungles of southern Asia. Roughly the same length as their body, it allows them to balance high up in the trees, not only for nesting, sleeping, and leaping from limb to limb in chase of monkeys or birds, but also—when used together with uniquely flexible joints in their paws—for dashing down tree trunks headfirst, like a squirrel, and dangling from branches upside down by a single paw, while stalking unsuspecting prey passing on the ground below them. Circled with black broken rings and covered with thick fur, their tails are a seductively alluring blend of function and form.
I grimace as my eyes trace her tail from base to tip. Except for several inches at each end, Sakari’s tail is thoroughly bald. No scabs. No pustules. No bite marks, ulcers, or other lesions—just hairless. And though I’d never find a tail like hers among a wild cat, this pattern is quite common among captive clouded leopards. While health, nutrition, and diseases, certainly, all play a role, the greatest cause by far for finding hair loss in these cats is stress. In zoos as well as nature, clouded leopards are keenly sensitive—more so than any other felid—to social stressors, intrusive noises, environmental changes, and human presence. In the wild, they avoid such stress by retreating deeper into the jungle or climbing up into the canopy above. Indeed, their sensitivity is the reason for their reclusiveness and why they’re so rarely seen in nature. In captivity, however, they have nowhere to escape. For that matter, exhibits such as this one don’t even offer them a place to hide from the steady stream of human voices and prying eyes of passersby. Add to this the dull, insipid dreariness of a small, barren pen—not to mention the loss of a lifelong companion—and it is not surprising that Sakari is distressed. The sad result is that clouded leopards far too often develop odd habits to cope with stressors they face in their lives. For reasons no one understands, these cats tend to groom their tails till after countless hours and days of grooming, they lick them bald.
Dogs lick at their legs and flanks, horses crib on fences and gates, parrots pluck out their feathers, elephants weave their heads from side to side, and bears pace back and forth along the walls of their enclosures. Patterns of behavior like these are not compulsions, as we saw with Dougal, but, instead, quirky habits some animals repeat, over and over and over again. Unlike as we see with OCD, most quite willingly stop if distracted or redirected to another activity. If not, however, they repeat these behaviors, oftentimes for hours a day. Their patterns vary one way or another, and so they look less ritualized than do those of animals with compulsions. These stereotypies, as scientists call them, occur with no relation at all to what is happening in the moment. In other words, they serve no purpose. But it’s not a mystery how they develop. Conflict, frustration, crowding, stress, or simply a lack of anything new or interesting in their lives can put an animal at much greater risk for developing one or more of these habits.
Odd behaviors such as these are not just seen in animals. We see similar patterns in humans—at times with boredom, frustration, or stress, but sometimes for no apparent reason. Many people chew gum well beyond any “fresh breath” taste: Some chomp furiously; some blow bubbles, popping and snapping them out of habit or delight; others gnaw methodically for hours, almost like a cow, gently and patiently chewing on her cud. On airplanes, in lecture halls, at movies, and in restaurants, I see people sitting in chairs and shaking their feet side to side or up and down, some intensely and others gracefully, back and forth, pausing, then resuming back and forth again. At one time in my younger days, I could lecture to a class only if I was pacing in front of the room, side to side or around in circles—not unlike a wolf walking a well-worn path in his enclosure. Pause too long in any one place and my train of thought just seemed to vanish. (Fortunately, some conditioning and a few speakers’ courses broke this habit.)
Stereotypies also develop when animals cannot perform a natural range of behaviors for their species. Think of any animal and we can sort what they do in a day into various basic behavior groups: hunting or foraging; eating; traveling; resting; sleeping; maintenance activities (for example, seeking shelter, eliminating, grooming); and social behaviors (such as communicating, breeding, and playing). Research has shown that farm cats, for example, sleep and rest for more than half their day. They hunt for roughly four hours daily and spend a bit less than another four grooming. Eating, traveling, playing, and other behaviors combined take less than two hours. From lions to ocelots, these numbers do not vary much from what I observe with wild cats in the zoo or, for that matter, what clients report when they track their cats’ behaviors at home.
Feed a house cat free choice from a bowl with no incentive to search for food, and he will spend more time in the day resting, grooming, or seeking attention. Keep a clouded leopard confined to an enclosure without a choice of trees to climb, reasons to explore where she lives, and a hiding place or two, and she may well end up like Sakari.
We can plot out a time budget for an animal in any setting and predict what might happen if we limit what they can do. I look at these behavior groups as if they’re each spokes on a wheel. If one is shortened, for whatever reason, the wheel, once round, becomes misshapen, and the animal’s life spins out of balance.
When one behavior is not expressed, another behavior will take its place. Animals, of course, are living beings and not unwitting automatons, performing only what they’re programmed to do. To fill the void of what is missing, they’ll draw from their behavioral repertoire. A cat that can’t hunt will likely forage—but if he’s given no reason to, he may well groom more, sleep, or pace. As such, it’s not at all surprising that Sakari licks her tail for hours. What else has she to do? What can she to look forward to? Can a keeper’s daily visits fill the gap left by Mufasa? How does she deal with a constant stream of people staring at her from across the glass—tapping their fingers to see her response, pointing, growling, roaring, laughing? To me it’s no wonder that she retreats into some distant world, far away from prying eyes, within a jungle of her own.
In the rain forests of Thailand and Borneo there are no clouded leopards missing hair on their tails. Despite their reclusiveness, it is not that they aren’t seen; it’s simply that bald-tailed clouded leopards don’t exist. Ethologists who live in the Congo for years never see western lowland gorillas regurgitate to eat their meal once more. On safari in Africa, we rarely spot giraffes licking at anything that isn’t food. Likewise, in the Arctic Circle, polar bears don’t pace on ice floes, retracing their footsteps time and again. And yet, we do see these behaviors develop from time to time in zoos.
Twenty years ago, I avoided some zoos for good reason. Times were different then and, all too often, what I saw haunted me long after my visits. At that stage in my career, freshly out of vet school, I lacked the prowess and expertise to know how I could make a difference. Yet, struggling with my ghosts at night, I also couldn’t surrender to them. And so I resolved to work within zoos, using what unsettled me to inspire the changes I longed to see.
For at least five thousand years, humans have captured and collected animals from the wilderness. As far back as 3000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, the ruling class caught elephants and apes to keep for hunting on private reserves. Dignitaries from faraway lands came with gifts of exotic creatures as symbols of their dominion and wealth. Venturing into the deserts around them with packs of greyhounds and lassos in hand, the pharaohs in nearby Egypt caught lions to worship and raise as mascots. Across the globe in distant China, successions of emperors’ dynasties fashioned elaborate palace gardens to harbor their royal menageries.
Across cultures and through the ages, humans have collected countless creatures from the wild for nothing more than entertainment. Once the domain of only the wealthy till as late as the eighteenth century, few in the public ever saw these collections. In fact, the oldest zoo standing today, the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Austria, was founded from the emperor’s menagerie. But, as soon as the common folk got a chance to see these animals face-to-face, public zoos quickly became a crowd-pleasing global phenomenon.
It was not until the 1970s, though, with the dawning of the Aquarian age, that zoos began to rethink their purpose. A paramount shift took off at that time and still, very much, is unfolding today. Although they will likely always be striving to entertain their visitors, today’s zoos and wild animal parks focus to a large degree on conservation. With the rolls of endangered species growing from hunting, poaching, and habitat loss, a central mission of modern zoos is protecting animals in the wild from extinction. And to that aim, hand in hand with conservation, zoos now strive to educate their guests. Docents offer crocodile skulls, waterbuck horns, and teeth from wolves for visitors to touch and hold. Zookeepers schedule training sessions late in the morning when crowds are largest, to show how teaching a new behavior can make a seal’s life more interesting. Overnight stays give families a chance to learn, play, and discover together; fall asleep under the stars with lions or tigers murmuring in the distance; and wake to the songs of gibbons swinging through the ropes at dawn as they explore their habitat.
Behind the scenes, the work at zoos goes far beyond what the public sees. What impresses me most wherever I travel is the zoo staff’s commitment and passion for the animals. Working long hours for modest wages and, almost always, in unglamorous conditions, zookeepers, to me, are unsung heroes: raking old hay and adding new bedding; ensuring each animal is cared for and healthy; hauling; sweating; worrying; cleaning and raking again; endlessly offering new challenges and puzzles; feeding a confounding assortment of diets, each handmade expressly for the animals’ needs—the lemurs savor peanut butter, mealworms, and biscuits; the binturongs eat chicken, grapes, oranges, and kiwi; and the zebras graze on grass hay, alfalfa cubes, and a bit of oats. Keepers, trainers, zoo vets, and curators all work in concert with one goal in mind: the health and well-being of the animals in their care.
Breeding programs between zoos ensure that species avoid extinction in spite of all the perils in nature and despite so many being caused by man. Without the conservation efforts of zoos toward habitats beyond their walls, many species would fatefully be one step closer toward extinction. Tragically, nonetheless, my daughter might still never get a chance to see the amazing sights I have seen in nature—a California condor soaring high above the Big Sur coast; northern sea lions south of Coos Bay, Oregon, sunning among the rocks on Simpson Reef; or green sea turtles swimming in the water and buried in the warming sands of Kahalu’u Beach.
Beyond their day-to-day operations, zoos are struggling to evolve. It’s not enough for them to meet their animals’ basic needs. Today’s zoos must constantly question what can be done to make their lives richer. Animals in dreary, humdrum pens with walls on one side and bars on the other are relocating to inspired new exhibits planned by architects with expertise in zoo design. What once was just display is now designed as theater, as much for the animals as for their watchers. More and more, the areas for animals and visitors exist side by side and commingle as one. In a world that seems far removed from zoo paths, visitors can connect with the animals, experience the world a bit from their viewpoint, and learn about their conservation. But even more importantly, the exhibits enrich the animals’ lives—changing week to week, day to day, and sometimes even more often, encouraging them to explore their world, connect with others, think, play, and adapt—in other words, find fulfillment. When I asked twenty years ago, “Do you feel the polar bears are happy?” I was met with funny looks and silence. Nowadays, I get a detailed description of all that is right and wrong in their lives.
Yet even now, far too often, I still find animals who haunt me—weaving, pacing, plucking, and licking despite the very best of intentions of the team that cares for them. When all is said and done, we expect animals to accept the limits we place on their lives. Most adjust well, but many cannot. They are not living in the wild. Perhaps if they were, they wouldn’t survive with mounting threats of global warming, habitat loss, and man’s exploitation. Even so, as their captors and keepers, it’s up to us to make things right. We must ensure their needs are met and their lives are fulfilled in every dimension.
Our responsibility to animals is really no different in our own homes. Though dogs and cats are domesticated, their needs and behaviors echo those of their wild cousins. So, I draw the same spokes and wheel for house cats as for clouded leopards. Yet, even more often in our homes than at zoos, I find animals whose lives are out of balance. From wild creatures to family pets, the symptoms are very much alike.
I think of Pandora and Persephone, found as kittens less than six weeks old. Amy, a veterinary technician, had brought them into the clinic where she worked after finding them stranded in a vacant lot. Pausing at the street corner for traffic during her morning run, she heard their tiny voices calling from somewhere off between the bushes. When she left the curb to track the sound, she found the kittens in a cardboard box, desperately clawing at the sides to escape. A small plastic cereal bowl lay toppled beneath their feet, empty except for a few thin, crusty smears of something on the underside. Amy hoped they were smudges of food. A bottle of water lay on its side, its lid popped open, half-empty and wrapped within a damp, mildewed kitchen towel; as she crouched down to the box, she could smell its sour, acrid odor.
The kittens’ clawing became more desperate and their mews turned into plaintive yowls. Amy looked up and scanned the lot—no trace of their mother, though she couldn’t be sure the queen was not off in search of some type of food for the kittens. Kneeling beside the box and lifting the smallest of the pair—a girl—she instantly knew the kitten hadn’t eaten for days. As she felt her tiny ribs beneath the shabby, matted fur, Amy wondered just how long a kitten her age could live without food … and what had happened to her mother. She gathered some skin on the back of the kitten’s neck and pulled it gently, as she had done countless times with other animals at work, and even before letting it go, she knew the kitten was badly dehydrated. Setting the girl cat down in her lap, she reached down into the box for the other, who had somehow managed to scramble halfway up and almost out, and lifted her—another girl.
Looking around the lot again, she still saw no sign of their mother. In all good conscience, she knew she couldn’t take the chance of leaving until she could return to check on them sometime later that afternoon. With surgeries booked before appointments, she also couldn’t be late for work. So, fate, it seemed, had taken a hand and dumped the kittens into her lap. While Amy held the second girl, the first one clambered back into her arms. As she cursed herself for deciding to jog a different route that particular morning, the kittens squinted up at her with pathetic looks of pleasure that could not have been more heartrending if they had been rehearsed. And so in spite of her resistance, Amy swaddled them in the sleeves of her sweatshirt and dashed home to get ready for work.
At the clinic, Dr. Dougherty quickly confirmed Amy’s suspicions. The kittens mustn’t have eaten for days and, tenting their skin as Amy had earlier, agreed that both were dehydrated. Based on their condition, he reassured Amy that the kittens, in all likelihood, had been abandoned without their mother. The wet towel, smears of cat food, and half-empty water bottle all pointed to someone leaving the kittens with a misguided hope that some kindhearted passerby would rescue them. Of course, the logic of placing the kittens between the bushes in a vacant lot was lost on both Amy and Dr. D., in spite of the fact that the strategy had worked.
With several helpings of baby food, a fair amount of subcutaneous fluids (for which the kittens squirmed impossibly), and a good bath—since both were riddled with fleas that skittered amid the shampoo bubbles before being rinsed, half-drowned, down the drain—the kittens blissfully snuggled together, swaddled in a blanket in the back of a cage. Bellies bulging with their first meal in days and exhausted from the morning’s adventures, both fell asleep to the trill of their own purring.
The two were an instant hit among the hospital staff—doctors, receptionists, and especially technicians. In only a week they gained half a pound, and by the end of two were as healthy and well fed as any kitten at eight weeks old. No longer tiny, wiry figures with massively pathetic eyes, in those two weeks they grew into their fur, with rounded tummies, gangly legs—quite capable of jumping and climbing all around the clinic—sharpened teeth, and ringing voices that they used without hesitation to demand freedom from their cage, food, and, most of all, attention.
Even before Dr. D. announced that they were ready for adoption, Amy found a home for both of the kittens with her parents. Within only a day of finding the pair, she’d figured out her strategy to work on her mom’s and dad’s sympathies. Persistently, but carefully, each time she saw her folks she gave them updates enhanced with pictures from her phone. But the deal was sealed one day at lunch, when she convinced her mother to meet her at the clinic, “and, oh, while you’re here, let me show you those kittens I found.” Fittingly dubbed Pandora and Persephone the day they left by all the staff without dissent, the girls Amy let out of the box took off with her parents to begin a new life.
The sisters took to their home instantly, exploring every cabinet and closet, managing even to open a few with a bit of willpower and perseverance. On the day that they arrived, Nate assigned them to Amy’s old bedroom; however, the kittens had other plans, and within a week they’d joined Nate and Sheila among the blankets of their roomier bed. Her parents didn’t mind, however, and were actually quite grateful for Amy’s insistence that the girls would “brighten up” their otherwise boring lives.
I came on the scene almost a full year later from when the girls first moved in. But again, as with their adoption, it was only after Amy’s gentle encouragement for weeks. “Maybe we should just try asking Dr. Virga if he could help.”
So, I sit at their table with her records before me, enjoying the view from the eat-in kitchen to the courtyard and small garden beyond. While I listen to the Wolfersons’ stories, the kittens play around our feet. Pandora has already discovered my doctor’s bag, climbed in it without hesitation, found the compartment with my hidden stash of treats, and is grabbing and gnawing at the bag of freeze-dried chicken. Persephone, I have no doubt, would have joined her sister if there was room, but instead is pouncing in mock attacks at Pandora’s tail whenever it swishes outside the bag.
As Nate interjects for the second time with “You know, they really aren’t that much trouble,” Sheila explains why she had called.
“We love them dearly, but I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for ages. And it’s getting worse—not better.”
The story, it seems, was that both sisters would reliably wake the couple sometime around four a.m. every morning. Nate would roll over and fall back asleep with his head buried underneath one of the pillows. Sheila, a lighter sleeper, was left to face the kittens.
“First I hear them crying—it’s almost a sort of moaning … and after a while it becomes a bit grating. They just keep going on and on.…”
“For how long?”
She pauses. “Well, if I just lie there and cover my ears … maybe ten, fifteen minutes. I know—maybe that doesn’t sound so long, but it gets to me after a while. I still hear them through the pillows.”
“Oh, no—please—I totally get it.”
“But honestly, I really do try to just ignore them.…”
“Okay, just so I really get picture, would you say it’s kind of a yowl like this?” I launch into my best imitation of what I’d describe as a Siamese maowll. “Or more of a wail, maybe?” I follow up with a mournful but more insistent weayeow.
“Yeah, there you go—that’s pretty much like it. Of course, it’s not just that. Then they start acting really hyper, running across the bed, knocking things off the bedside tables, or they go off to the bathroom counter and knock things over or onto the floor.”
“Only if you ignore the crying, or do they do that no matter what?”
“Oh, no, they’ll always do it … just sometimes they start right away and other times they’ll wait for a while.”
“Five, ten minutes—or more?”
“Sometimes five, maybe less. Other times, easily ten.”
“Oh—so sometimes they meow for a bit, just start running around, and then go back to meowing?”
“Exactly.”
“And you’re still lying there with your head in the pillows?”
“It’s really hard, but, yeah—unless they knock something over or pounce on my tummy.”
“And then you …?”
“Well, of course, I have to go and check what they got into. If they’re in the bathroom, Persephone demands a drink from the faucet.”
“How?”
“She meows and paws and won’t leave me alone while I’m picking up whatever it is. And by then it’s just like, ‘Give me a break for a minute, girls!’ ”
“And if they jump on you, you know, back in bed?”
“Oh, they do that all the time. It’s kind of like: yowl; come up to my pillow; sniff my face and rub against me; pounce around on the bed and me—sometimes around the room. Then it’s often quiet for a while—that’s when I get really nervous.”
“Why?”
“Let’s see … sometimes they’ll knock things off the bookshelf. Oh, or our nightstands! It’s like they’re doing it on purpose, you know, just to see if they can get me up. I gave up keeping vases or flowers in the bedroom. Or figurines. Or things like that—anything breakable. Of course, sometimes they go off to the living room and then, sure enough, I’ll hear something fall out there.”
“When do they finally give up?”
“Oh, they don’t. I mean, they’ll stop for a while if I give in and feed them, but then they start up again, maybe an hour later—just as I’m falling asleep again—maybe not even that long. And it’s so unfair. Nate sleeps through it all.”
A picture is jelling in my mind. I turn to Nate. He raises his eyebrows, sheepishly smiles, and takes a sip of coffee. Around the edge of his cup, I watch his cheeks begin to blush. Then, I turn back to Sheila.
“And if you lock them out of the bedroom?”
“Oh, all night long, howling off and on, first that one”—she points to Persephone—“then the other, or both. And then, of course, knocking things over in the living room—off the piano or the bookshelves or the tables—or in the den.”
“Amy’s room, the kitchen?”
“Oh, gosh! Thank goodness not the kitchen—at least not very often—or Amy’s room … or, really, anywhere else. It’s like they hover around the bedroom door.”
“I think you’ve got it, right there.”
At some level, she already knew the answer. What Pandora and Persephone are doing is really fairly common: a classic mixture of play behaviors with attention seeking intended for their humans. She and Nate had already wondered if it might be one or the other. So, before calling me they had tried the typical tactics: locking the sisters out of the room—they cried and pawed at the bedroom door off and on, all night long; cuddling with them to calm them down—they didn’t want to snuggle at playtime; feeding them extra food at bedtime—no difference; spritzing them with a squirt gun—they just ran off and played in the bathroom; and, of course, ignoring them, which certainly was the best idea, but, just like with many other clients, they didn’t do this long enough or with any consistency. So, by giving in sooner or later, Sheila was, in effect, teaching the kittens, “Just try long enough. Don’t give up. And if you keep at it, I’ll give you attention.” And, like good kittens, the girls learned their lesson well.
The solution for the sisters’ behavior is really quite simple for the humans and cats: Give the kittens challenges and reasons to explore their home every day and even more each evening. Offer the girls all sorts of adventures so they won’t turn to Nate and Sheila for attention. The kittens’ first task will be to find their meals—no more big bowls of kibble, most of all not at four a.m.; instead, the girls will need to search their home for several smaller portions, which added together will make up their meals.
“Two important caveats,” I stress as we discuss the details. “If anything, make it easy at first—put the food in rooms other than the kitchen, but still not hard at all to find. Once they catch on, you can make it more difficult, but just bit by bit. Build up to hiding the bowls and truly making it a challenge. After all, if they were kittens living on a farm, no mouse or lizard would walk up, lie down, and say, ‘Okay. It’s time to eat me.’ They’d have to forage or hunt for their food.”
As I watch Nate’s and Sheila’s faces, they look at me as if to say, “That’s it?”
Refocusing my thoughts, I press on, “The second condition: Don’t keep using the same hiding spots every day. Keep mixing things up. Find new places and switch them for the old ones—behind that cabinet; over there on that bookshelf; in this corner, here between the window and the pantry.”
I then outline an enrichment program to put in place, with a good range of puzzles and challenges to keep the girls busy, especially before bedtime. Finally, I suggest closing the kittens in Amy’s bedroom overnight, with water, a litter box, and a puzzle or two, to help the kittens shift their routines. The rest is up to Nate and Sheila. Only time and their diligence will tell. Although I trust they will keep me posted, I ask them to call every few weeks to keep me up to date.
Sheila calls me ten days later. As soon as phones begin ringing that morning, my assistant, Donna, comes into the treatment room. “It’s Sheila Wolferson on line one. I think you better take her call.”
An alarm goes off in my gut—so soon?
“Dr. Virga? It’s Sheila Wolferson.”
“Hi there.” I remind myself to breathe. “What’s going on?”
She hesitates. I hear her take a sip of something, and then she says, “I just can’t believe the difference. I never realized how unhappy they were. It’s like they’re entirely different cats. Really.”
She goes on to describe the changes she’s seen in little more than a week. After a couple of nights of a few complaints and crashing books, the kittens now sleep quietly all night long in Amy’s room. When Sheila opens the door in the morning, she finds them comfortably snuggled in Amy’s bed. The games, puzzles, and hunts for food keep them busy for hours each day, so by the evening all they care to do is cuddle. At bedtime, with Pandora in Nate’s arms and Persephone in Sheila’s, the Wolfersons carry the sleepy-eyed cats to Amy’s room and tuck them in.
“It’s a complete transformation,” she adds.
In the months and years that follow, the girls still thrive with those simple changes we made in their lives. Though Pandora and Persephone have long since fully grown and are free to sleep where they wish, many times they still prefer to camp in Amy’s bed. Now, no matter which room the cats choose, though, all in the family sleep through the night.
The Wolfersons’ cats adjusted well to their home. Sakari did not to her habitat. Of course, their situations and circumstances were very different—for that matter, so were their genetics. Clouded leopards and house cats sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of felids. Given their species, when their needs weren’t met, each tugged further toward their end of that spectrum. The kittens, already social creatures, demanded even more attention. Sakari, reclusive as a cat can be, withdrew even further from everything around her. Perhaps their greatest difference, though, lay in how their lives were managed. Regardless of all her keepers’ efforts, the limits set by Sakari’s enclosure were just too oppressive for her to overcome. It failed to meet her most basic needs. The kittens’ home, in contrast, was rich with opportunities. All it took was to give their human family guidance.
Integrity is a state of being whole and undiminished. Living with integrity requires that we are honest with ourselves and others about our needs and wishes. Yet, it also means that we fulfill those truths by living them. When we deprive ourselves of our basic needs, we stop living in integrity and our lives become diminished.
Animals by their very nature do not restrict their lives by choice. Yet humans do—in countless ways—with animals, others, as well as ourselves. We have few, if any, captors or keepers, although we act as if we do. Every day we put ourselves in boxes, denying ourselves the things that matter most to us.
We can look at human wants and needs as we do those of animals, plotting them on a wheel—each spoke representing a need for which we seek fulfillment: health and well-being; work or career; creativity and personal expression; relationships and connection with others; and spirituality or a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves. Several times a year, I sketch this wheel for my own life. Each time I do, I find a spoke that is shorter than the others—something I aspire to or value that is missing. Laying out the wheel helps me reflect on my own life: where it is out of balance and what I can do to make it whole. Oftentimes, it is obvious from how I set my priorities and the choices I make from day to day. I skip running to give myself a bit more time to write, setting my creative time ahead of my physical well-being. I leave earlier for the zoo in place of breakfast with my family, trading connection and relationships for work. I miss my morning meditation time to sleep a little later, and all day long I feel less grounded in how I relate to others. Each of these choices may by themselves seem trivial. Yet, added together, again and again, they take a very real toll on our lives. Just as with the animals I see, when we live with integrity, we improve our lives in every dimension: body, mind, and spirit.
As we strive toward integrity, we run into conflicting needs. Yet, staying true to our highest values helps us to reconcile them. As M. Scott Peck wrote in The Different Drum:
Integrity is never painless. It requires that we let matters rub against each other, that we fully experience the tension of conflicting needs, demands, and interests, that we even be emotionally torn apart by them.
And farther in the book, Dr. Peck continues:
As soon as we think with integrity we will realize that we are all properly stewards and that we cannot with integrity deny our responsibility for stewardship of every part of the whole.
We can find wholeness and balance in our lives only when we attend to all our needs and our highest values. We must be stewards to ourselves, honoring what most fulfills us.
We can turn to the animals in our lives who live within boundaries that we have set as humans—our pets at home; horses in the stable; creatures at the zoo; a flock of sheep grazing in a meadow—to consider how we have limited their lives, defining what they can and cannot do at any moment. The ways by which we put constraints on their existence reflect how we set limits on our own. And how we bring them greater fulfillment is really no different from how we do so with ourselves—through careful attention to every part of the whole.
If we’re willing to consider the animals around us and take notice of where we limit their lives, we can better see how we set limits on ourselves. And where we bring them opportunities to find fulfillment in their lives, we can be inspired to create our own new ways of being. When we take the time to step back a moment and look at our priorities—those parts of our lives and daily routines that mean the very most to us—we can see where our lives are out of balance and adjust them to living with integrity. We begin by noticing and caring for every part of the whole.