INTRODUCTION

“I have lived with several Zen masters—all of them cats.”

—Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Common wisdom insists that cats are not dogs and shouldn’t be asked to walk on a leash. If you’re foolish enough to attempt it, well-meaning friends and family members may try to set you straight. They’ll tell you that cats are too independent and dignified to walk on a leash. Some of them will shake their heads and laugh. Others will share stories of their own feline failures. Most of them will wonder why you would even try such a thing.

But no one knows your cat like you do. If you’re like me, you see your cat sitting in the window, separated from the natural world by a thin pane of glass, and you feel a pang of regret. You know he longs to be a part of that world, to feel the wind and the sun on his coat, to stalk birds and squirrels, to eat grass, and to become a participant instead of just an observer. And you think, maybe, just maybe, you have one of those rare cats who don’t bow to common wisdom, a cat who has never been told he can’t walk on a leash.

The odds aren’t good, but then you look over at your cat and he’s still in the window, laser-focused and chattering away at a blue jay in the yard, and you decide right then and there that you’ll never know if your cat is that rare individual unless you try.

The last hurdle may be your self-esteem. Because cat walking is still on the societal fringe, you may fear how your efforts will be judged by your neighbors. If successful, you may be branded the crazy cat person in the neighborhood. Of course, there’s also the possibility that your cat won’t take to the leash, and you’ll fail. Then, the neighbors may decide you’re not the crazy cat person, you’re just plain crazy.

And that’s where it ends for many. Fortunately, there are a number of people who decide that making this happen is more important than what the neighbors might think. Still, there’s a lot of baggage to unpack before going out and buying a harness and leash for your cat. But even then, as you pass the extensive row of dog-walking paraphernalia to find only one or two options for cats, doubt rears its ugly head again. So, it’s no wonder that so many people give up when their cat doesn’t immediately accept the harness. After being buckled in, many cats refuse to budge, or worse, they have a violent reaction and begin jumping and flipping about like a fish out of water. A portion of the remaining potential walkers stop right there, before even setting foot outdoors.

This leaves a small group of dedicated people; the lucky ones whose cat accepts the harness outright and those who realize that this is a really big deal for their cat and decide to give their cat the time he needs to adjust. This book was written for those people. If you’re willing to invest in your cat, you could end up proudly wearing the crazy cat person mantle and significantly enriching your cat’s life in the process.

This book also serves as a Zen meditation primer. The idea came to me after I’d titled the book. Initially, the connection to Zen was limited. My original intent was to simply emphasize the fact that to be successful at cat walking, you would need to exercise patience, calm, and perspective. In my own life, these qualities were greatly enhanced by my exploration and practice of Zen and other forms of meditation.

Meditation is both the easiest and the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Learning what to do is deceptively simple, as there’s very little to it. It’s sitting and breathing, or sitting and reciting a mantra, or, in the case of guided meditation, it’s about refocusing your mind on the images and sounds that the guide provides. While each form of meditation differs in the fine details and underlying philosophy, they all rely on quieting and deactivating the random thoughts by redirecting your attention elsewhere. Once you’ve reduced the mental chaos to a manageable level, you can dive down beneath it to a calm place that enables introspection and leads to enlightenment.

Conceptually easy, but when you sit down to meditate, things get difficult fast. I found keeping focused on my breath or maintaining a mantra the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted. The thoughts return unbidden and it’s often difficult to realize the focus shift has occurred until you’ve gone on for breathless minutes. It’s no wonder it’s so difficult; your mind has been in control all your life, so relinquishing some of that control doesn’t come easily. It requires practice. The more you practice, the better you will get, but I can’t stress this enough: this is not about the destination, there is no endpoint, and the success will feel very uneven in the early stages.

The benefits of meditation are well-documented and numerous. Inner calm and reduced stress have numerous health benefits. Your relationships will benefit as you gain the ability to see things more clearly and less emotionally. And you may experience changes, personal changes, that you never expected.

I began my meditation journey in response to a severe TMJ problem. TMJ is a condition that can cause extreme pain, headaches, and temporary locking of the jaw. The temporomandibular joint is the point where your jaw connects to the temporal bones of your skull. TMJ is an inflammation of the joint caused by teeth grinding and stress. At its worst, it can be completely debilitating. So far there really isn’t a cure; flare-ups are most commonly treated with muscle relaxants, painkillers, splints, and hot and cold compresses. None of these treatments worked for me, and a bad flare-up would have me bedridden, writhing in pain, for a couple of weeks.

During one such flare-up, I was given everything from codeine to Valium, but nothing worked. At all. The effect was the same as if I’d taken a Life Saver, though not nearly as pleasant. I assumed that I had a weird metabolism that kept me from feeling the effects of drugs. That’s what I believed at the time.

In desperation, I tried meditation.

In the early days, I didn’t feel any change. I was going through the motions, meditating four or five days a week, but it felt like I was struggling with the discursive thoughts that peppered my consciousness without realizing any real benefits.

Except, I was.

I had been meditating for about six months when I found myself in a rooftop restaurant bar, sharing a glass of wine and freshly grilled shish kebabs with a friend. It was a beautiful San Francisco evening in the Mission District, and on my way to the restroom, I walked to the roof’s edge to look down at the bustle of activity on the street below. As I turned away from the edge, I felt a strange, light feeling. It was disconcerting at first, but when I returned to our table, I told my friend:

“I think I just felt the effects of alcohol for the first time.”

He smiled, and in his gentle way left the door open for me to talk about it. Which I did. It probably sounded silly, but it was a huge moment for me.

To say it was on my mind a lot that week is an understatement. Could the meditation be working? Was this a corollary effect? And as I ruminated, I realized I hadn’t had a flare-up since I’d begun meditating and the clicking in my jaw was nearly gone.

And then I began to dream again, or at least, I remembered them. Something I hadn’t done since childhood.

Nobody told me that meditation would impact me so profoundly. But it did. I felt like I’d been released from a self-imposed prison. One I’d built up since childhood and mortared with the best stuff I could find to protect myself from the world. It was scary and freeing and a little uncomfortable.

Where would this take me, I wondered, and still wonder.

Like cat walking, learning to meditate takes time. How much time? This too is like cat walking as neither endeavor has an endpoint. Meditation is a practice. It benefits the sitter in ways that are not immediately apparent and even on those days when the meditation “doesn’t go well,” you’re still making progress below the surface.

This book discusses Zen, but all meditation is similar and if you practice, or would like to practice, an alternative, feel free. My own meditation practice is neither fish nor fowl; I’ve taken the bits that work for me from various disciplines and created my own practice out of it. I hope, after reading this book, you feel comfortable enough to do the same with both your meditation and cat-walking practice.