Dedicated to my cats and the super mutt Shepard dog who looks after them.
We’re all just along for the ride, for as long as it lasts…

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In gardens where dappled sunlight plays and dances,
Cats move with grace, untouched by fortune’s advances.
They need no deep philosophy to guide their way,
Content to simply bask in the quiet gift of the day.

Cats, arch-realists, slip free from human schemes,
They live each moment, unbound by restless dreams.
Secure in their nature, they simply exist,
While humans, tangled in thought, endlessly persist.

For cats, contentment is their natural state,
No frantic projects, no haggling with fate.
They lounge in the daylight, they hunt when they must,
They play without purpose, in instinct they trust.

Humans, divided, are haunted by thought,
By stories and futures and lessons self-taught.
We chase happiness, forever just out of sight,
While cats, in their wholeness, rest free of our plight.

We seek in others what we cannot find—
The peace that comes from an undivided mind.
While cats possess what we can never claim:
To be themselves without pretense or shame.

Their love is given freely, never owed;
They come and go along their chosen road.
No master claims them, yet their presence shows
A grace that only unfettered being knows.

Cats show the calm that ancient sages seek,
A quiet strength, profoundly pure and meek.
Not worried by the future, free from anxious fear,
Just wholly present and exquisitely here.

So let us observe, with humility’s eyes,
The grace in a creature that never asks why.
For wisdom may dwell in a nap in the sun—
A life simply lived, and a day simply done.