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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Roughly four Christmas ago Debbie and I where unceremoniously run out of Oxnard. We had lost our lease at the Café on A location that we had occupied and provided programs and services to at-promise youth and their families for three decades. No matter how much we “negotiated” with the landlords and the Oxnard City Manager at the time, they were determined to kick us out. They told us impatiently and obliquely that they had other plans. Yesterday, I returned to Oxnard, the pain of the eviction, almost gone. I bravely drove down the old part of downtown Oxnard, on to A Street. What has replaced our beloved Café on A is a smoke shop, soon I suspected they will sell cannabis products out the location. The irony of this building tenant change makes me both want to laugh and cry, all at the same time! Coldblooded profit driven capitalism at its best, and our work and lives in Chiques were permanently snuffed, that hit occurred in the fall of 2018.
We decided to move out of Oxnard and Ventura County, lick our wounds, recover and let the Spirit of Love heal, comfort and direct us. We ended up in Orcutt, a tiny town right outside of Santa Maria in the county of Santa Barbara. As divine intervention would have it we found the perfect location, a quiet and secluded little home nestled between the strawberry and blue berry fields of the area. The house had a big yard with lots of area to garden. I immediately started to plant forages plants that were being discarded by my neighbors. I promised myself that I would not spend a penny on any foliage that I would plant in the yard. I wanted to recycle, forage and rescue the plants, give them a new start, a new home, a new life. In the beginning it was symbolic then I found the plant “rescue” mission to be healing and liberating. When I would run in the majestic hills of Orcutt, I would gather wild sees, broken cutting, and damaged seedlings to plant in our garden. I have been out in the garden a lot over the past four years. It was during this time of reflective healing that a skinny, frightened, and very wild mongrel cat began hanging out in our garden.
Over the next few months, no matter what we tried the cat would not get close to us. If we got to close he would run off. We would see him through the course of the day resting nervously under the beautiful pine tree perimeter that protects our home from the world. We left milk, pieces of meat, and even bit of cat food that we got from the store in order to show the wild cat that we were not the enemy. We even gave the cat a name, we called him Whiskers. Not a very imaginative name, almost given to him as an afterthought really. We did not think for a moment that he would be in lives for very long. It was right about Christmas that Whiskers began to bring us daily gifts, a gopher one day, a rat the other day, sometimes a bird. He was now eating the cat food that we would put out for him on a daily basis. Every day he would leave a gift, the catch of the day on our porch. It seemed clear to us that he was reciprocating for our attention and care. Over the next year Whiskers took care of all our “rodent” issues, gophers, squirrels, mice, rat, and even the pesky racoons all disappeared. My garden plants were happy, the critter went elsewhere, otherwise Whiskers took care of them.
Over the course of the past four years, ever so slowly, we have gained Whiskers confidence and we learned from this wild the cat a lot about ourselves. First of all the cat is a female, so we changed her name to Lady Whiskers. She is a wild cat and will never be fully “domesticated” and we have come to understand and respect that about her. She will take the food that we provide her, but when she wants, and this is frequently, she will still expertly hunt for her food. She always “shares” her quarry with us. Lady Whiskers, like all cats loves to be petted and groomed. So every day out in the yard I groom her and she purrs in blissful delight. This daily ritual continues throughout the course of the day, the Lady cannot get enough of our loving grooming attention. It struck me on day that she was showing and training me to be mindful, in the moment. I was learning to meditate for the first time in my life. She showed me that the time and attention she give to me is peaceful, loving and at that the moment shared between us is the most important moment in the universe. For a man that was perpetually on the run in my pervious life this “cat lesson” was revolutionary.
Lady Whiskers, a “human” whisperer has converted me into a cat lover. That wild and frighten feral feline now follows me around the yard. Lady whiskers now sleeps at the foot of our bed. She has been patient with me and taught me some of her marvellous language of the senses, she tells me where all the birds are, she lets me know when “danger” is approaching, she lets me know in no uncertain terms when she wants to be groomed. We understand one another, she is loyal, loving, yet Lady Whiskers is still the master and ruler of her wild world. When she decides to revert to her natural instinct, which is daily, she is a lightening quick and agile deadly hunter and disappears for hours to do what wild cats do. She always returns home and lends calm, peace, and mindfulness to our lives.
This Christmas I will be spending a quiet, mindful and peaceful day alone with Lady Whiskers. My extended family members, having made peace with their monsters, fantasmas and assorted boogeymen are now strong and secure enough to visit their once estranged and warring families. Lady Whiskers has been in large part responsible for this transformative miracle. It was Whiskers that helped us all find mindful peace in the moment. A real love and appreciation for the simplest thing in life that we all can give to one another, a moment at a time, for the rest of our lives. It is this wild, once abandoned cat that reminded me and my family that the greatest gift is love and we can all give freely and all of the time to every one we me.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.