I left a chicken to thaw in the sink, covered with a cutting board, and went to sleep. I wondered why the cat didn't come to bed, but at least nobody was pouncing on my feet. Turns out that the maid had removed the board and the cat was downstairs, having a fancy feast…

“A cat in Dragonese is called 'miaowla'. Dragonese is the languge dragons speak,” by Luna. “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 blast off! The cat zoomed into space! He zoomed past the planets, and he zoomed past the stars and the sun! He cept on zooming and zooming thru space,” by Miro. Excuse me, I'm single-parenting the kids for the moment and they've taken over. As I was saying,

The cat had dragged the chicken—weighing nearly as much itself—all the way across the room and onto the rug, which is where I found it in the morning. The cat had just ripped through the bag and was happily chawing on a wing. Luckily he hadn't gotten any further. Is this chicken halal anymore? Was it now, technically, carrion? And what do I do with this cat? He's unhygienic, ungrateful, and constantly getting into trouble. In a very small way, this must be how Allah feels. They're trying to help humans and we're just stupid and dirty and ungrateful about it.

I think, then, of the Garden of Eden, and our own garden. We let the cat wander around the garden on the condition that he stays there, because outside are cars and canines and death and injury. But the cat doesn't listen, and I don't know how to communicate to him. How do I explain anything? I'm not saying I'm on a higher level than the cat, if anything animals are closer to God. I'm just pointing out the differences in communication between different types of beings.

One point against religion is that it's not literally true but what does that mean? Why would the truth of the universe fit into the grunts and scribbles of apes? Is the number 7 'true'? Is 'apple' an apple? When I say “aaaah!” to the cat when it jumps on the stove is that literally true? No, it would be more like “rwwaooow” in cat language, and even that is just a symbolic representation of the pain I want the creature to be avoiding.

Science posits its truth as superior because it's accurate, but at what level? If you get down to the quantum or universal level it's all fuzzy again. Science is really like a child who found his father's gun and brought it to school, which is not good for actual learning. Science thinks it's great because it can split the atom, but then uses this power for the basest things. Melting the flesh off human bones and powering toaster ovens for a few years at the price of toxic waste for aeons. How much thinking are we doing without understanding? How much doing without even a thought to our undoing? What's the point of getting the details right and missing the bigger picture entirely?

Science and modernity look down on stories and poetry and feelings, but does this not speak to a higher truth, which is more than the sum of its parts? If God was looking at us creatures—who live in stories and dreams and imaginings—how else would They explain things? Would explaining the scientific structure and creation of the universe A) make sense to people and B) be wise to tell them? In short, would it help or be helpful? This was a core question the Buddha asked himself, and some questions he simply didn't answer. Not necessarily because he didn't know, but because we didn't need to. This is an entirely foreign concept to western philosophy, which insists on jamming its finger into every socket, like a toddler with nuclear weapons and a God complex.

The fact is that for the most important questions in life, science has no good answers. You can see people today trying to cobble diet and parenting and 'mental health' out of science and it's just exhausting. And then you can see science digging up every grave on earth, lighting bodies on fire, and incinerating the climate. And its only answer is to dig up other stuff and kill everyone a bit slower and thus 'renewably'. People say that science 'just works', but does it? To invert the saying, what is works without faith? Just a monkey with a switchblade, let loose across the face of God's creation. Or like a cat with a chicken on the living room floor.

What I see in the cat is gaps in perception, and the difficulty of communicating across them. I also get the urge to just smite everybody and be done with it. How do you keep someone you care for in the garden? How do you protect them when they leave? How do I get the cat and dog to not fight each other, though it's really in their own best interests? You might be a 'higher' power, but you still have to 'lower' yourself to communicate on their level, and they have to reach out to you first. Meow and you shall receive. But the cat is, of course, an ancient god and takes no notice of me at all.

I just clean up the mess and try to get some praying and writing in before the children wake up which, as you can see in the intro, I failed at. There truly are signs everywhere, though we speed past them in our haste to get nowhere quickly. With children, with the pets, with all my duties of care, I can feel the caring presence of God. Of course, like most humans, I usually reject these messages in my arrogance and haste.

God gives us more than enough but we insist on dragging chickens out of the sink to eat them on the rug like ingrates. We insist on dragging every animal out of creation and ever mineral out of the earth and our reckoning is surely more than getting sprayed with a water bottle. There's a literal flood coming, and I'm not cleaning that up. The arc of history is long and it bends towards arks. We've been given the message enough. Now God is taking things quite literally.