Tomorrow is For Fools - TheProof Is In The Litter Box

"Five years from now, I'll have a mansion and things will be better"
"Once I get my investment portfolio up and running, I'll be happy"
"As soon as I get my television show, life will start being REALLY good"


Tomorrow is for fools.

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The family Martin has a new cat. Her name is Chloe. She is an excitable kitten who is bursting at the seems with boundless energy. Although I must admit I prefer the previous pet at the moment, this one is not without her charm. A pint sized grey and white tabby kitten, Chloe is five hundred pounds of attitude and swagger in a two pound frame. She dictates when she will be held. She calls the shots with the humans in the household. Her food bowls are re-filled with no second thought once she fixes her kitteny eyes upon the house people. Chloe, only three months into existence and three weeks at the Martin Family house, has herself a charmed existence in a myriad of ways.

The house is covered in cat toys and cat bells and cat fishing rods. It also has kitchen table chairs, which double as cat-monkey bars. It has grocery bags which have evolved into cat noise makers. It has hands, fingers and toes, all of which are of the most exciting things in the world of cat-dom. The house itself has become not much more than a kitty-cat playground in which a mother, a father, call home, and a son and his girlfriend call their launching pad. But, in the mischievous eyes of excitable Chloe, it's the whole world and she is the undisputed Queen - a Queen, mind you, who would starve without her servants can-opening abilities.

I watch her. She amazes me. She goes and goes and goes, running circles around the TV, family room, kitchen and living room, attacking everything she sees with zeal. If you are reading the newspaper, she will attack it and seize your attention. If you are drinking chocolate milk, she will sneak attack a sip. She pounces at her own tail, then, like clock-work, realizes it's attatched to her body, which is hers, and thus focuses on another toy in another room, beginning another cycle of kitten rampage.

She will do this non-stop until the fatigue sets in. Once it does, she finds the nearest warm place and crashes into the deepest realms of kitty sleep, re-energizing for the next round of all-out Chloe terror.

In the world of Chloe, there appears to be no tomorrow. Granted, there may be limited levels of consciousness, but the fact remains true. When she is chasing her cat-nip bow-tie, there appears to be no other reality at the moment but that. There is not thought of which toy to swat at next, no consideration of whose toes' to surprise attack soon after. She appears to be the master of the moment, the zen cat from the future, sent to teach the Martin family and whoever has an open (third) eye a thing or two.

I found myself watching her sleep, curious as to why she would wake up. For what reason? She has no career to pursue. There is no dream home to build. There is no mate out there for her to meet and, thanks to the neutering service of the Humane Society, no offsrping to conceive and raise. In terms of conventional reality as we know it, her life is meaningless. If I could speak Cat, though, I am not sure I could convince little Chloe of this fact.

You see, in her world, once she wakes up, all is anew. In front of her lay a vast land of opportunity, fun, excitement, joy and pleasure. There is love, too, given from the hands and laps of the people populating her universal reality, that, in her moments between food and play, she is more than happy to partake in. There appears to be no tomorrow for Chloe - only a wonderful now; a blissful, exciting, all-encompassing moment that she, in her infinite wisdom, knows to appreciate.

It matters not to her that there is no University on her horizon, no kids to raise and kick-out of the house, no tomorrow in which the work of today will pay out; there is no pursuit but one - to be. And at that, Chloe Martin is the champion of Being. And at 26 years old and haven seen the majority of my enormous, vast, country and reasonable amounts of the world, I find my wisest teacher yet may very well be a three month old kitten who just happens to love playing with feces in the litter box.