Mustang Sally and Big Bad John

Ever since the I became acquainted with the tiny, crying kitten who would come to have the name of Mustang Sally, I knew I was in for more than I expected.

I didn't mean, really, to get her. A few days before I heard her cries in the dark early morning, one of our clan had disappeared. Sophia was likely taken, but I kept on hoping that she had only run off; momentarily spooked over a neighbor's fireworks. When I heard the fearful meowing, I went outside and saw her. Under a parked car, she wailed. Hmph. Not Sophia, I can go in, but wait. Is she following the trash collectors? Oh if they pick her up and toss her in their cart she'll surely die! Let me just follow along and make sure that she stays out of their bins. We had enough, or too many (depending on your perspective), cats, but when the trash collector scooped her up and handed her directly to me rather than tossing her in his cart, what could I do other than take her?

Sally is, without a doubt, the most challenging of all our clowder of babies. She is either full of love and cuddles with the other cats, and even with us, or out of nowhere she'll pounce and swipe one on the head or nibble my leg when I'm at the sink, especially if I sing! The other cats seem to understand her ways as she is now the slightest of the bunch and any one of them could take her on, but they don't. They must know something that I need to learn. All the same, she ofen prances about on my last nerve. A while back I wrote about Sally and while I should have written a follow up to say that although my new experiment of reaching out to her with more love than scorn has made a positive difference, she's still Sally.

After bopping one of the babies on the head today, I did what my daughter knows too well: I sang her an on-the spot song entitled "Sally, don't be an asshole". As usual, Johnny came to check on his lover. They have a special relationship that I try to understand because Johnny's nature is the most peaceful, most purely spiritual, and most docile of any of them. He's the only one who'll engage with her when she acts like that. Jack and Saucy give her "the look" while Peter and Simon stare in utter amazement that such a little thing acts with such bravado.

Johnny and Sally - love from day one

I kept on singing because it wasn't a bad song and oddly enough, she stopped fussing at me for singing and sat down to listen. Maybe she was thinking "WHO is being an asshole, Mom?" As she listened, so did I. Where did I hear that melody? Is it from another song that I've embellished? It didn't sound half bad so surely I didn't make it up!

All of a sudden Jimmy Dean's Big Bad John popped into my head:

"Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip
And everybody knew ya didn't give no lip to big John"

I stopped my singing and thinking and rushed to the computer to hear Jimmy Dean's hit.

Johhny

As with many songs that made their way into our American consciousness, Big Bad John tells the tale of a big strong man with a questionable background who has a big heart. A heart so big that he sacrificed himself for the lives of 20 miners. 20 miners who feared him to the point that they'd hardly talk to him and probably excluded him from their daily lives, but it didn't matter. Big John saved them because of who he was, not because of who they were. He was not a leader, he was not the boss, and he was most definitely an outsider. And yet he saved the day.

Being out of context for so long and experiencing the magnificence of Islam Nusantara, the culturally contextualized practice of Islam specific to Indonesia, I often reflect on American Christianity, my faith tradition.

It's tempting to think that my Christian religion is practiced relatively the same all around the world because of the basic tenets, but similar to the question of which came first, politics or history, I have to ask, which came first? Culture or religion?

As the very Indonesian understanding of Islam permeates this society,  I've learned that the same has happened in the US regarding Christianity, as very surely it's happened everywhere else in the world. Our American cultural traditions honor the underdog, especially the ones with the big hearts willing to sacrifice themselves for others. We LOVE Big Bad John. Maybe, just maybe, to many of us the idea of an ousider thinking of others before himself is something Jesus would do. To think that there is one pure way of practicing religion is ignorant at the least and dangerous at the worst. Our cultures are woven into the ways we practice and understand our faiths. There are no absolutes. Absolutes form the foundation for modes of outdated thinking that manage to emerge from dark places whenever the rest of us stop paying attention.

Recently on Facebook there have been some posts about the leader who ruled Indonesia for more than 30 years. He is viewed as either a kind of father-figure or as a despot, depending on your perspective, His era is referred to as the New Order and was ideologically based on the same kinds of organic heriarchies that influenced the facists of the early twentieth century.

Perhaps you can't see how Sally fits into all this.

According to David Bouchier in Illiberal Democracy:

              Guidance, hierarchy, harmony, structure, familiarity, paternalism, and 

              patriarchy were all key themes in the Soeharto regime's attempt to 'order' 

              Indonesia's social and political life

The awareness I've had about everybody "knowing their place" has finally made its way into the relationship I have with my pets.

You see, Sally doesn't exactly fit in. She doesn't really fit in the way I want her to (I mean I like to keep my things picked up, but for the sake of neatness, not because I have to worry about them getting peed on).

Not to mention that she can be a bit of a bully from time to time.

I wouldn't tolerate behavior such as that from a human. Why would I endure it from a mere cat? I realized that I put up with her for 2 reasons, mostly. Number 1, she's a part of our family. Number 2, she's a cat and I can't expect her to think rationally like a human being should.

This is the part where it all comes together.

In the typical hierarchy of living things, humans should be at the top of the pyramid (much like Soeharto was during the New Order and as a father is often similarly placed in the family structure,)

The trouble with that pyramid is that the people at the top don't always act in the most rational, humane, or intelligent ways meaning that their position at the top is not legitimate. It is false and based on power, money, gender, privilege...you get the picture.

And sometimes those lower in the pyramid act with more intelligence, grace, and aplomb than those at higher levels. Sometimes, those in lower levels, one such as Big Bad John, save the day.

In the 21st century we are facing new times and new ways of thinking. The out-dated idea of structural heirarchy is being replaced by the idea of "heterarchy"

Image with thanks to http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/CreatingNetworkCompetenc.shtml

Even in my rather isolated circumstances I can experience the changes happening in the world. In this case, it's through my cats.  The main difference between hierarchies and heterarchies is that heterarchies are kinetic. They shift and change position - they can evolve.  Who we are, the roles we play, and our positions in society change depending on need and ability. Figure it out, understand it, and make it work.This is in high contrast to the hierarchy model in which places are set in stone and immobile. That model is being superceded. And I learned about it in real time from Sally.

Sally has taught me that there is room at the table for everybody. The onus is not on others to adapt to us, but on all of us to hold space for one another so that we all can learn and grow, together. To have compassion, to think outside our own limited bubbles, to be forced to see something from another perspective. Sally's relationships with the other cats showed me that they knew something about her that I didn't, or couldn't, grasp. 

That made me pay attention.

I've struggled with Sally. She has taught me more than I've been ready to learn and somehow, somehow, she's finally calmed down. She's not a bully anymore.  Sometimes we need to let others teach us something; even if that other is a cat. Class dismissed.

Thanks, Mustang Sally.