Jenny just settled onto the arm of the sofa next to me, neatly folding her forepaws under her spotless white breast, curling her tabby tail just so, assuming her best "go to hell" look, and preparing to be entertained. She likes to keep an eye on me when I'm knitting, an activity that she clearly regards as a spectator sport with occasional audience participation.

I give daily thanks to God for my cats, because they keep me humble. The glory of living with a cat is that the cat reminds you daily of your essential powerlessness. Brute force aside, you cannot force a cat to do one single fool thing you want. Cats exemplify the First Law of Biology: "Under precisely controlled laboratory conditions, living things will do what they damned well please." Exactly.

Attempt to boss a cat around and the cat's response will be a bland "You spoke?" Try to commandeer a cat's personal agenda and the cat will remind you, with a single look, to ask yourself just where you got that damnfool notion that you had any rights here, huh? Try to buy a cat's love and the cat will find more interesting things to do with its time. There's no defiance in a cat's mind because defiance implies at least a potential Power Structure and cats don't "do" power with human beings. We are wholly irrelevant to feline dominance relationships, because we smell all wrong. We may make cats wary of us by sheer nastiness, but they have no notion of pleasing us or respecting our wishes. It just doesn't cross their minds.

It is not possible to measure feline intelligence, because that involves doing tests and cats have absolutely not the slightest interest in cooperating with testers. Why should they? What's in it for them? They aren't _un_cooperative; the word "cooperation" simply isn't in their vocabulary. If a cat decides to settle down next to a knitting person and play boogeties with the person's yarn, the person can (of course) shoo the cat away, but the willingness to play is the cat's decision. It is, in a sense, the most egalitarian sort of relationships. I may be bigger than my cats, but they're faster on their paws and have sharper claws.

This is a deeply refreshing sort of relationship, spiritually speaking. We all enter this world feeling that, as gods at the centre of the known universe, we should be in command of our corner of it. We should, we feel deeply, not be distressed by any failure to get our own way. Satisfying this imperative leads us to do things to others--to plan and manipulate, to coerce, even to bully and oppress, in the hopes that we can arrange life so that it turns out the way we want it to.

But this is an illusion. We're at the mercy of forces we can't begin to control, from other peoples' wills to the weather to cells that don't replicate when they should and do replicate when they shouldn't. In this control business, the best thing that can happen to us is utter defeat, because, in fact, life gets a whole lot easier and more pleasant when you accept the fact that you're not going to be able to run the world by your own lights.

I could, of course, try to cling to controlling what happens around me, and maybe I'd succeed for a time. But ultimately, God has a way of breaking our control over ourselves and our surroundings, one finger at a time--if at no other time, at the time of death, which is probably one of the things that frightens us about death so much. We no longer have even the pretence of running any sort of show. In death, if never before in our lives, God really is in charge and we're helpless. I read an article not long ago about a rich and powerful man dying of cancer, and it was clear that this loss of power was, to him, absolutely crushing. He should have had cats; they would have kept him in his place.

I'm glad to be reminded of this--that my own will must dance with God's and other people's (and my cats') instead of insisting that other wills must bend before it. I can't even predict what my cats will do: I cannot plan that I'll sit down to my knitting and Jenny will jump up and settle down next to me. Either she will or she won't, but that's not for me to say. If she finds my knitting fetching enough, she'll be there. But she might decide instead to sleep, curled into a neat bundle, with her paws tucked in and her tail draped gracefully over her nose. If so, that's her choice.

If I'm willing to concede that my cats are free and independent beings with perfectly good wills of their own, instead of demanding that they be predictable and reliable and do what I want, when I want it done--if I give up controlling them, then I can take enormous pleasure in them. If I try to force them to come to me, they will run away. If I'm willing to forgo my greater power and let them come when they're so inclined, it decreases my control but greatly increases my joy in them.

Maybe that's how God sees us. Maybe that's why free will is so important to God. It is so much more delightful and deeply satisfying when someone comes to us of their will than it is when they come to us because it's what we've willed. God, knowing God and us, trusts (no, *knows!*) that God is so very, very fetching that ultimately, he will draw souls to Him, just as my cat is drawn to the irresistable click of knitting needles, for her own delight and for no other reason.

Maybe that's how we should deal with others, too, instead of trying to run their lives in ways that we want--whether it's trying to force them to grow, or making them do what we think is best for them, or ensuring that they're there when we need and want them, or demanding that they be who we want instead of who they really are... Maybe if we had faith enough to let go of our need to control, as I have faith in Jenny's playfulness, we'd find that love is twice as satisfying when it's freely given instead of being demanded or manipulated for.

Love lies in freedom. Let those whom you love sit lightly on the arm of your chair, and if they want to jump down and do something else, trust that they'll come back to you in good time. Let God be free to give you your desired miracle or not, without thinking you can somehow, through your own actions, manipulate God into giving into your will. "If you love it, let it go; if it is yours, it will come back to you; if it doesn't come back, it was never yours." Trust God to know the difference and to provide whatever it is you need. But don't clutch God or cats or your fellow humans. Cats are right; that's no way to run a friendship.