The Cat’s Play

Often, I wondered why the Kemetians, the ancient Egyptians, relished the feline as an embodiment of God – then, I began noticing the untamed street-cat living in my own backyard.

Slowly at first, then more gradually, I began to see a certain majesty in the cat’s play. “Play” because their lives consist of levels of ‘games.” Games of love, games of war, games of hunting, and games of nurturing, and yes, of course, games of simply ‘play.’

Second only to the chicken’s crow, the cat’s play became, in the New World, the Voodooists’ main accompanist. Zora knew it. So, did Marie, the first and second one. And, some say Sanite’ even introduced them!

Nevertheless, Ramses, Kufu, and even Cleopatra, have watched the cat’s play…

Is it their eyes, so penetrating with stares so intense, which have caused humans to hold them in such esteem: we do tend to either love them or hate them! Or, maybe it is their grace of movement that move us so!

At the core of traditional African dance is the respect of nature: the celebration of the plant and animal worlds. The world’s which human live in, and take, and make – into whatever they will, and finally, more and more, destroy it at their leisure. Could the way forward for humanity really be the way back?

In New Orleans Afrocreole Voodoo the Senegalese Mende, the Bright of Benin’s Dahomean/Yoruba, and the Congolese Angolans come together, over the centuries of the Great Enslavement, to create a gumbo. That gumbo, call Voodoo today, has been called many things in many places, in the New World and Old, but the Cat’s Play remains – whether that cat is a lion, tiger, panther, or just a plain ole street-cat prowling around your backyard.