A Little Bird Told Me

A story about stillness, healing, connection and a cat who wouldn't take no for an answer

The other day I talked to a longtime friend about a little bird who visits her daily.

My friend said, “See how boring my life is, that I notice a little bird who comes to visit me on my porch?”

But I saw this differently. So I told her, “It isn’t boring. If your life were still the same, you never would have noticed that little bird who visits you every single day.”

My friend has been working since she was about ten years old. I estimate that before all of this happened, a good 80% of her time was spent tending to the sick, the dying, and the forgotten. Her life has never been still, until now. For the past several years she has been a fulltime caregiver for her son who suffered a massive brain injury. This upended everything from her daily routines and rituals, to her short and long-term goals, to her very sense of self and identity.

I told her how animals know. They come by to remind us. That little bird knows she needs the reminder that her life isn’t boring right now, it’s different. It’s forced her to slow down, and that can be incredibly uncomfortable for someone who has worked 10-12 hour days most of her adult life. But I do believe that experiences like the one with the little bird are reminders of what we so often miss when we are caught up in all of the static and the noise of our day to day lives.

I told her about my cat Rusty. Rusty is more than a cat. Though, cats are always more than “a cat.” I truly believe they are transcendent beings, one paw in our world, one paw in another. Rusty belonged to a young woman in an RV where I lived for several years. In 2020, smack in the middle of the pandemic Rusty came to me. Every morning he would sit on the steps of my trailer, and I would sit there with him, in the heat, him offering the underside of his chin, me scratching him. And every day I would carry him back home, only for him to boomerang back to me.

His owner, a young woman about eighteen or nineteen years old, asked if something was “going on” at home. I shrugged. She said, “Rusty goes where he’s needed.”

She told me Rusty was a kitten when she found him, on the verge of dying from a respiratory infection. She nursed him back to health. She told me this as we sat in the grass in front of my RV, masks on our faces, Rusty on his back purring, while she rubbed his belly.

“Bet you never seen a cat let you do that huh?” And she smiled. “Yeah, I raised him right.”

But she knew her time as Rusty’s mama was ending. She had three other pets in her RV and was about to be evicted. So, after multiple attempts of mine to avoid it, I brought Rusty home, and he’s been with me ever since, purring as I write, a robust, 17lb house cat whose best friend is my Doberman Husky mix, Twix.

Rusty goes where he’s needed. I didn’t think I needed Rusty.

Rusty came to me when the world both stood still and cracked open with marches and revolution. If it hadn’t been for that summer of quarantine and isolation, I never would have noticed the cat hiding under the trailer, refusing to go home. Rusty, the most extroverted, friendly and even nurturing (he has a habit of “adopting” stray kittens and raising them as his own), taught me that even in the time, no, especially in the time of pandemic and pandemonium, I could not continue to “hide” and avoid connection as a way of keeping myself safe.

Rusty ushered in friendships with neighbors who are still important people in my life, five years later. He was like a bridge or a portal, one who connected me to others when I was so ready to stay disconnected.

And this has me thinking about how inspiration, connection and healing often favor stillness.

What more has gone unseen, how many little birds and Rustys might we have missed?

Because the thing is, we are told over and over and over again, “No one is coming to save you.”

And yet. And yet the bird. And yet Rusty. And yet the tree I named Clarissa. And yet the Progressive Insurance agent who listened as I cried storms and told me to keep my good heart.

It’s true that when I was in my worst moment of crisis no winged giant appeared, no Messiah, no knight in shining armor. It’s true that I had to steel myself and tell myself dozens of times a day, “It’s okay. You can do this.” And I did.

But I think maybe these small, holy avatars are devotedly seeking to save us every day, maybe every hour, maybe every minute even. But the traffic of our lives makes for little opportunity to see and be seen in the most sacred of ways.

We cannot always be still, and more often than not, it feels impossible. But maybe we can at least be intentional in making room for these moments to happen.

So, say thank you to the little bird, and thank you to the cat who brushes up against you, and thank you to the tree whose dry leaves crackle under your feet. Maybe we don’t need saviors. Maybe what we really need are reminders to let ourselves see and be seen.