The Cat People: Thoughts on Right Action

An acquaintance from my old neighborhood called to ask if I'd write a letter of recommendation for his son. We hadn't spoken in nearly ten years.

I remembered the boy very well. I remembered that I didn't like him and that he didn't like me. Our mutual dislike began because of a lie his father told. I had regarded the man as a good neighbor, and when his boss told him that if he didn't learn how to run a new computer system that his company was going to install, he'd lose his job. He signed up for an evening college course but he couldn't keep up with the class; and so, too embarrassed to confess his failure to his family, he came to me, asking if I'd tutor him. I said I would.

I worked, too, and the only time I had available was Sunday afternoon, the time he usually went to watch his son play baseball. He played ball with the boy - fielding and batting practice - every evening after dinner. His school classes now prevented this, and the boy, who had dreams of being a major league player, grudgingly understood. But when my neighbor couldn't go to watch him play on Sundays, he lied and said it was I who needed his help because of problems I was having at my job; and the boy openly resented me. He egged my car a few times - other neighbors saw him - and then snickered at me as he walked past, watching me go through the misery of removing half a dozen dried eggs from the glass and paint. He started to have batting practice on the street across from my house and broke two of my windows. Again, other neighbors saw him do it; and when I confronted his father, he confessed to the lie. He pleaded that he couldn't bear to lose his son's respect. He paid for the window repairs.

He passed the computer course and kept his job but he never told anybody else the truth. The whole neighborhood thought he had sacrificed the most pleasant time of his week to come and help me. Several times different people remarked how lucky I was to have a caring guy like him around. I'd just smile and grit my teeth.

Soon after I moved away and ten years later there he was on the phone asking me to write his son a recommendation, a character reference. I stammered, "I don't make it a practice to write letters unless I know the person well..." There was an awkward silence and then I heard a husky voice in the background shout, "Tell him he owes you!" It was the boy. His father quickly changed the conversation to "old times" chatter, and it was then that he told me about the cat people.

There was a retired couple in the neighborhood who loved cats. That they loved cats is an understatement: they were actually called, "The Cat People." They had been made locally famous a few years before by a newspaper article that honored them for their efforts to save stray cats. After the article was published, people would come from miles around to donate cats to them. Some were old abandoned cats, but most were kittens that had come into the world because their owners didn't want the nuisance or the expense of having their animals neutered.

It didn't take long before the couple had about 50 cats. It was funny to see them all sitting on and around the house on a summer evening. The kids would sing, We got no mice, we got no rats, and all because we got those cats. Then the number climbed to about a hundred cats. And we didn't have any birds either... not oriole, not cardinal, not blue jay... and even sparrows were scarce. The couple were people of modest means and they couldn't afford to have the animals neutered - and the cats were increasing exponentially. We didn't know how impossible it was for them to support so many animals. I think we thoughtlessly assumed that they had some unknown financial resources: but they didn't. At first they began cutting down on their own food in order to pay for the cats' food. Then they stopped paying for their own medicines in order to pay for the cats' medicines. We knew only that they loved the cats and kept accepting them from people who didn't know or care whether this couple could afford the "gift." Then we began to notice that their house began to smell funny and that the cats were getting into garbage cans and overrunning the neighborhood. The man had been hospitalized and the lady couldn't cope. And somebody turned them in to the humane society. They were in the midst of being investigated for animal neglect when I moved away from the neighborhood.

I was happy to change the subject and talk about The Cat People. "Whatever happened to them?" I asked.

"The guy died in the hospital; and she had to go to court and was ordered to pay fines - which the judge suspended providing she got rid of all the cats except three. She was allowed to keep three... and she sat out front on the stoop crying like she had to make Sophie's Choice. She loved those goddamned animals so much she couldn't make up her mind. I think it drove her nuts between losing her husband and having to give up those mangy cats. Her daughter came and took her and the house was cleaned and put up for sale."

"What happened to all the cats?" I asked.

He laughed. "There were too many for animal control to catch. Most of them ran away into vacant lots. And then they'd keep coming back meowing and fighting every night until somebody got smart and got a pit bull he'd turn loose at night when all the kids were in bed." He laughed the same way his boy had snickered at me when I washed the egg off my car and I knew that I was supposed to understand that he was the "somebody who got smart." We continued to talk about different neighbors and their fates and then he said plaintively, "My son really needs this job and a good character reference from a clergyman would be a big help. He's got a wife and a kid on the way. You know he's a good kid... I'll be forever in your debt... I'm saying please..."

I heard the boy say something gruff that his father evidently did want me to hear. He suddenly said, "Take a little time to think about it. I'll call you back in an hour - if that's ok?" Without waiting for me to answer he said, "I'll talk to you later." Then he hung up. I needed time to think.

This is life. How do we escape it? This is life. A father values his son's opinion of him so much that he lies about needing tutoring. A son values his father's companionship so much that he attacks the man he thinks is stealing his father's time. An elderly couple sees abandoned animals and know it's their dharma to help creatures in need. We are supposed to help the helpless; but too often we act without thinking about the consequences - the long or the short term consequences.

How often do we find ourselves in these situations. A friend or a relative comes to us asking for help. He says and acts as if he's at the end of his rope. "Can you let me stay with you just long enough for me to get on my feet? A week... two at the most." We try to help, but seldom are we rewarded by the knowledge that we really have helped, that the friend or the relative is now independent because of our efforts. Usually, if we get the person a job and vouch for him or her, there's a screw-up. The job wasn't good enough, or the boss wasn't nice enough, or the location wasn't convenient enough. Weeks turn into months and then there is the awkward time when we see that we've damaged our own family and we're given the ultimatum. Get rid of him or else.

A member of our sangha straightened me out about opening my home to friends and relatives who were "at the end of their rope." "My family would always be prey for these domestic predators," he told me. "My grandmother used to feed as many people as she could during the Depression; and then we learned from the police that our house address was found on a variety of vagrants that had been arrested for one reason or another. She was on a kind of grapevine "list of handouts" - a resource not only for the out-of-work homeless but for bums, alcoholics, and addicts. For years afterward strange people would come to the house... some would break in and take what they wanted. Finally," he said, "one of the junkies attacked my sister and my father had enough. We were fifth generation in that house. It would have been mine, but my father had to sell it. My sister's mental health was more important; and frankly, I was glad to move."

Again and again, whenever we're asked to do someone a favor, we think to ourselves, "I'm a good Buddhist. Buddhists help others whenever they can. What if I were in his shoes?" Empathy makes us emotional and we cease to be rational. After we yield to the impulse to be compassionate, it usually doesn't take long before our lives are in shambles. By the time we realize that our friend is abusing his welcome it's already too late. The damage has been done. Our friend has taken us down with him into the depths of his own misery. We have entered his hell, making it our own. In our quest to be good Buddhists, to Do Good, we have done quite the opposite. Our friend has used us to avoid dealing with his own problems, and we have been his accomplice. All we've done is enable him to move on to exploit somebody else.

How do we know when our involvement is going to help or harm? How do we know if we are going too far or not going far enough? Making things better or making them worse? Usually the situations we encounter are not the stuff of drama. No throne is at stake. No nation's future. It may simply be a person asking us to write a letter of reference or a stray cat meowing at our door.

I wasn't looking forward to the callback. I wondered about the boy. Obviously there was no religion in his life - else I wouldn't have been called. Denying him wouldn't do much to help him to seek religious guidance. I thought about his family...

And then I remembered Janwillem van de Wetering's wonderful book about his experiences in a Japanese Zen monastery, The Empty Mirror. While sweeping the monastery's cemetery walk, Wetering found a hungry kitten which he befriended, giving it food and milk. As he tenderly cared for the helpless kitten, the temple dog suddenly appeared out of nowhere and seized the kitten in its mouth, shaking it violently to death. Wetering wrote, "People from around the temple would often leave kittens in the garden. They wouldn't kill the animals because that didn't suit their religion; Buddha is compassionate and to kill is cruel. By taking them to a monastery garden they transferred the cats' souls to Buddha and his monks. Meanwhile the monks were stuck with the helpless kittens and their doleful mewling. Usually the dog took care of them and if he wasn't around the monks drowned them in the pool, at night, when nobody was about. Without being aware of it, I had dropped my broom and leaned against a tomb. I was crying. I hadn't cried in years."

I thought about the Cat People and the lady having to decide which three of her cats she would save, and how she could possibly live with the knowledge that she had condemned the others to death.

And suddenly I knew what I had to do. I understood the sad duty of the monks. They had to accept the responsibility forced on them by righteous but irresponsible townspeople. There was no town animal shelter to quietly euthanize the animals. It was a hard choice to make, but they made it.

An act of good will is only an act of good will if we do not inflict a penalty for it on another. Why do we sentimentally yield to the impulse to help? Are we really stroking our ego (that we are a good person, a good Buddhist, and so on) more than we are truly concerned with someone else's welfare?

Is the person we are trying to help also trying to help himself, or is he trying to take advantage of our "good will" to avoid having to confront and to solve his own problems. Nobody is capable of making another person change, or of making another person happy. Change happens inside us through an act of will. We can act to comfort and to encourage, but we cannot impart that essential element of will that is necessary to overcome suffering. We need to know our limitations as human beings and not assume we have godlike powers to change a person. A person with a serious emotional problem needs a psychiatrist. A person with a broken leg needs an orthopedic surgeon. A person with spiritual difficulties needs a priest. We can't be all things to all people.

We pay taxes because we want to live in a society in which we collectively can provide for the needy. Of course there are times when we can and should help; but what we need most to do is what the Cat People did not do: put realistic limits on our ability to help before we allow ourselves to get involved beyond our capacity to be helpful ... before we are so inflated with our own notions of being indispensable ... before we allow ourselves, through our own sentimentality and ego, to do far more harm than good.

In the end, the cats were worse off than if they had been taken to the shelter. Responsible people - people who wanted a cat for a pet would have adopted one. They likely would have had their pet neutered, but even living as a single animal the cat wouldn't have produced the exponential numbers that dozens of them living together had produced. And none of the adopted kittens would have grown up to destroy the lives of the people who tried to help them.

Duty requires that we remember our own specific commitments - to our families, to the creatures for whom we have taken responsibility, and to ourselves. We are vowed not to be injurious; but saying 'No' to someone who wants a favor from us doesn't mean that we're injuring him. Saying 'yes' may very well do that. But also, we're vowed to be truthful.

I could not truthfully write a letter of reference for a person I did not know. Perhaps the boy had grown up to be a responsible adult, but I had no indication that he had. If he was still aggressive and acted out his aggression, and if, to any degree whatsoever, he obtained a job because of my false letter of recommendation, I would probably cause injury. I thought also about the pit bull "some smart person" got to kill those cats who were trying to come home. And I don't mind admitting that I thought that anybody that "smart" ought to be able to figure out a way to get a job without my help.

When my neighbor called I told him that I had thought about his request and regretted that I could not fulfill it.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Because I don't know your son well enough to recommend him for anything."

"You're still holding it against him that he egged your car and broke a couple of your windows. He was a kid, for God's sake. Would it hurt you to tell a little lie?"

"Yes, " I said. "It would. And now that you mention it, maybe if you had told the truth all those years ago, things would be different. You used me then to your advantage just as you are trying to use me now. And I'm telling you to let your son gain what he needs to gain on his own merits. Tell him the truth and let him stand on his own two feet."

The Buddha taught that we must first of all know ourselves, and it is here where the source of Right Action is rooted. Compassion develops when we recognize that we are in the same boat as our neighbor … as our friend … and as our enemy. We, like all animals, have the propensity to suffer but what makes us unique as sentient beings is that we also have the ability to overcome that suffering. And once we do, we recognize that the suffering came from within us, and that it was through our own effort, and nobody else's, that we were able to break out, to discover the path to liberation. Once we see clearly through the eyes of compassion we can act according to the Greater Good. And then our choices will be the right ones, choices of integrity and realistic, compassionate duty.

But still I hung up the phone feeling like the monks who had no choice but to drown the kittens.