Out of this Maze

The sky was clear, the breeze felt cool for a summer day, and sounds of construction sites and traffic was no bother. Walking away from a Brooklyn cafe with an almond milk latte in one hand and my other sliding along a chain link fence to an abandoned building. Nothing in my head but the present. Two plus months and this would be my last lunch-time-latte from the Seven Sisters Cafe and my last days in this neighborhood. I had accepted life as a freelancer and experienced plenty of last work days. I felt differently about this go-around. Understandably a shift was happening, but unknowingly affecting my life perspective as well.

There was a lighter bounce to my step as I rounded the corner, turning on to Dakota Street. I couldn’t help but look back at the lovely cafe once more when I caught a glimpse of movement along the fence. A small cat who I had locked eyes with for a blip of a second that felt like a lifetime. She had been watching me like most strays in Brooklyn, and I continued on my way. Approaching the studio I wondered if the cat was still behind me when I spotted a co-worker outside smoking a cigarette. He pointed behind me. “Yo bud, you know there's a little cat following you, right?" I turned around and saw nothing until I looked down at my feet. Our eyes locked once again. This scruffy face with human-like eyes looking up at me. I couldn't help but think of the character Puss-n-Boots but without the whole getup. I reached for her as she let out a soft meow and started crawling up my leg. She was beautiful, and aside from her orange and white coat being covered in the streets of Brooklyn, I knew she wasn't a normal stray. This kitten, who was no more than 3 months old was as abandoned as the building I walked by every afternoon. Assumptions led me to her being the runt of the litter hiding near one of the construction sites. Ears filled with mud and who knows what else. As I approached the studio door as lunch was ending and without hesitation I took her inside. I knew she was special. The closing of our show was pretty laid-back, and she was welcomed by the crew with open arms. Passing her around like a new toy, she loved every second of the short-lived welcome until the executive in charge walked into the room, took one look at the kitten, and one look at me. No words were needed. One text message and some time later, my girlfriend Amy was in front of the studio ready to receive this lost soul for her first trip to the Veterinarian. I couldn't have imagined the situation in her first months of trying to figure out life and still having the energy and playful manner she showed. I’d say she had a plan.

The rest of the work day dragged, and I was eager to see the notes from the Vet. Everything checked out to be well except for the excessive mixture of mud and ear mites, which came with a three-a-day weekly prescription. The abundance of construction and traffic had caused the development of her hearing to fail. Survival on the streets of Brooklyn without hearing had shown that she was no ordinary kitten.

As weeks elapsed, our new and nameless kitten had become a traveling cat. Amy and I were working on the same gig which happened to be in different locations each week. Instead of traveling with the crew, we opted to drive. We were able to care for our medicated kitten at hotels along the way. Lots of interesting places yet one location stood out from the rest. I was able to film an interview from a woman from the Lakota Tribes. I wanted to know more about her people and the tribe itself, but the interview was not related. Unlike most along the path, this one was engraved in my head. That night as we were laying in bed, kitten on chest, my girlfriend was following along a pattern with her finger on the kitten’s fur as she slept. We saw that it resembled a maze. That’s when the light bulb in my brain went on and I said. “Mazey.” From there on Mazey had a name and a home. With her being deaf, I thought that as she got older we would need a way to get her to listen, so I made a point to practice my interpretation of cat sign language. Before feeding, I would make a certain hand gesture. Before a treat, another one, and for when she did something bad…the list goes on. She progressively started her own gestures for me to acknowledge as well. I think I became what I never imagined being possible. One of those cat dads.

I had never been a cat person. At all. I actually thought that all cats were assholes. Not knowing much about them except for the one my family had when I was young. I like to believe he was scared off by my two overly-loving sisters. Not to return again. I probably would have been pretty hesitant if it weren’t for the discussion Amy and I had been having for weeks. “No, I do not want to get a cat. They suck.” Was my short and abrupt response to what seemed like a never ending question. Be that as it may, I’m a true believer in “everything happens for a reason.” My girlfriend and I had been learning more about spirituality and health on a somewhat inconsistent basis. Gradually trying different approaches to life. Learning far more than what we knew. Had it not been for these open attempts, I probably would have never switched to almond milk lattes. Not stating that they’re anything close to a healthy alternative, but acknowledging I would have never taken those walks to find what turned out to be not just a cat, but a messenger.

Two years elapsed as Mazey, which we often referred to as Maze, had followed me around for most of it. She had always been strange, so she fit with Amy and me. At times I questioned whether she was a full cat breed at all. Eighty percent of orange cats are male. Females like Maze were a rarity and I wasn’t surprised. She would pounce on creatures that didn’t exist in my world, and had an extreme obsession with ice cubes. Perhaps a calming technique. Her own kind of latte. The mystery animal was living on her own frequency, and she was trying to get me there.

Our sign language developed into specific looks where we knew what each other were thinking. A certain tilt of the head meant that the ice cube in her water dish had melted, and she was ready for another one. She would tap on the window in the back of our apartment looking out to the yard, informing us someone was at the front door who we didn’t hear. There was a reason for everything she did. Her abilities as a living being had been remarkable and I never understood how observant and in-tune with everything she actually was. It’s been said that if we lack one of our senses the others become heightened. I always believed this for Maze, and she proved it to us one night.

I’ll never forget the month we spent in a family cabin in New Hampshire. Being from Boston, I would go up there often. Working as a freelancer allowed for time off whenever needed and Amy and I desperately needed that time. The grind of working in the television industry can break people, and I was broken. I had become sick and stressed-out with a chronic disease and needed to relax. Something I was constantly in search of. Relaxation. Prescription medication had been failing me. I was in search of something I didn’t yet know. An alternative outside of medicine to rid me from my aching body. Maze felt it as well. She would wait for me to lay down so to work her vibrations of deep purrs and massages on my stomach. The morning before leaving Brooklyn, I woke up to her not by my side. Instead, she was sitting on her laid out carrying case, ready to go. She would do this for our trips to New Hampshire and that’s all. We had taken her to this cabin a couple of times before, but not for nearly as long. Her intuition blew my mind. She seemed to know everything in advance and was the epitome of a curious cat. When settled into our SUV packed with luggage we would let her roam free. Sitting on every suitcase or box she could, she would spend most of the six-hour ride looking out the windows from different vantage points, observing everything.

The cabin was small with a couple of rooms on one floor, and a sliding glass door leading to the porch facing out to the woods. During this month, Amy and I would sit on the back porch with a small fire beside us looking out to the tall pine trees. We would star gaze on every clear night and trace out the defined constellations. We would talk about the Ancient Egyptians and our interpretations of what they were trying to accomplish, and the purpose of everything unknown. Amy would always bring up their obsession with cats and how they were supposed to be the protectors of the spirit world. I often nodded along in my masked disbelief. In spite of that our discussions grew from what nature brought out in us. Among the entire star filled blanket in the sky, there was always one cluster that stood out from the rest. Something we could never see in Brooklyn even on the clearest of nights. The Pleiades star cluster or better known as The Seven Sisters. We were intrigued. We began researching more, diving into the meaning of this cluster and read all sorts of theories on it. Each night on the porch as we stared at the night sky, we would hear a tap tap tap on the sliding door. We would try to ignore, knowing she would stop and fall asleep watching us until the night she didn’t. 

A similar feeling on the day Mazey had found me entered my body. Nothing bothered me. Everything was calm. A cool familiar breeze passed by us. Then another. Then the third more powerful breeze swept through extinguishing the fire. With the light from the near full moon, and one lamp in the house peaking through the half opened curtains, we looked at each-other’s dimly lit faces. The tap tap tapping became more evident as we turned to see Maze running back and forth in a panic. Jumping at the glass and tapping louder and faster. We stood from our chairs. Another gust, now colder, swirled around us. Amy looked deep into the woods and then back at me with scrunched eyebrows. “We should go in,” she whispered. I turned towards the woods to uncover what I believed was the cause of her altered demeanor. Rising shadows growing towards us. Focused on these advancing silhouettes for a short time I responded, “You see those shadow people too?” She was shocked they weren’t exclusively in her mind, and we hurried inside to Mazey. She was still in a panic. I grabbed her, sat on the couch with her in my lap, and Amy rushed to shut the curtains before sitting next to me. We didn’t care to look outside. We were curious yet frightened so our focus turned to calming our cat. After minutes of erratic behavior, Mazey stared up to the ceiling in the direction of our favorite star cluster. She was trembling and her fur was damp. The maze on her coat began to shift. Amy rose from the couch and stood over us, backed away, and began to watch as a message in Mazey’s fur began to form. The letter A appeared. Then an R. Complete silence had taken over the room. Amy moved closer to Maze reaching her finger out towards the newly formed letters. Upon contact the one lamp illuminating the room began to flicker and everything went black. Simultaneously the vintage stereo turned on to a loud unbearable static. Mazey jumped off my lap. I moved across the room through the dark to another lamp. Turned it on, turned off the stereo, and the sudden panic became calm once more. We looked around the room to see Mazey sitting by her water bowl with her head tilted as if nothing had happened. I walked to the freezer, placed an ice cube in the bowl, and bent down to pet her wondering if what happened was some hallucination. It became clear after noticing the maze in her fur had disappeared that it wasn’t.

We slept with the lights on that night. Mazey purring even louder on my stomach, kneading more than usual. The next morning we awoke oddly refreshed and my pain was minuscule. Both inspired to read more into the Pleiadians. Our fear had been replaced with motivation and excitement which became part of our routine for the rest of our time in the cabin. I came across a connection between the Pleiades cluster, their people, and the Akashic Records. A and R. The meaning behind this connection is to represent introspection and deep self-healing. The metaphysical Akashic Records are where all your soul’s energy is stored to help you on your life’s path and much more, if you believe. As I went further down this rabbit hole, I discovered that The Pleiades cluster is presumed to be an origin of the ancestors of the Lakota people. A native tribe of the Americas. That interview I had been carrying with me since the day we named Mazey became more clear. It all made sense. It’s everything we had been staring at. The Pleiades cluster is the guidance for healing and Maze understood how to get me close. Everything is connected.

As we packed up for our trip home, nothing felt right. The energy was off. We turned to see Maze sitting on her carrying case. This was odd for the reason she did this on times we were going to the place we were now leaving from. I looked at her and asked where she wanted to go. She looked back at me and pointed her nose up to the sky where our star cluster had been. I turned to Amy as we continued to pack up. We knew we couldn't go home yet. I pondered if this was Mazey’s purpose all along to show me a path to a true cure for my chronic illness. Did she find me for this reason? The curiosity of the Ancient Egyptian obsession with cats might have been explained. For Amy and myself at least. Could cats be our guides and healers? This experience with Maze may have been the purest connection and understanding of a cat's purpose with their humans, in the right situation. They have to choose you and not the other way around. I had become a full-on spiritual believer that anything is beyond possible.

We left the cabin that afternoon. Not sure of our exact destination except to head west towards the origin of the Lakota region. The Dakotas. I was never into puzzles, but I figured that if the universe was giving us signs - there’s no better time to piece them together than now. They had been surrounding me my entire life and changing with every decision I made. We were certain to continue this spiritual journey in hopes that I would find answers and a cure to my disease. Perhaps Mazey’s panic was misinterpreted that night as more of an excitement to welcome the shadows in the woods? We can always speculate, or we can learn and move on. Whenever this situation, or those like it, is presented again I hope I will face the shadows with all their uncertainty. For me nothing is for certain except for change. Change is the only constant in this world and I needed to find more of it. We drove off knowing where to come if we needed to start over.

I can now look back five-years at these memories as the start to a long journey of my spiritual and physical recovery. Gaining knowledge about myself at every destination I found myself guided to. Support by my side. The change I needed to heal was within my mind as unbelievable as it sounds. Maze got me there. My cat saved my life. We understood each-other through a connection that is out of this world.