Jimmy’s Monthly Stories.

Some of you may know me in my previous incarnation as the dish-obsessed sage of acatnamedjimmy.com. Well, after years of wondering how my very presence seemed to create peace and harmony for my human keepers [not always the case with my feline siblings] I have re-emerged as Who I Am, Jimmy the Healer.

In this column, sometimes published in 'the Daily Mews' [see links page], I will share with your my monthly reflections of how we can wake up and heal the planet.

Fireworks!

My keepers tell us felines that when they were young, Bonfire night lasted one night. They heard the odd firework, but everything was geared up to just one event.

Now, of course, we all know that you have a firework month. Some will have a bonfire on Sunday 1st November, most on Thursday 5th, but we can add in Saturday and Sunday immediately after, and a few more times after that.

You all know we cats have hyper-sensitive hearing, and the last thing we want is loud noises.

Most of you also know Guy Fawkes was supposedly attempting to blow up your Houses of Parliament, and given what is currently happening with your MP's [Make a Packet?] I suspect some of you wish he had succeeded.

Did you know bonfire night in Eire is June 23rd [which just happens to be my male keeper's birthday] when the Irish celebrate the eve of St. John the Baptist's birthday? And the ritual has its roots before Christianity, when the Celts honoured their goddess Áine?

I suppose a celebration which marks the birth of someone [John the B] and/or shows gratitude to God for crops should be a of a higher moral order than celebrating someone's execution...

We cats are never surprised. Your 'media', especially aimed at your kids is wall-to-wall noise. 'Passion' in your popular culture is a whisker's breadth off being violent, and certainly it is at least aggressive.

You love us for our grace, peace, calm and our purrs. Fireworks are crude, noisy, loud and potentially dangerous. How could we like them? Even our noisy house mates, dogs, don't like fireworks.

We have no problem with humans celebrating. It is how you do it. Can you not have spectacular but silent fireworks [you can]? Does it surprise you that time after time, when here and abroad, British people are the loudest, most drunk, most aggressive?

I know my keepers used to set themselves a goal when working in schools to have the kids be silent for 1 minute. They always achieved it, but only just.

So, how many of you sit silently for 10 minutes or more, regularly, on your own in a room?

A culture that values aggression, celebrating death, mindless noise and upsetting the most sensitive of its members [us, all animals, very young and 'old' people] has no future.

I gather one of your philosophers, a former French child prodigy named Blaise Pascal had it right in the 17th century when he declared:

“All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

We can sit in a quiet room alone for 18 hours, so you have some way to go.

 Jimmy, October 09.