The Four Visitors: How a cat, a hawk, a tortoise and a dog helped initiate me into a new chapter of my life
I gave birth to my first child, my daughter, the day after the Spring Equinox in March of 2017. Like most first births, hers was an initiation; a part of me died with every contraction, every push, every prayer that she would get out of my body safely.
After the 18 hours that it took to make the necessary sacrifices upon the altar of motherhood, her body and mine were able to come into sync and make a birth happen. We spent a couple of days in the hospital before returning home, where I’d originally intended to give birth to her. Because we had to rush to the hospital unexpectedly, one of our midwives cleaned up after we left and was supposed to lock up on her way out.
Three days after our midwife put fresh sheets on our bed and dismantled the birthing pool, we brought our daughter Wyette home. We entered through the front door and said a spell of welcoming, then Wyette and I sat on the front-facing couch in the living room while Chris went out to unload the car. I heard a light creaking noise behind me and turned to see that our back door, just through the kitchen, had been left open for the entirety of our hospital stay. At almost the same time, I made eye contact with a black and white cat who had been in our bedroom and was scurrying toward the back door to escape.
Chris was about to bring our luggage in through the same back door, and while I could see that they were about to have an unhappy meeting, I couldn’t bear to yell at him and startle our newborn baby. When the cat saw that she may be trapped, she leapt on top of the shelf adjacent to the door, unseen by Chris until she threw her body onto his shoulders and catapulted off of him into the backyard, never to be seen again. It wasn’t the warm and predictable transition home that any of us had been hoping for. After we checked under the beds and in the dark corners for more cats, squirrels, or birds and found none, we commenced our journey into family-making.
A couple of weeks after this incident, I was on that same couch looking out of our front window as I was breastfeeding Wyette. Chris was out running an errand, and I remember being in one of those peaceful lulls between the baby’s painful latch onto my nipple and the tumultuous un-latching. I was admiring our neighbor’s garden across the way when a large red-tailed hawk landed in the center of our fence and looked directly at me. I had never seen a bird of its size in our neighborhood, although I knew they’re prominent members of the ecosystem here. For 30 minutes as Wyette nursed and slept, this hawk stayed in the center of our fence, looking at me, then away, then back at me with its piercing sideways gaze. I wasn’t sure what conversation we were having, but I knew that we were in one.
When Chris got home, I told him about what had happened, but it was hard to convey the sense of wonder and affirmation behind the experience. I appreciated it and thought it was interesting, but quickly filed it away as something random.
Photo by Chris Briggs
A couple of months after the cat and the hawk, Chris was holding Wyette in our front yard and talking to our neighbors when I saw one of them run by the kitchen window into our backyard. Sleep deprived and with a jumpy nervous system, I felt on guard, permeated, vulnerable. I exited through the front door to find Chris and see what was going on, and as I walked toward the sidewalk, our neighbor came out of our backyard holding a very hefty, very old tortoise.
This tortoise belonged to our neighbor four doors down, and somehow it had escaped and chosen to lumber down the block, onto our driveway, and into our backyard. We all admired the tortoise for its bravado, and I silently drank in its ancient form: the geometric pattern of its shell and the way that its thick, scaly skin was capable of meeting the harshness of a penetrating sun. In the back of my mind, I began to wonder if these never-before-and-never-since animal visits were forming a pattern that I was meant to notice.
A few weeks after the tortoise’s visit, almost five months since I’d given birth and been met by a scurrying cat and the searing vision of a red-tailed hawk, I was home alone with Wyette, looking out of that same front window onto our yard as we played in the living room. I was giving her a toy when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something black in our front yard. I turned to give it a full look and saw a very sickly black dog, probably a Labrador. She had patches of hair missing and a grotesque limp, like her hip was broken. She sniffed around for a moment before coming up onto our front steps and laying down right outside our front door.
I felt frozen as I tried to make sense of what was happening. Unknown animals generally scare me - I’m not relaxed around them, and I know that they can sense my unease, which makes me even more afraid. But I felt like I had to be brave, so I secured Wyette, took a deep breath, and cracked the front door open to see what this mysterious visitor was doing. As soon as I opened the door, she bellowed and barked in a pained way, appearing both helpless in her agony and also like a gatekeeper scaring me back into my place. I quickly shut the door and held my pounding heart.
For hours, she stayed on that porch and hobbled around our front yard. Because the front yard, driveway, and backyard were all connected, I felt too afraid to try and get Wyette and I out of the house. At one point when she was a bit farther from the front door, I quickly opened it and threw out a bowl of water before she could reach me. I hoped the small offering on a hot day would ease her distress and entice her to be on her way.
After a long and curious standoff, alone at home and unable to reach Chris, who was in meetings all day, I reluctantly chose to call the local Animal Control office. They arrived after about an hour, and Wyette and I watched out the window as this wild, mangled, brave black creature defended her station with barks and bared teeth. The officers used their long pole with its metal noose at the end to secure her, and together they scooped her up and placed her in their truck.
Wyette and I stepped onto our front porch, which was awash in spilt water and urine, to speak with the people who came to take our guardian-imprisoner away. They said she looked injured and that they would take her to be looked at. They asked me if I’d ever seen her in the neighborhood, and I said that we hadn’t. As they drove away, my heart ached. I felt bonded to that old ragged dog, and still so curious about how she found her way to our home, and why. A few days later, I checked the local dog shelter websites and found her profile posted. She looked healthier already, happy even. I said a little prayer to her - gratitude for that odd time we’d spent together and loving wishes that she find a safe home to be in for her remaining days.
Cat, hawk, tortoise, dog. Four creatures who had never been inside the bounds of my home before and who came in quick succession of one another.
For a long time, I believed that they came in response to Wyette’s birth: that her aliveness, her soul’s incarnation here, caused unseen ripple effects that acted like calls to these wild kin. I still believe that may be what happened, but as I’ve pondered these experiences in the five years since, I’m beginning to wonder if they came for me, too.
Photo by Brazil Topno
Her birth initiated me. It initiated in me a new cycle of surrender, joy, rage, helplessness, sovereignty, and connection to Something Greater. I became at once highly sensitive to every stimulus in my environment (an innate trait heightened by the physiological changes of motherhood) and also much more sensitive to the unseen knowings, textures, and messages that inhabit the interstitial spaces between the material and spiritual worlds.
Since being initiated into parenthood, I’ve become more connected to the animating Life that is all around each of us. We are all initiated at various points in our lives, and through a wide range of experiences: the loss of a loved one, the hardship of immigrating, a debilitating accident, unrequited love, divorce, unemployment, or any other threshold that forces us to step into an unfamiliar and vulnerable aspect of being. After being initiated in some way, our perception changes: what made sense before the experience may no longer, or what we could not see before is now clear.
The meaning I make of these four visitors now is that something opened up when Wyette and I gave birth to one another: her as a human child, and me as a mother. The boundaries between me and Whatever Else Is Out There became thinner, permeable, and more fluid, and it meant that new messages and messengers could come in. I believe this was true for Wyette as well, and that it’s the experience of all children because of their closeness to the mystery of where they came from.
In his book A Branch from the Lightning Tree, Martin Shaw writes:
”There was a time, the myths tell us, when the link between animals, humans, and the land was fluid, magical. The perception of community would extend out, both into the landscape and through the stories seeping up from the burial grounds of your ancestors. The swift raven, the sharpened axe, the soft hairs on a mouse’s belly, all were interconnected if you looked long enough."
What I was witnessing in each of these experiences was nothing new - each of these animals were already existing in the environment. Perhaps what was new was my ability to accurately perceive them, to appreciate the cadence of their visits and to sense into the fluid links between us, as Shaw describes.
Throughout my life and especially since this experience, I’ve been attuning to signs that remind me of the pulsating life that’s beyond and behind the facade of civilized culture. These messengers reminded me that what’s wild will always break in or break through our walls, fences, and boundaries. Even the so-called domesticated visitors - the cat, tortoise, and dog - escaped their confines and journeyed into my space, liberating themselves and reminding me that the freedom of movement that is a human animal’s inheritance.
Despite our resistance, the furry, shelled, and winged ones, the sentient plants and ancient winds will obliterate the lines we draw between the “human” and “non-human” worlds. In doing so, they show us the wildness within; they resonate with an instinctual part of us that remembers the mysterious conversation that we’re in with the rest of Life. Since this experience, I’ve had others, which I’ll tell you about another time. For now, I hope this story inspires you to notice the creatures and symbols that seek to crash into your awareness, into your workplace, your calendar, your social media feed. May you stay open to the otherness that wants to break through the din of this culture and initiate you into a much larger, much older, and much more magical way of living.