The Secret Life Of An Inside Cat

Whenever I ease myself out of a social plan, my husband announces— with the smug certainty of a man who believes he understands cats— that I am an “inside cat.” He says it as if I’ve chosen a life of warm windowsills over humanity. Which isn’t fair. I love people. Truly. I just also love retreating from them before I drift a little too far from my better self.

What I need is time to recharge, to let whatever I’ve been doing—working, listening, absorbing other people’s enthusiasm, anxieties, or traffic sagas—settle somewhere that isn’t my nervous system. And for that, I require a particular flavor of nothingness. Not “I’ll reorganize my dance-clothes drawer” nothingness. Not “I’ll finally wrangle that avalanche of device cords” nothingness. Those are simply productivity sneaking in through the side door.

I mean the kind of nothingness where I sit down and the familiar procession files in—old dialogues, unchangeable moments, and a to-do list that seems to be annexing new territory by the minute. The monkey mind does not rest. The monkey mind runs a marathon.

And yet, this is the doorway. The threshold of what some people call meditation, or centering prayer, or transcendental something-or-other—labels vary, but the point is the same. You stop being the sole occupant of your own head and make space for something greater, quieter, more truthful than the commentary you’ve mistaken for yourself.

But the entry ticket is silence. Not polite silence. Not background-music silence. Not “let me put on an orchestral playlist” silence. I mean silence so still it feels slightly awkward. Silence that refuses to entertain you. Silence that gives your thoughts nothing to grip, until you are simply there. In nothing. Listening.

Because it’s only there—in that unglamorous quiet—that anything inside us can expand. Growth isn’t dramatic; it doesn’t arrive with a marching band. It shows up when everything else finally stops. When there is room for a new thought to land, for an old truth to soften, for the inner self to stretch out a little. For whatever you believe is greater than yourself—whose image and likeness you are made in—to step forward and take center stage. That, my friend, is the real holy grail of the do-nothing practice.

I’m not avoiding life; I’m listening for the part of it that only speaks in whispers.

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