The Cat Goddess by Cathleen Miller

I glanced at my watch as I swung through the heavy doors of the British Museum in London; alarmed, I realized I had only two hours till closing. I was leaving for San Francisco in the morning and had two hours in which to absorb the art wonders of history. Urgently I inquired the location of the Ancient Egyptian art. Flying down the marble halls, deftly avoiding impact with jogging suit and sari-clad art lovers, I mentally reviewed my notes on Egyptian art.

My love affair with its grace and mystery had begun in art history class. Dr. Elliot, my instructor, had worked on archaeological digs in Egypt for many years, and I had lived vicariously through his beautiful photography and exotic tales. Queen Nefertiti and her ilk began to take over my subconscious and insert themselves into my artwork in the most unlikely places. While planning my trip to London, I learned that the British Museum housed the largest collection of Egyptology in the world, finer than the collection in the Cairo Museum even, and I was thrilled at the prospect of visiting my old acquaintances in person. Now as I hurried on, I chided myself at the realization that my careful planning had resulted in two whole hours of appreciation for several thousand years of achievement.

Then suddenly there they were: mummies, sarcophagus, and the key to it all—the Rosetta Stone! I joyously greeted them all as long lost friends. As I ran from one to another like an excited child, my self-abuse abandoned with my decorum, I must have presented an amusing spectacle for the more sophisticated museum patron.

My fascination suddenly focused on one small object in a glass case: a two-foot bronze statue of a cat. The cat held the mystery of the unknown. I stared at it entranced, my pulse accelerated. The sounds of the room faded away as I stood motionless, held captive by its sullen gaze. The cat, like its corporeal counterpart, was obviously not impressed by the fawning of a mere human. It sat on its feline haunches in regal splendor, elongated sinuous lines rising strongly upward to the fine, proud head. The idolatry was pronounced; gold earrings, nose ring and medallion announcing the elevated status of this otherworldly creature. It commanded my worship and I struggled to keep from bowing down before it. I longed to stroke the hard smoothness of the mottled green bronze, but knew the cat goddess had been placed inside the glass case at its own request in order to avoid the sweaty fingers of its admirers.

I do not know how much time passed—mummies and sarcophagus were long forgotten, not to mention the accumulated art treasures of the rest of the world. At the urging of the guard, I tore myself from the clutches of the cat, and followed him limply to the entrance of the museum. There he cruelly ushered me out into the strange juxtaposition of honking and clamoring rush-hour London.

Blindly meandering through Bloomsbury, I tried to make some sense of it all. Why was I obsessed with the cat? Why do some works of art take hold of us, grab us and shake us down to our very core? The obvious explanations did not suffice: I liked Egyptian art (why not then the mummy cases I'd studied so religiously in school?). I liked statues (I never preferred their colorless forms to painting). I liked cats (I didn't).

For lack of a plausible answer I turned to more mystical theories: was there really such a thing as reincarnation? Did I live in ancient Egypt and have a past history with the cat goddess? Do the secret powers of ancient Egypt still exist today and I stumbled upon a force that few of us, programmed to lead our sensible routine lives, fail to perceive? To understand the meaning of such ethereal questions is to understand the very mysteries of life. And to understand more of ourselves than most of us, rushing past the wonders, will ever have time to figure out.