Anxiety Cat

My anxiety is cat-like. It creeps, and crawls, and JUMPS! and claws. Sometimes she's just playing, catch and release, little mouse erin. Other times she is a true hunter, catching dinner for her whole family and I am her prey. My anxiety cat likes to sleep in the sun, stretch out with long luxurious forepaws. She likes to climb up curtains, but often she gets her claws stuck. She likes to climb trees and tries to catch the birds. She can lay languidly for what seems like an eternity before she gets up and leaps! I am learning that anxiety cat's game is not really to eat me for dinner, but to keep me so trembling for fear that I can be her subject whenever she wishes. I don't move, caught up in a mind-numbing paralysis that prevents all forward thinking and analysis. She can always find me right where she's left me, still wet with her spit, my right ear a little mangled from her jaw. I haven't time to even clean myself up. But today I have a secret weapon. I draw. I write. I paint. I do what forward thinking mouses do--imagine a way not just to get away from the cat, but imagine a life, uninhibited by cat's paws. A schedule of safety with relaxing hovels built right in-- time to think, time to pray, time to seek God while going about my day (even while searching for cheese). My life is not without meaning.