Intention too.

My grandfather, the Free Will Baptist preacher who bought his first and only car in nineteen sixty-late-something with mostly one dollar bills got mostly from marrying people mostly in his backyard, said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

But intentions *do* matter.  They are magic, true, but well, anyway.  If you think that maybe intentions don't matter, I'd be interested in hearing about it . . . somewhere else.  Write away.

And I look at this cat, I hear this cat bleep because she is in heat, again, and I wonder what the intentions were of the person who dumped her in the woods.  Did they think she was a predator so it would be ok?  Did they think it was near some farms so it would be ok?  Did they think anything other than their own convenience?  Yep, I vote that they didn't think anything except what was easiest for them.  There are always things you don't know when you pick up one of these animals, things that don't make sense, like why hasn't she been pregnant given that she seems to be older than old enough and fertile enough, and why did she scream every time a human came close to her, and how in the world had she brought herself to be allowed to be picked up in the woods and brought home.  You don't know what the human's intention was, but you do know the effect and that is never, ever good.

There is a stray cat at the barn.  That is what I call him, Stray Cat.  For months no one could get within 40 feet of him, but he came daily to eat (after I put the food out for him that is).  Now we get within 4 feet or so, sometimes at least.  I assume he is a him because he has a big head (nothing personal meant by that).  Anyway, I'm sure he's the cat from the other side of the bridge actually.  See, there was this cat who had gotten old and disappeared from here some time ago, and after that I would periodically see this cat who looked like him near the bridge.  No connection between the two except in my head.  Several times I stopped to see if he'd come to me but no, not even close.  I thought about leaving food for him but he seemed pretty competent gleaning the lake leavings, avoiding the cars and people.  Then this cat showed up at the barn and it took me some time to realize that I hadn't seen the cat on the other side of the bridge in, well, some time.  And one of my lessons in the power of intention is that this cat, this wild, wary cat, was aware of my intention to feed him and he made it possible for me to feed him.  His intention, evidently, was to get fed.

We don't know where he came from.  We don't know when.  We don't know what all he's been through.  We are the other end of the dumpers.  It doesn't matter what the dumpers' intentions were; their actions sucked.  That these animals, so many of them that are with us (me and my friends), have found people who love them and care for them is not an assuage to the dumpers but an indictment.

We have a horse who is technically a "rescue" although I dislike that term.  But her people, even tho she was underfed, managed to get her a coggins and to the auction.  She had a shot at a real home.  And she got one.   Her people tried for her.  This cat's people, whatever their intentions, didn't try.  They dumped her to be a coyote's next meal or a greasy spot in the road.  That she allowed me to talk her into my arms is a testament to her.  When I got home with her, that my family just said, "She got that cat," is a testament to them.

It isn't that you have to keep an animal forever, although we tend to.  It is that it isn't lightly entered into, any relationship, nor lightly left.  Not lightly left and not wrongly left.

(referencing the previous post) Yes, you study intention at the splitting block.  Because if you fail there, your house is cold.