As you know, all cats have their origins in Egypt, and as you might know, the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun. It makes sense then, that cats also worship the sun, being good Egyptians. It has been a dark winter. Humans have a hard time living in darkness and cats don’t much like it either. Sometimes, very early on sunny winter mornings I have awakened to hear my cat crying and meowing. When I look for her to see if anything is the matter, I find her rolling around in a patch of sunlight that comes through the window. She cries and run to me, and then runs back to the patch of sun to stretch out in it and it is clear that she is saying, “Look! This person has just come into our room! Let us welcome him by rolling around on his warm self!â€
“You go ahead, dear,†I tell her. “I’m going back to bed.â€
The other morning, say around 5 a.m., the cat woke me up again. We’d had an awful lot of rain – remember? about eight days in a row — and the sun was finally starting to shine again in the mornings. I expected her to make quite a fuss, and she didn’t disappoint me. But you know, it was worse than a fuss. She was making such eerie sounds — unlike anything I had ever heard any animal make — that I remained frozen with fear for a moment. I finally got up to see if she was hurt, or if she was choking on a mouse or a toy and saw her – for heaven’s sake! — sitting quietly in the first ray of sunshine that was coming through the window. She wasn’t meowing and rolling, she was making short, low, throaty sounds (grrrll-owwwl) and then quick, high sounds (chya! chya!) like a little girl catching her breath. And she repeated this sequence again and again, all the while sitting very much as you are sitting now, as if in a pew at church, in her little beam of sunlight, looking up at it with great love while she made these remarkable noises.
I watched this for a minute or so, and it made the hair on the back of my neck prickle a little bit. I certainly couldn’t go back to sleep. “What is she doing?†I thought. “Who is she trying to talk to? Is she calling the mother ship?â€
           I watched her and listened for a bit, feeling a kind of awe, and then I realized, oh my goodness… she’s singing. She’s singing a little hymn of praise to the sun! There’s no other possible explanation for this. She’s comfortable, she’s not hungry, she’s not crying for a boy cat, there’s nothing outside the window to see, she’s not making this noise for my benefit…she’s singing. In her own little cat way, she is sitting in her little beam of sunlight responding to the beauty of the morning. She is expressing her religion. I have not been able to get it out of my mind.

[This is part of a sermon I gave in 2005. Ermengarde died at the ripe old age of 18 on July 31, 2019. She was a beautiful being and spiritual teacher until the end. – PB]