What Cats Taught Me About Trust, Trauma, and Healing

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Shais Taub’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

All right, let's talk about the cats. Some of you are wondering about the cats, especially people who are over on Instagram where I do a lot of cat updates here on YouTube. Not so much, but uh I'm going to explain it all. What's with the cats? Okay, so as you know, we're here in Soulward Studios. This is the podcast studio in the basement of Soulward's uh studio. Well, so Soulward Studios is in the basement of so the Soulward's house which the first floor functions for events, classes, Fabangans. The basement is where we do our studio. Okay. So about two years ago, a little over two years ago, when I got this property, which is a half a block from the from the Babach's resting place, I started to notice there were some stray cats that wandered around the neighborhood. And you know, I get ideas from time to time, just random ideas. And it popped into my head. I was like, "Hm, I wonder if I can get those cats to trust me." And I've I've never owned a cat and didn't have cats growing up. Um not sure I've even previously ever pet a cat. I've seen them. They're all over the place, but I had no particular connection with cats. But I I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to see if I could get these cats to trust me? So, what the first thing I did, I went to the dollar store and I bought some pet food and I put it out and they would not come anywhere near it if I were around. And I had to go inside, close the door, or they would not eat the food. Then I

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00All right, let's talk about the cats. Some of you are wondering about the cats, especially…
2. 1:34could come outside and they would eat the food if I were like standing like really…
3. 3:37had to internalize it on on a deeper level because cats are not codependent. That's one…
4. 5:09so cold. Let them come in." I've opened the door hundreds of times. They've actually come…
5. 6:43but then one day I did and it was actually it was the day before uh…
6. 9:18we're ready for cat adoption. And I was like, thank you for keeping me grounded. And…
7. 11:24too feral and they'll just re-release them to uh where they come from. And I put…
8. 13:57is a picture of them last night sitting on my couch. Now, it makes it look…
9. 15:31Um but you know, yeah, I'm definitely not for a forever home. And this isn't a…
10. 17:05Helps them find a forever home. Come on YouTube, do your thing. Um, I call these…

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