I Need Aslan: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

It has come to this: I am writing about cats. In the past I have always quashed my expressions of affection for cats so to guard my secret cat-lady identity, but I am writing from the uncertainty of the 2020 COVID-19 shelter-in-place, so all holds are off. 

I also love dogs, and grew up with them constantly on the farm, but the two animals couldn’t be more different from my point of view. A very clever dog has some cat-like characteristics, and a very clever cat has some dog-like characteristics. Since this is a cat-essay, we’ll just talk about cats (how very cat-like). 

I grew up with farm cats, dozens of them coming and going, some staying, some moving on quickly. I even impersonated a veterinarian once, using popsicle sticks to splint a cat’s broken leg. Right now, as an adult, I am the co-owner of two luscious, spoiled, big-boned, saber-clawed, green-eyed Siberian lady-cats. 

Cats are mostly solitary animals. Even in the wild, very few live in prides or groups or packs. It’s everyone for themselves (or their immediate, young family), except if congregated for mutual purpose (like a barn, or a farm which feeds them).They have not been “living” alongside humans as long as dogs have. We have not impressed our evolutionary pressure on them for as long as we have dogs. Cats are still wild. Cats are not tame. When you try to impose an anthropomorphic frame over their behavior, they seem like jerks–standoffish, stuck-up, jerks. 

Most of them are not at all eager to do our will, or follow our rules, or cooperate, except by accident. They do not serve us (except where our purposes coincide); we usually serve them. Housecats have an uncanny habit of watching and staring at us humans with severe expressions, which we usually interpret as judgemental and disapproving (they can’t help their faces, really). 

So, when my sweet housecat decides after much deliberation, to jump up on my lap and curl up for a nap, it is a significant sign. She is warm, soft as down, sometimes, purring. Her peace infects me, her body radiates heat (average body temp of 100-102 F), to the point where sometimes she make me too hot. Our cats’ affection seems like a hard-earned privilege or very dear gift, not a right. 

In The Horse and His Boy, the third book in The Chronicles of Narnia series, a young orphan boy, Shasta, who was kidnapped as an infant from the North (though he doesn’t know it), is being raised by a veritable stranger he calls father. He meets a Narnian talking horse who was also kidnapped as a foal and they run away from Calormen, back toward Narnia. Their way leads through the city of Tashbaan, then through the  “Tombs of the Dead,” a graveyard with tall monuments, which is rumored to be haunted.  

Shasta’s desire to get to Narnia is stronger than his fear of the ghosts. Temporarily separated from his Horse and companions who have joined him on the way, he has to spend the night in this graveyard, but he is not alone. 

“He looked round;and his heart almost burst with relief. What had touched him was only a cat. … Its eyes made you think it knew secrets it would not tell.” When Shasta lay down to sleep in the cold, lonely night, the cat lay by him, back to back, keeping him warm. When jackals came in the night, it dispppeared, but a lion in the darkness chased them away. The cat came back, cuddling him, but gave him a reprimanding scratch when he confessed to throwing stones cruelly at a defenseless cat in the past. 

Later, Aslan, the giant lion-god of that world–caring, strong, powerful, frightful but not tame (never tame)–reveals himself to Shasta, telling him, “… I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time.” Unbeknownst to Shasta, the “cat” or, Aslan the Lion, was with him through his whole journey, unseen, but guiding his path and protecting him from real danger.

I love dogs, but if they love you, they seem to love you with all your flaws and shortcomings and sins, without question. Cats seem to say, with just a glare, “I like you, maybe I love you, you feed me. But as I stare deep into your human soul, I can see that you have the power to do better and be better. See to it that you make improvements. Now leave me alone until I need you.” 

I can appreciate both attitudes. I need them both, especially now.  

As I write this, the world is slowly coming to a halt because of a virus-CoVID-19. We’ve never experienced this before. Michigan has canceled the rest of the school year, shut down non-essential industries, has a shelter-in-place order–we are only to go out for food, life necessities or for solitary exercise, never to meet in groups. I’m even discouraged from taking my cats to their annual checkups. Because this virus is new, unknown and can’t be easily contained, we are encouraged to stay away from friends, extended family in order to stop and slow the spread of it. It is unseen, almost ghostly. 

In this time of uncertainty and fear, I like to think of a big cat curling up with me, with the warm softness, the purring, the comfort, but also the call to action, not accepting my shortcomings and flaws, but a comfort despite them, with a call to be better, to always re-assess my attitude under their seemingly judgemental eyes. 

In 1955, in response to a mother’s letter indicating that her son, Laurence was concerned because he felt he loved Aslan more than Jesus, C.S. Lewis replied “But Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus; and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before. “ C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, Dorsett and Mead, Editors, pg 52, 1985 Simon & Schuster. 

Sometimes “Jesus” the name gets besmirched with associations that do not belong to the biblical Savior. The name may take on the undisciplined emotionality of the yelling, jumping, sweaty TV preacher who is caught up in his own fervor; or the swaying, shushing, heavy makeuped face of the women’s minister cooing sweet affirmations of self-acceptance; or the always-positive assurances of blessings from a prosperity preacher; or the “I just tell it how I see it,” fire and brimstone, judgmental, hypocritical pastor of radical fundamentalist churches; or the surgical sterility of a professor explaining Christian doctrine with all its -isms and -tions. Sometimes these well-intentioned, but only human purveyors of The Word give the name “Jesus” unintentional negative connotations. Jesus is so much more than that. 

My favorite part of the Chronicles of Narnia is Aslan. I love Aslan, he is based on the biblical Jesus. That’s why I’m reading these books now. He is not tame, He is not who we want him to be, nor does he do what we want him to do. 

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. 

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything ‘bout safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe pg. 86

He has claws and is ferocious, but can be gentle and comforting as a housecat. He appears in His own time, He only tells you your story, not others’.

“We don’t know when he will act. In his time, no doubt, not ours. In the meantime, he would like us to do what we can on our own.”- High King Peter in Prince Caspian, pg. 187

 I love Aslan, because I love Jesus (I’m sorry if that sounds trite and jaded as it does to my ears).

The Chronicles of Narnia is a children’s story, a story that speaks to the fearful, scared child in us who doesn’t know what’s going on and can’t predict the future with the information we have. These stories comfort me; they help me to be brave and courageous, all through a gentle, powerful, but not-tame lion.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan often brings strength and courage to characters, either by his very breath (pneuma, spirit) or his mane, “Lucy buried her head in his mane to hide from his face. But there must have been magic in his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her.” -Prince Caspian, pg. 150

I wish I could get courage and lion strength from Aslan’s mane right now, but I guess I will just have to settle with The Good Book and a housecat on my lap.