Our Dreams are only Limited by Our Belief

My childhood cat Puffy was a great hunter. She was a medium sized sleek black cat that was a half Siamese mixed breed, but she believed she was a black panther. We feed her well and yet daily she went out hunting to bring home a prize for the family. Often my childhood homes were perched at the edge of a forest or fields that provided ample opportunities for her to display her wild side.

For three years in Texas we lived on West Lake Drive, which was teeming with ample wildlife. A common sight was a triumphant Puffy carrying her catch home. My brother and I held somber funerals for all the animals. One day Puffy approached the house dragging between her legs a jack rabbit that was more than twice her size. The rabbit was huge, but Puffy thought she was a black panther so in her eyes it was tiny.

When we were living on a military base overseas our upstairs neighbor threatened to report Puffy to the Military Police. We lived on the first floor and our neighbor lived directly above us on the second floor. The neighbor had a squirrel feeder on her balcony. Puffy had discovered this prime hunting spot and simply picked off the squirrels as they ran up the wall to the feeder. We had a large squirrel bone graveyard in the dirt directly below our balcony

I was about eight or nine years old at the time. I attempted to teach Puffy not to hunt the squirrels, to no avail. We agreed to have her declawed so that she would stop killing the squirrels. Our neighbor agreed not to report Puffy. The problem was that Puffy refused to be tamed. She was completely unaware of the fact that she didn’t have any claws and continued to successfully hunt. Thankfully we got transferred across base into duplexes. Our new home backed up to thick woods and we created a new graveyard for her prey.

As far as Puffy was concerned she needed to provide for her family which included her humans, her dog Tora, Smokey the cat, and my father’s black socks that she consistently gathered up like a litter of kittens and cared for them under my bed. She believed she was bigger than her prey, fully armed with claws and faster than any animal on earth.

In reality Puffy was a small to medium sized clawless cat. There was nothing extraordinary about her size, build or physical strength. Little did she know that she was handicapped in comparison to other cats. It was all in her mind. She overtook animals that were faster, bigger and stronger than her by sheer determination.

What we believe about ourselves has a major impact on our success. Don’t limit the size of your dreams by what you believe about your potential. We should all chase the big prey like a mountain lion, even if we are simply a small housecat.