Ryō, an Egyptian Mau, is languid in a shaft of sunlight on Carla Francis’s couch, head tucked towards front paws, silver spotted fur gleaming, low thrumming purr. This, you see, is the epitome of seijaku, a Japanese word describing the stillness, silence and serenity found amid life’s chaos or, if you’re dedicated to the practice of one form of mediation or another, in your mind. “All of us need seijaku in today’s world and I think we don’t find it,” says Francis.
Across the incense-fragrant living room of Francis’s inner-Sydney apartment, Backer, a street cat, a rescue, is delicately lapping from a water fountain. Backer eschews the Japanese concept of bimbōshō which translates as “miserly nature” but which more generally describes those who have a pessimistic outlook on life, a glass half-empty approach. For Backer, life is always deliciously half full. Fresh filtered water, a stream of sunshine, a bowl of tuna, a warm lap and a scratch behind the ear. What more could any creature possibly want? “What’s there to be negative about?” Francis says.
