Regency

My wife and I help care for the local community cats. We and our neighbors provide the cats with food, water, and shelter. We also work with our city to have them spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and get them health care when needed.

Indeed, there are perks to caring for the cats. While some are feral and standoffish, others are loving and allow us the honor of petting them. In some ways, it’s become our own cat café. We’ve even given the cats names.

However, it’s not all fun and games. Providing food, water, and shelter isn’t always enough. Sometimes, we can catch the sick ones for treatment; other times, they elude us. Recently, one became pregnant before we could catch her to have her fixed. This isn’t surprising since many aren’t spayed or neutered.

We have accepted regency for the cats.

In the book Pagan Consent Culture, Druid priest John Beckett wrote about the concept of regency in the context of personal sovereignty. He borrowed from the traditions of Irish kings having the right to rule as long as it’s done justly and fairly. Beckett applies this tradition to individuals who have the right to rule themselves in a way they deem fit.

However, there are exceptions to self-rule. Beckett gives the example of young children who cannot exercise their personal sovereignty. Because of this, parents are responsible for properly caring for their young children. He calls this adult responsibility ‘regency.’

We can expand this to say that we also have regency for non-human animals. This regency isn’t because of the Hebrew creation myth of humans being given dominion. Instead, our regency comes from our relationship with the natural world.

While we might not notice it in our urban living, our existence is tied to the natural world. Nature gives us the food that we eat, the water we drink, and the air that we breathe. We evolved in the natural world. Our fates are one with the Earth and with all other living things. 

However, we’re different from other animals. We crafty apes have broken the natural relations we once had with the Earth and Her inhabitants. The Earth has a fever caused by human-created global warming, which results in climate change. Human activity is causing a mass extinction on a vast scale. And we’ve taken entire species and bred them into something that sometimes barely resembles their ancestors.

This brings me back to the community cats. Domestic cats have a special relationship with humans. While genetically closer to their wild ancestors than dogs are to theirs, cats have been integrated into the human world. Whether in the distant past they chose us or we chose them, humans have regency over the domestic cat.  

Each of us must individually choose whether or not to act upon our regency. There is no divine or universal mandate for us to do so. It’s a choice we each make.

We have made our choice. Our care for the community cats shows that we’ve accepted our regency.

I encourage you to do the same.