I'm pretty confident to assume you haven't, or at least most of you haven't anyway ....I certainly never had.
When the lid is removed, those fleas for the rest of their lives will never jump higher than the level of the lid. And what is truly amazing, is the offspring of those fleas will never jump higher either subhanAllah.
You can see the experiment for yourself in this short one minute video [click here].
When I saw this, I immediately thought about the conditioning of my own upbringing; how my parents have influenced my behaviour and then I thought about how I influence my children in theirs.
When we were kids, we pretty much always had a cat or two. I loved those cats. My parents had strict rules around them. They were never aloud upstairs, or on furniture. They were fed once a day (dry food was always available and clearly they were capable of catching mice because they would often leave us a furry dead gift on the doorstep) and were put outside every night. I used to always feel so terrible for those poor hungry cats kicked out in the cold.
Now fast forward 20 years. I remembered my cats so fondly with warmth and love and naturally wanted my children to have that same experience too with a pet of their own.
Was I the calm, cat loving parent I longed my own to be when I was small?
No! I was indeed that same germ-phobic - that cat is dirty - get it away from me parent mine were subhanAllah! ....and I even went a step further than they did, because I didn't allow her in the kitchen either!
I say all this as past tense because it got too much for me to bear, that we no longer have the cat!.
SubhanAllah, the powerful effect we have on our children.
Baarik allaahu feeki. Too bad about the cat especially since cats are not unclean. The Messenger of Allaah salla allaahu alayhi was sallam tilted a water vessel for a cat to drink from then later used that same water for wudu. Aisha was even seen eating from the same place a cat had nibbled some pudding that she had laid to rest on the floor.
ReplyDeleteHe salla allaahu alayhi wa sallam said: "It is not unclean; it is one of those who go round among you" - Sunan Abi Dawood.
With all these poor feral cats about maybe one favoured one can get a second shot with you, inshaa allaah.
JazakAllahu khayran for this reminder.
DeleteFor me, it's not so much a thought a cat being dirty in that sense, but More about where has the cat been walking outside and what are her little paws spreading through the house. ....i think about our dirty city streets, and the dirty bin she liked to climb on.....and all I see are those germs stuck to her feet!