For the third morning in a row, my cat Havana woke me up today at precisely 4:45 a.m. And for the third time I stumbled out of bed right onto a dead mole. Three days, three moles. And they’re getting bigger.

She’s trying to tell me something.

Later I sat at the table sipping a cup of tea. The morning sunlight glinted on the dead mole which Havana had moved from the bedroom to the kitchen so that I could get a better look at it. As I sat ruminating about the many mole funerals I have conducted since moving here a year ago, I realized that I had indeed purchased the house from a person with the last name “Moles.”

Now I was really paying attention.

Mole medicine. That’s how the Native Americans phrase it when an animal totem appears in one’s life. Apparently I am a slow learner, my cat is a patient spiritual guide, and mole has many lessons to teach me.

Symbolically, I’m being asked to ground myself. I have written recently about landing the plane, peeling potatoes, and falling. All the signals in my world now conspire to show me the quiet humility in returning to my roots and family. I have been spending more time alone, in my home, taking care of simple necessities.

Mole teaches us to pay attention to sense perceptions, to trust the wisdom of the body, to balance thinking with feeling and to touch others. As I retreat from my head to sit more in my body, I notice that even my teen-age son wants to hug and snuggle more.

Mole likes to dig beneath the surface of things. His natural predator the cat, a nocturnal creature, also feels comfortable in the dark. How much of our lives have we spent afraid of the dark, the subconscious, our own hidden thoughts? I, too, have begun to explore the hidden aspects of myself with the clear goal of getting to the bottom of things.

Mole is blind, yet he digs for treasure nonetheless. For that reason mole teaches us to follow our intuition, feel our way and work steadily toward our goals.

Finally, mole is also the perfect totem for me now as I search for a job. Perhaps once a steady paycheck arrives, Havana will no longer feel the need to provide for the family.

We’ll see.

A mole

Digging in a hole

Digging up my soul now

Going down, excavation

Higher now

In the sky

You make me feel like I can fly

So high

Elevation

U2, “Elevation”