Are you ready to meditate with Cori?
Close your eyes and try and get really comfortable in your bed.
It's time to let go of your day,
To relax your body and hopefully fall fast asleep.
I'd like to take you on a journey to a very special place.
A place where if you use your imagination and you can visualize with your eyes closed,
It's a place where you can go along with me in your mind.
Imagine you're in a quaint little village in England.
All of the houses in the village look like quaint cottages with thatched roofs and stained glass windows.
Pretty front gardens with lots of wildflowers.
The people in the village all seem very happy and pleasant to each other.
Walking around just like you are,
Going about your day.
The road that you're walking on is cobblestone and it looks like it could have been made hundreds of years ago.
Everything about this quaint village that you're walking through feels old and ancient.
It has a feel of safety and family,
Like everyone knows each other.
The place that you're going to today is somewhere you haven't been before.
One of the nice people in the village told you all about it and you're very excited to go there.
In fact,
This place is one of those places where you've always wanted to go but you've never had the chance.
Your footsteps are quite quick as you're excited to get there as soon as possible.
It's a really nice day,
So everyone is out and about and everyone looks happy because it's sunny and there in England it's not sunny very often.
The air definitely has a feel of summer about it.
You can smell different things.
You can smell bread,
Fresh bread,
As if it's just come out of the oven,
Whiffed in out of the door of the bakery.
Because the village is really small,
There's not that many shops,
But you walk past a butcher's shop that looks very busy,
Everyone buying their meat for the week.
You walk past a florist.
She smiles and says hello as she's making bundles of flowers for people that come in to buy them.
There's a hairdresser's that's absolutely packed full of people waiting to get their hair done.
And then there's a general convenience store that sells everything in there that's open 24 hours a day.
And that's about it.
Everything else you have to travel further away to go to.
Everything except this special store that you're walking towards.
You're really,
Really close now.
Just a couple of hundred feet before you get there.
You walk past a bench with an old man on eating fish and chips out of newspaper.
It's very normal there in the village.
In fact it's very normal in England for people to still eat fish and chips in certain parts of it out of newspaper.
You smell the fish and chips and it smells really good which makes you hungry,
But at the same time you have somewhere important to be.
And then as you're thinking that thought,
You arrive at the door.
The door is pink with a big window in it so that you can see inside.
Pink is quite a strange colour for a door,
You think.
You open the door to step inside of the very special place and it rings as if there's a bell attached to it to let the owner know that someone's coming in.
As soon as you step inside your world,
It gets very,
Very happy.
The first thing that you hear is lots and lots of meows.
Kittens and cats are absolutely everywhere.
You look around at all the decorations and the size of the shop and it's the quaintest place you've ever been.
The far back wall is full of books,
From the floor all the way up to the ceiling,
As if the bookshelf is the whole wall.
And all of the books look really old and ancient,
Leather-bound,
With gold and red and black and all different coloured books.
There's a couple of big,
Comfortable-looking leather chairs,
A sofa on another wall that looks big and soft and comfortable.
It's blue and it's velvet.
There's some round tables here and there with chairs all around them.
And then,
On the far end of the room,
There's an area that looks like a small,
Quaint kitchen.
There's a lady in there with curly hair and rosy red cheeks.
She's wearing a floral apron.
The apron is covered in tiny little rosebuds,
Pink and lilac.
She says hello and she has a really big smile.
Hello,
My dear,
She says.
Welcome to the cat corner.
The place is a really cool little cafe where you can get tea and coffee and scones and different pastries.
And while you sit and drink your tea,
Your English cup of tea,
You can relax and play or just watch all of the cats and the kittens that are walking around and climbing on things and playing as freely as they wish.
They either come and say hello or they don't.
There's a couple of other people in there,
Customers,
That are already enjoying their pastries.
There's one lady with a grey hair and a bun and she's stroking two cats that are sat on her lap.
There's a couple with a small child sat on the sofa and the small child is very happy about the fact that all the little kittens want to play with him.
You go and get a cup of tea.
You order an English scone with jam and clotted cream.
You go and take a seat on one of the round tables that has just two chairs.
You sit down on one of them and instantly a black and white cat jumps off one of the bookshelves onto the table to say hello.
It meows in your face as if it says,
Hello.
You say hello back.
The cat carries on meowing at you as if it's starting a conversation.
For some weird,
Unusual reason,
You feel like you understand everything the cat is saying.
Every meow feels like it's telling you about his day.
And you respond by telling the cat how you feel,
How your day was and how you look forward to meeting some of his friends.
The cat jumps off the table and walks over to a group of cats as if it's telling them all about you.
Some of the cats turn round and look at you,
Interested in what you are bringing to the table.
Who are you?
Why are you there?
Are you a nice person?
Do you like us cats?
They're all the instinctive questions that you feel as if the cats are saying as they look at you.
The lady with the curly hair and the pink cheeks brings over your tea and your scone,
Puts it on the table in front of you and says,
Well,
Just to let you know,
Most of the cats and kittens in here love people,
Especially the nice ones.
So you just go ahead and enjoy yourself while you're here.
I'll let you know that the ginger one over there really loves ear scratches.
And Sally,
Sally,
The gray one,
She's the oldest cat in here.
She's 15 years old.
She's been with me a very long time and she absolutely loves people,
Especially girls.
But she also does like boys.
You look over at the oldest cat in there.
Sally looks very uninterested in what you're doing.
She's too busy licking her paws and trying to get under one of her armpits to give it a scratch and a lick.
There's a lot of kittens in here.
And you're quite excited about snuggling some of them.
You take a sip of your English tea and close your eyes because it's wonderful.
And as you close your eyes,
The sound of all the cats purring and meowing and scratching and licking gets really,
Really loud inside of your head.
And you love it.
When you open your eyes,
You've already decided that you love everything about this place.
When you're older,
You're definitely going to have a cat corner just like this.
Maybe it's in America somewhere.
Maybe it's in Ireland or Scotland.
Maybe it's in Canada or Russia or Belgium or Switzerland or France.
Maybe it's in Germany.
Maybe it's in Timbuktu.
It doesn't matter.
Wherever you settle,
You think that you would love,
Love to be that older lady with the curly hair and the apron and the rosy cheeks and the nice smile.
Or maybe you would be an older gentleman with glasses perched on his nose as if you're just like Geppetto in Pinocchio with rosy red cheeks and maybe a cute big belly like Santa.
Who knows?
But either way,
You have a cat corner all of your own and everyone is welcome.
It's the bestest place ever.
You take a bite of your scone that you've put the cream and jam on and it's the bestest,
Bestest thing you've ever tasted.
The scone is cooked to perfection and it melts in your mouth.
And the clotted cream is creamy and rich and sweet.
Oh my goodness.
And the jam is homemade and it tastes like nothing you've ever had out of a jar.
You love this place.
This quaint little village in England with all the houses that look like they've been drawn for a fairy tale in a storybook.
The cobblestone roads and the sweet,
Sweet people.
You feel very happy and comfortable in the cat corner.
Before long there's kittens crawling all over you.
You're glad that you wore trousers because they would have scratched your legs so much.
You stay there for about two hours and have two cups of tea.
The second one you try with sugar.
And it's so good.
You play with almost all the cats in there.
Walking around sometimes just giving them a stroke or a tickle or a scratch.
And then it's time to leave.
That night as you lay in bed you feel very content and happy.
You had the bestest day.
When you think to yourself you're definitely going to go back there.
You close down your eyes and relax your body.
Letting all of your muscles get soft.
Your bed is super comfortable and warm.
And everything is just perfect in the world.
Before long you end up falling fast asleep.
Dreaming about cats purring as you tickle behind their ears.
The end.
