Is It So Much to Ask?

 

I was sitting at the kitchen table this morning, trying to remember the last time in my life that it was usual and customary for me to go to the bathroom alone.

Certainly not since my first baby learned to walk, so about thirty-nine years. The kids outgrew that, but by then we had dogs and cats, and if you have lived with dogs and cats, you know that they have their own ideas about boundaries, and the bathroom door is not one of those boundaries.

The last cat standing is Mellow, the tuxedo cat, and this morning he came in and flopped down at my feet and stretched out like he was luxuriating in the summer sun, not on the bathroom vinyl flooring in mid-winter. It bothered me a little bit that he looked like he was settled in there for the long haul. Okay, okay, I do a lot of daydreaming and reading and playing games on my phone while I’m in there, but it seemed kind of high-handed (high-pawed?) to me that he assumed I wouldn’t be moving any time soon.

It also gets my attention when a cat gets comfortable in a cold, hard place.

Years ago we had a long-haired tabby named Miss Kitty who gravitated to cool, hard surfaces, and seemed happy to sleep there. I had never seen a cat that preferred hard and cold to soft and warm, but that’s how she rolled. Maybe it was that long hair.

She was the queen of the cats here until Beanbag came along. By that time Miss Kitty was getting on in years, and Beanbag, a tuxedo cat, arrived with a belly full of kittens (hence her name), so she really was a Queen. She gave birth in a box that Rick put on the back porch, after checking us out for a couple of weeks. I guess she decided we were okay. She was with us until she died, and she ran a tight ship. A cat of a lifetime.

We had a lot of feral cats in the yard that we fed in those days, so she had plenty of cats to herd. We only kept one of her kittens, a blue-gray tuxedo cat who was named Playfully by my older son.

When the kittens were old enough, I tried to drop them off at a VIPP adoption day, held at McFeed’s at that time, but I burst into tears as I drove away and had to turn around and go back and get them. The kittens may have been ready, but I wasn’t.

Playfully was the favorite of Rick’s and mine, because one day our younger son, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, tossed her into a wheelbarrow full of water. Rick spotted this and came running out to save the kitten. “Cat floats, Dad,” our son said. Rick was furious, but he rescued the kitten and brought her inside after telling our son not to throw cats into water.

She had inhaled water and became ill. We put her in a box, with towels and a heating pad, on a chair at the kitchen table that was next to the baseboard heater. Rick would occasionally carry her around in his shirt. It was touch and go for a few days, but then she turned a corner and recovered – almost. Her lungs were permanently compromised. She had gargle-y breathing and respiratory problems the rest of her life.

You can’t give away a kitten after bonding with them like that.

We found homes for the rest of the kittens individually. There were times in later years I wished we’d kept them all, but that would not have been practical, would it?

Would it?

Beanbag was the smartest cat with whom I have ever lived, with the biggest personality. She ruled around here for years. She even intimidated Sadie, our 85-pound Doberman/pit bull. Beanbag would stick her head deep into one of Sadie’s ears, and lick, while Sadie stood there cringing, afraid to move. Beanbag would put one paw on Sadie’s head, and if Sadie tried to pull away, she suffered the wrath of the paw.

But where was I? Oh yes – going to the bathroom with company. Mellow will come right in and lie down, as he did this morning, and sometimes he’ll jump up on my lap and proceed to my shoulder, where he snuggles in and purrs.

My late beloved AmStaff, Marley, usually would not come in, but she would stand outside the door looking in at me, checking on where I was and what I was doing, and seeming a little worried. Did the dog want to be part of what was happening? Usually, no. Sometimes she did come in, to give me a nose touch and then head back out to the living room, assured all was well, I guess. I really don’t know what went through her pitty mind.

Mellow is a senior cat now, eleven or twelve. He likes to go in and out several times a day. I don’t let him out after dark because I know there are coyotes in the neighborhood.

When he feels like it, he’ll jump in my lap and climb up to do a neck snuggle, then walk around and jump down from the other shoulder. When I’m on the couch or in bed he’ll come and lie on my nice soft stomach, or, sometimes, lie next to me. Then, according to some schedule known only to him, he will suddenly “chirp,” and stand up, and leave, to go tend to whatever occurred to him.

His only real downside is that he drools uncontrollably when he’s lying on me, purring and happy. I try to keep a kitchen towel handy to throw under his drooly mouth. If I don’t have that I can end up soaked.

I suppose when Mellow is gone, I’ll be able to go to the bathroom in solitary splendor.

I’ll miss him, though, like I miss Marley now.

The Fault-Finding Gene

 

 

What kind of a year will 2022 be? I think I’ll try to stay in the present and take it one day at a time, like I do with everything else. I will try to be a good person, which is not a given for me.

Just to show you what a terrible person I am, there are few things that cheer me up as much as seeing a death notice for someone I did not like. That happened recently, and as the warm glow spread inside, I thought, I’ll never have to deal with that person again.

This may be the acme of schadenfreude, but I console myself that whoever it is will never know, because they are, you know, dead.

I do not talk about it to people. I keep it to myself. I mean, saying you are glad someone has died is bad form, you must agree. Well, unless it is someone whom we have as a culture agreed would leave the world better off by departing. Then it is still bad form, but we are not alone.

At the same time I cannot help but wonder who and how many will breathe a sigh of relief, or maybe say, “Yahoo,” and do a little dance when I fall off the perch. I am not the only one who feels a certain satisfaction at the passing of someone who was a pain in the butt.

Why do I imagine people being happy if I die? Because I have lived around human beings for a long time, and I know what they are like. Plus I know I can be a real pain in the butt myself.

There’s always someone wanting to criticize and find fault. In my experience people can find fault with other people for anything and everything, and make up stuff to criticize, no matter how nonsensical.

I do not know what evolutionary purpose this serves.

For an illustration of fanciful fault finding, I hold up One America News, which is slightly to the lunatic right of Fox News. They like to tell their viewers that Joe Biden has an uncontrollable stutter, and they offer doctored video evidence of him stuttering, which is another proof that he is a morally derelict commie cannibal.

Because that’s the kind of leap they like to make in Delusion World (A denizen of which told a friend of mine that today is the day the UN starts throwing people in jail until they get vaccinated. Sometimes the conspiracy theorists come up with a good, if not legal, idea).

Going from the political to the personal, that fault-finding gene seems to be present in all of us, and if we don’t like someone, we will find all kinds of things to justify our dislike. They are too fat, or too thin, or too bitchy, or too nice, or too sloppy, or too anal, or too slow, or too fast, too loud, too quiet, too late, too early, or too good to be true – it must be an act. Or they think they are so darn smart.

When I review the people who have given me the pip, I realize that mostly they were people who looked down their noses at me. I do not object to people having a good opinion of themselves. I do object to people who have a lousy opinion of themselves trying to make themselves feel better by dissing me.

If I felt better about myself, I wouldn’t notice this behavior, or I’d feel compassion for people who are mired in their own emotional soup and try to make themselves feel worthy by throwing their soup around.

Okay, that metaphor is exhausted.

So – anyway – I see this less than admirable trait in myself. Sometimes when someone dies, and it is someone who has always treated me as a lesser being, I am relieved, and glad.

If I have not sorted that trait out of myself by now, I am probably stuck with it.

Back to work, trying hard to be rational and behave well and fluff up my compassion.

It’s a struggle.