Cats Are People,Too

Kizzy is really making an effort to transition from the skittery, invisible cat she's been playing at for so long to the cuddling, aloof-within-reasonable-limits pet cat I always knew she wanted to be. Our current evening ritual consists of her following me to bed and cautiously working her way from my ankles to my hands, which she often starts before I've even gotten settled under the blankets. For reasons I'll never understand, she begins at the feet, then rubs her way along my leg, back and forth several times before allowing my fingers within a grasping distance. Eventually, the path grows smaller and she moves across my lap, back and forth, while accepting some brief pets from me - but only with one hand, if I dare try a double-handed scritch all bets are off.

What I love the most, though, is how she is clumsy with this routine, there's no sign of a graceful feline whatsoever. Somehow, she manages to trip herself up while simply walking along the blanket. When she gets adventurous and dares a hop up onto my lap, she does it with too much gusto and has to teeter on my thigh to catch her balance. Repeatedly, she misses her mark and ends up headbutting into the side of my hand and casually recovers by walking back towards my feet, as though she meant to do it that way all along.

Silly as it is, this level of interaction with her person is massive progress for Kizzy, and it hasn't been an easy for her to get to this point. What she's going through seems to be exactly how it goes for a person when they're giving something new a try. At first, we stumble along, and, with the encourangment of our friends, we have to push through the painful bits in order to build up our stamina before whatever it is we're trying starts to feel natural and reasonable.

A hike last Sunday nearly ended me. There I was -- escaped from the downtown fog, surrounded by the views and smells and sounds that our hills have to offer - just wheezing away and pausing and kneeling my way through the entire trail. I wanted to give up and never go on a hike again, but my friend did her job well and encouraged me to keep going, that I was doing great, that it's only going to get easier. Of course, she was right.

For these seven years, I've been that person for Kizzy. Keeping the faith that she'll get there eventually. Patting myself on the back for staying so patient and steadfastly encouraging her to keep on trying. But, I wonder, now, if Kizzy is really the patient one in this scenario. Maybe she's the one who has had to be willing to forgive herself for not being able to fulfill her person's expectations from the very beginning. Maybe all this progress I think I've made is really Kizzy's triumph, not mine. Maybe she's got more to teach me than she's been letting on.

One Man's Trash?

There's been a set of pigeon wings on the ground in front of the building where I work for going on two weeks. After the third day, I stopped worrying about what happened to the rest of the bird and started wondering why the hell someone hadn't gotten rid of them because that sure as shit wasn't going to be my job. By about a week into it, I was actually looking forward to seeing the wings in their spot each morning as I made my way to the desk job. I'm not really sure why, either, because normally I'm not all that into pieces of animal carcass. Maybe it appealed to my teensy weensy appreciation for the macabre...can't really be sure.

Yesterday, a plastic fork appeared on top of the wings. I had to stop and stare for a moment because it sure looked like that fork was placed there with intention. It made me laugh a little, but its presence definitely altered my relationship with the wings. Now we had a third party involved and I wasn't so sure the fork was properly respectful. This sucked for me because, clearly, it was going to have to be my job to do away with the wings lest someone else mistake them for a place to stack their trash. But I figured that task could put that off for one more day.

This morning, though, I was let off the hook. When I checked for my friends...er, the wings...in their usual place, they had disappeared. All that remains now is the blasted fork. I'm not going to get caught up on why someone would take away the wings and not the fork because that could lead down too many icky paths. Still, I can't stop thinking about what these last two weeks with the wings might mean. Even though I'll probably have let it go by tomorrow, I need those wings to have meaning for reasons that I can't quite nail down.

All in the Details

Interesting what our little minds hold on to as meaningful. There's a shirt I sleep in sometimes. It's a men's long-sleeve cotton t-shirt...orange with a wide, blue stripe down each arm and one across the chest. For as long as I live, I shall refuse to put this shirt into the yard sale box because of it's incredibly significance. This is the shirt the husband wore the night I first noticed him, on the night he dropped his beer at the Joyce and I looked up from my spot at the pool table and there he was...puddle of beer at his feet, hands still in front of him in the shape of the glass, and making eye contact with me, eyebrows high on his forehead as if to say, "Ummm, did I do that...?"

That was the night I stopped letting anyone but the future-husband have a bite from my candy necklace. Ha! Believe it or not, I'm being literal about the candy necklace and not attempting some perverse metaphor. Really!

Anyway, back to the orange shirt. Could it be that within this seemingly minor detail lies the root of our love? Would I have even noticed him in the way that I did had he been wearing, say, the green version of the very same shirt? Well, probably, since it was actually the charming way he recovered from the spilled beer moment and how he managed to end the evening with me chasing him into the parking lot for the goodbye candy necklace bite that truly reeled me in to his life forever. And it's all of those things I think of when the minor-detail-orange-shirt works its way to the top of the comfy clothes drawer.