I Would if I Could in Everyday Ramblings

I am typing this on my laptop, my poor old refurbished laptop, with a cat curled up against each hip. The boys just completed the after dinner snack bath ritual. We like routine around here, apparently.

After having to keep the bathroom door closed all those years with Sammy, who was neurotic about water and would stand there and yell at me as if I were in mortal danger when I stepped into the shower, now I have to keep the bathroom door open for Carlo and Diego because if I close it, they scratch at it and yell as if they are in mortal danger.

Friday morning I was washing my hair in the shower (which is in a tub, not a stall) and I looked down and there was Diego with his paws on the rim of the tub and his head curled around the side of the shower curtain checking out what I was up to.

I laughed and shooed him away, which gratefully he listened to, as I had visions of freaked out wet cat with long claws loose in the vicinity of my unprotected, well, everything.

These two are such goof balls. It is a joy to have healthy cats. We are all going to the vet for shots in a few weeks. The first time in a year! I know I am going to hear it about their weight. Carlo is actually fine, he is a big cat and just a little on the, umm, content side… but Diego, who is smaller is getting a little rotund. They are very active. The most active cats I have ever lived with.

So it comes down to feeding them less.

I am going to need to do very slow, very gradual taper because they are both neurotic about food. They fret and fuss and wrestle and knock things over and get underfoot when we get close to a designated feeding time.

Finally after a year they have relaxed enough to stop going directly into the kitchen after I feed them wet food to see if there might be anything left in the can or anything else I might have left out by accident. For months I would find the cans carefully removed from the recycling bag and gone over with two determined rough tongues. Now the cans stay put.

I bought some salmon today for myself and I need a strategy for cooking it and eating it. Basically, if I am cooking something they are interested in I need to sequester them in the bedroom.

The initiative to keep them off the kitchen counters has been a complete failure.

I am a lonely old lady with rescue cats.

It is not as bad as it sounds, because mostly I am a happy lonely old lady with a modest number of rescue cats and a clean apartment that does not smell of canned soup or cat pee but I definitely fit the edges of the stereotype.

I have been thinking about all week and listening to practice talks on this concept of “radical inclusivity” in yoga. The difficult concept of accepting the dark parts in us, and in others and inviting them in and giving them a place to belong.

The attacks in Paris are so sad and scary. I fret that what comes next will be more of the same and of course my heart aches for those who are wounded and the families and friends of all affected.

We have a large population of students here at Portland State from predominantly Muslim countries and groups of young men smoking on the street are part of the landscape here. But not today.

That made me sad too.

I don’t know how I can change the world to be a little bit better place, a more welcoming space here bookended by warm gray furry beings alone at home on a Sunday night.

I surely would if I could.

If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Last updated November 16, 2015