TGIF
After another semi sleepless night I staggered out of bed to feed Chester, my fur bearing alarm clock.
He begins to howl at 6:00 A.M. every morning like, well, clockwork.
He has no snooze button to repeatedly whack, and though I’m tempted at times to pretend he does.
I dumped a can of Friskies in his bowl and went straight back to bed.
Now, I know Chester’s routine…eat, groom excessively, use the cat box, groom some more, then jump back in bed with me.
Like clockwork…
I could hear him eating as I tried to steal a bit more rest from the night already past.
I was surprised when he stopped eating and jumped directly into bed.
I opened my eyes to see him standing right in front of my face…with a chunk of Friskies Liver and Chicken Dinner in his mouth.
I was more surprised when he dropped that chunk a cats hair away from own mouth.
Chester had brought me breakfast.
Now, there were two ways to react to this act of feline grace
The first was my natural inclination…yell at the cat for defiling my bed and screech loudly at him while removing wet cat food from my sheets.
The second option was to eat it and affirm the good intended .
I ate it.
Rather, I managed to choke it down without throwing up on the cat.
Content that I wouldn’t starve now, Chester climbed over me and resumed his grooming.
Why swallow a chunk of gross, wet, cat food?
Have you ever tried to do something good for someone only to have it blow up in your face?
Have you ever worked really hard to do the right thing only to have it turn out all wrong?
Have you ever had the good you attempted called evil?
Few things will break your spirit in a deeper way, in a way that will affect how you live your life going forward.
It can work the other way as well…sometimes we can be critical and dismissive of some one who was trying to do their best for us, but they missed some mark we’ve set in our own minds.
We damage them by how we react…sometimes the damage is permanent.
Sometimes the gracious thing to do is eat the cat food as if it were filet mignon.
Sometimes, it’s an act of love to affirm the good intended, even if it’s not very good at all.
Keep trying to do good.
Affirm the good intended.
Bon appetit…
Make your own application…
Oh my.
Please god tell me this is just a metaphor.
Josh,
It wasn’t a big chunk… 🙂
Well… we used to hear stories of old people getting by on canned cat food when their S.S. funds ran out before the month did….. But…. ? Twas a good metaphor…. I think…. mebbe….
P.S. I just remembered – a friend told of talking to her husband about the family budget at bedtime. As they turned in he remarked to their cat, “You’re going to have to start pulling your share of the load too.” He woke up to find a dead mouse in his shoe.
Michael, promise me you know where to draw the line! LOL
Em,
I think that was my line… 🙂
A few months ago there were suspicious crumbs on the counter and I blamed Mr. Noodles, the cat. Next morning there was a dead mouse on the table.
Satchmo used to line ’em up at the front step. Neat lines. Equal spacing. He was OCD. All sorts of corpses. Mice, chipmunks, one day there was a decapitated rabbit about the same size as Satchmo.
Michael, I never ate any of them 🙂
Xenia, did the mouse leave those crumbs? Bravo Mr. Noodles… !
Michael, “Affirm the good intended” amen – but “Bon Appetit?” ?
loved reading a good truth, wrapped in a little humor today … A blessing, thank you
Em, yep, it was the mouse, not the innocent Mr. Noodles.
Actually, using “innocent” to refer to that dastardly cat is not something that happens too often.
I told you all about the time he tied me to the chair?
I might need to get a cat. After 7 years of being mouse free, one… or two… got into the house through the back sliding door. Lily The Chihuahua is worthless. She lets the morning sparrows come steal her food, and the mice used to come from their burrows onto the patio and grab her kibble. I saw this a few times, me sitting there utterly still.
I saw one scamper down the hallway in the day time. It went into the broom closet. Ha! I thought, Trapped! I opened the door to whap it and darn if those things can’t jump at least two feet in the air. I’m not scared of rodents (I used to have pet rats… tame ones), but that thing leaping up into my face caused me to instinctually draw back (I’d fail the gom-jabbar test). It ran under me into my small front bathroom. Ha! I thought, trapped again!. Same thing repeated. And there was enough of a gap between the door and the tile that it ran under the door after I thought I’d trapped myself with it. If it were filmed, it would go viral as a YouTube video. Part of me thought it was hilarious.
In the past few months, I’ve seen mouse scat on the kitchen counters. I found some in my boy’s captain’s bed drawer in his room. I’ve seen it late at night scamper across the living room as I watched tv before bed. My daughter even saw it once in the kitchen.
I’ve tried snap traps, but apparently it (they?) is too light to trigger (whereas it almost snapps off my fingers if I barely touch the set trap). The cheese or whatever disappears. I’ve tried the glue traps. Nothing. Pepperoni, cheese, bacon, peanuts… they remain. I got a sonic wave kill trap the other day. Thus far, nothing went inside.
Last week, I was sitting on my back porch in the dark reading my tablet and I saw one of the mice leap up onto my screen. Ha! I had it now. Nope. With my lack of depth perception in the dark, it was on the inside of the screen. It had squeezed between the fixed and the sliding glass door and when I got up, it fell off the screen and went into my house. Aaarrrgh!
Time for a kitty, hopefully better than Lily The Useless Chihuahua. Problem it, only 1000 sf house. Where do I put the litter box that won’t gross me out?
Good word….. and if it’s good enough for Chester,…… make your own application.
Loved the comment, “We damage them by how we react…sometimes the damage is permanent.” Sadly true.
Blessings to you and your fur kids.
“Keep trying to do good”
“Affirm the good intended”
Good reminder!
Some ten years ago I was with my family in Zion National Park. My daughter’s fiancé was with us on this trip, as we figured it provided a good opportunity for us to get to know him, and vice versa.
One afternoon, while riding the tram that runs through the park, a big, strange, but harmless bug landed in my hand. As I lifted my hand to get a closer look, my soon-to-be son in law joked, “I dare you to eat it!” So without any hesitation, I tossed the big in my mouth…gulp…much to his shock and surprise. A few years ago he told me he learned more about me in that moment!
I am mean (it distresses my daughter) but decon placed where pets can’t get it does in the mice and all their offspring, too. Up here there js the real danger of hantavirus
I know what its like to have your best ignored or despised. You feel let down, as if your gift wasn’t appreciated, was disliked, or worse, irrelevant. Funny that I remember when my best has been shunned, but I can’t remember when I was the shunner.