Sensitivity Training: Part One

The good news: While I have not yet found a partner to run with me the levels of the great Parking Structure of Life, I have found a companion.

The bad news: The companion looks like this for about twenty hours out of every day. Bo-ring.

The other bad news: she is a rescue cat that came with the name Precious (Based on the novel Push by Sapphire--ha). It is not, to be frank, the name that I would choose. But I can't quite bring myself to change it either--it's been her identity for ten years. Who am I to sweep in and name her Lucinda, or Jo, or any other name I would maybe give a cat? So, when she is being charming and nuzzling me, I call her Cat. And when she is doing things I find less charming, I call her Cat.

The other bad news: she's a cat. Which means fur balls, stinky litter box, and after only one week, my apartment now rests under a thin layer of cat hair. Each day, I become a little more of a cat lady. There was also the digestive incident that I will just call "The Bath Mat Event of 2010."

The good news: I am learning sensitivity. The whole idea is that I give the Cat a nice home, and she gives me a major dose of what my mom calls "responsibility for another living being's happiness." Which I have been told I need. Responsibility, sensitivity, awareness, blah, blah, blah.

Because there is a weird myopia that happens when you're twenty-seven and accustomed to living alone: every other living, breathing creature becomes an imposition on your life. For instance, when birds wake me in the morning, I feel irrational rage at their intrusion upon MY LIFE and MY BEDROOM. I hate them, because they're clearly on earth just trying to keep me from getting a full eight hours.

But now, I've got a cat, and I'm sensitive, so I think, "How nice that the birds have trees to be in, and their trees were here before my apartment, so we'll just have to share the universe. Lah-di-dah." Then I check in with the cat, and see to her needs (cat food) before my own (coffee). This, apparently, is what grown-ups do.

I've been working to adjust to this responsibility--and YES, I do realize that cats are ridiculously independent and need very little and this particular cat would probably attempt to eat my face if I fell asleep for too long and she got hungry enough--but it is still a first step in my life! I am her person. She doesn't eat if I'm not around. That's something!

The cat, this cat that is teaching me "responsibility for another living creature's happiness" is weird. She snores. Like human snores. We take lots of naps together, on the futon. And on more than one occasion, I've woken up, which has woken her up, and I wander into the kitchen for a snack because that is what I always do after a nap, and she wanders into the kitchen to pick at the leftovers in her food bowl, and I'm at the cabinet eating chips, and she's at her food bowl, and she looks up at me, and I look down at her, and we both seem to say: "Hey! This is alright."

And on Saturday morning, while I was in bed working on a short story (congratulatory pat on the back for working on a short story!), she curled up at my side and put her head on my chest, and kept me company while I worked. And I'm not saying I've gone totally soft, over-the-moon, my-cat-is-a-real-person, crazy. I'm just saying it was nice.

With enduring sensitivity and a grown-up sense of responsibility,

Kendall