Loyalty

The other morning I woke up for work and seen this.  Pop-eye cuddling my boyfriend (Pop-eye is his cat).  He normally just sleeps next to him or at his feet, he never really clung to his arm the way he is in the picture.  When I seen them like that I just HAD to take the picture because it just made me think of loyalty and love.  A lot people tend to say that dogs are loyaly creatures, which I don't doubt, while cats are not loyal.  I disagree with that.  All three of our cats are loyal to one of us.  Pop-eye is loyal to Tom and Falcor and Orion are loyal to me.   Falcor even comes running when I call for him.  Cats can be just as loyal as dogs.   They are not just loyal to us, their owners but it seems they are also loyal to each other and seems they care for each other even though I know there are people who think animals don't have emotions like humans do.

While I think of the loyalty of our cats I have to wonder if we are as loyal as they are.  Do we stand beside our friends not matter what, do we forgive their faults and love them for who they are, or do we hold grudges that tear friendships apart.  I have lost friends during my battle with cancer, then more when they got married and I remained single.  Friends who said they were loyal to me.  Too often I see people leaving those who care about them, not sticking by them when they needed it most.  How often do we see other people hurting one another for no reason, or over something petty and small.  I read a facebook status of someone losing a friend they were loyal to because the "friend" found out this person was gay.   Cats don't do things like that.  The only way the become unloyal is if you beat them or do horrible things to them.  Cats stay by their owners side, when I was going through Chemotherapy, the cat I had then Cuddles, would wake me up at night and look at me, or she would lay right beside me when I slept after a treatment, she wanted to be close to me and give me comfort.  Why can't humans be loyal as cats or even dogs?  Cats don't discriminate against who they are loyal too, Pop-eye keeps an eye on the door when I keep it open, i don't know if he wants to protect or run when someone comes to the door.  I like to think he wants to protect the house from the outside cats he sees, or those horrible horrible things called birds.

I think the concept of loyalty is often lost on us humans, we tend to think of ourselves instead of thinking about other people, especially those in our lives.  We expect others to loyal to us, but are we ever really loyal to those we expect it from?

Laughter

I have come across a few pictures of cats that have made me laugh out loud.  Sometimes laughter is the greatest medicine for anything.   My cats have done so many different things that have caused me to laugh and wonder what they were thinking, like Falcor going from room to room meowing or meowing down the heater vent in the living room.  Both of the pictures I have posted are two of the pictures that I laugh every time I look at them.  The one on the right that says stop laughing makes me think of my cats after they get a bath.   Once Pop-eye found himself in the basement when we left for the night.  Our neighbor told us he found a cat in the basement but couldn't get him to come to him.  So we searched and search until we heard his meow up in the rafters.  When we pulled him down he was black.  All black.   When we washed him our tub was black and he looked miserable like that cat.

Too often we don't take the time to laugh at things or even ourselves.I think we need to do that more often.  I just be able to laugh at ourselves and then forget our mistakes or embarrassing moments later.  Cats do things that would other wise be embarrassing like sleeping in a sink or falling off the bed while they roll around for attention.  Laughter comes with cats, enjoying their insidiousness and their actions.   The pictures on LOLcats are examples of laughter from owning cats, if only I could capture my boys in one of their moments.  Enjoy the laughter that follows from owning a cat and learn to laugh at yourself sometimes.

Companionship

All three of our cats get along very well.  They play together, they cuddle and sleep together. They even give each other baths.  When we brought Falcor into our home, he and Pop-eye played together off the bat, they shared their food like true kitty brothers.  They didn't fight over food or our attention.   When we brought Orion home, he went straight to Falcor and tried to snuggle up on him.  Later that night Falcor showed his disapproval by pooping on the counter.  Despite that one moment they all got used to each other and find companionship with each other.  

It is normal for us to come home from work and find they boys cuddled on the couch together or on the bed.  While they do want our attention and do let that be known, they mainly find their companionship with one another.  They share kitty-cat joys like sunbeams and the tinsel balls a friend bought for them.  The boys are just like brothers, part of the family.  They sure do fight like brothers.  One of my favorite things is coming home to see Falcor and Orion snuggled together like in the first picture.

As humans it is part of our nature to want to find companionship.  We want someone to share our lives with, whether it is as a spouse or a very close friend.  Someone we can turn to when we need a shoulder to cry on or someone to share in our utmost joys.  We spend so much time searching for that perfect person and at the same time we hurt those people we chose as companions, and get hurt by them.  While we want that everlasting companionship of another person, we also want our free space, our time to ourselves.  Who wouldn't want a little time to be themselves?  But from what I have observed, a lot of the times we tend to push people away when we want that space.  Think so many of us think that when we have someone as our companion, someone to share life we feel the need to be with them all the time and soon lose out on ourselves so we feel we need space and push them away.

While the cats do spend time together, cuddling, playing, and whatever else.  They do also spend time alone.  At this very moment, Pop-eye is laying under the table with me, Orion is on my pillow and Falcor is laying in the bathroom sink.  When one of the boys wants to play and the other doesn't, they let it be known, or they simply run away.  A lot of the time we feel obligated to do things our spouse or friends want to do, almost like we need to do things for them, with the, instead of doing somethings on our own.   In our search for the perfect companion, we tend to lose out on who we are, and I will be among the first to admit that I do the same thing I am talking about.  Its not like our companions will leave us if we don't do something they want, or even if we do something on our own.

We desperately crave companionship and would do anything to gain it sometimes, and many of us women tend to do things we normally wouldn't do.  Again something I have done in the past looking for someone who would give me what I wanted and needed.  The cats are content with their companions, they are content at playing when they want, cuddling whenever, and spending time alone as well.  They find safety in knowing the others two are simply around (or at least I like to think that they do).  Why can't we be content in simply knowing our companions are there?

Taking Risks

 The fat man, aka Falcor, has the habit is sleeping or laying in the bathtub.  When I am in the bath relaxing he likes to take the risk of walking across the edge of the tub, or sit there and play with things like my razor.   There have been one or two times when he fell into the bathtub: full of water, and me still in it.  Of course he was scared and wanted out, but he continues to take that risk of walking across the edge of the tub.  Or  he will just lay and sleep in the tub (recently the bathroom sink.  He doesn't care if there is water in there or not, he just likes to lay there for some odd reason.  I am not entirely sure of what his facination is with the bathtub, or the bathroom in general.   But he does take the risk and walks the edge of the tub, despite having fallen in twice already.


Even though he has already fallen into the bathtub water twice he still is intent on taking the risk of walking the edge of the tub.  In my last blog I mentioned attempting the impossible, this one is about taking the risks.  Too often when we fail at something, we give up.  We stop taking the risks needed to be successful in anything: career, education, relationships, family.  A lot of the time we want to try something new and different than the usual, but we are too afraid to take the risk.  We are afraid something bad would happen to use if we should attempt taking a risk.  Even if something bad happens once or twice and we fail a little, isn't that a part of life to make mistakes and learn from them to grow.  We fail sometimes in order to find out what we need to do in order to succeed.  But for some odd reason we are too afraid of making those mistakes so we stick to the safety of things we know we won't fail at.  I admit that I have something like that.  I have taken the easy road and avoided the struggles and failures.

Taking risks is a part of life and something we need to do in order to move past certain obstacles within life.  How else will we learn what we need to?  How else will we do anything in life worth doing?  My cat takes a risk of falling into water everytime he walks across the edge of the bathtub, or when he sleeps in the sink.  Yet as humans we are too scared of the "water" to take the necessary risks that we need too.

Attempt the Impossible

When Tom and I first moved in with each other I had a beautiful white fluffy cat named Cuddles.  She was an older cat, about 17 years old or so.  She was content at being alone and not really being bothered unless she wanted to be pet.  That was not in Pop-eye's plans.  Being a young cat that he is, he wanted to play with her and give her attention.  Every time he did so resulted in the same way, her growling and hissing at him, and him booping her on the head.  That of course made her hiss some more and growl more.  But Pop-eye did not care.  He persevered and at every chance he got he would try to make her play with him or at least accept his presence, even if that meant cornering her in the kitchen under the table (he did and we do have video).  Pop-eye did not give up, he kept at it and attempted what seemed to be impossible.  One day while Cuddles was on the futon sleeping he crept up and laid beside her and sniffed.  She didn't hiss or growl, she just looked at him and turned away.

Too often when we are faced with something that seems impossible, we give up.  We deem it impossible and stop trying to achieve our goals.  When something seems impossible we need to try every day to make the impossible become possible.  We need to persevere and strive to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves, or else we would not be happy, and feel we just gave in.  I think we give up too often in life.  We get discouraged and throw in the towel.  Not the cat, he stuck to making Cuddles tolerate him and in the end she would lay with him.  Sure she didn't play the way he wanted her to play, but she would lay on the futon with him and let him nuzzle her.  That's a step toward the right direction right?  She died after 4 months of introducing them together, who knows with a little more time she could have been playing with him in the living room, instead of hiding and hissing anytime he walked by.  If Pop-eye didn't try to play with her at least twice a day she might not have allowed him to lay with her.

We need to attempt the impossible more often and try show that the impossible is in deed possible with a little hard work and determination.  It seems as if no one wants to work hard or have the determination anymore. There are many things that people set out to do and accomplish but give up halfway through because it seems to be impossible to succeed.  If we saw things through to the end I wonder what state the world would be in right now.

Trust

When we first got Orion as I stated before he was afraid of us.  He would run away from us, hiss at us,and whenever we would try to pet him his ears would fold back and he would squint his eyes shut as if he was waiting to be hit or something.  In short, he did not trust us to keep him safe from harm.  Even now several months later he is still a tiny bit afraid.  He doesn't run away from us as much and allows us to both pet him and hold him without him hissing or having his claws out ready to attack.  He is slowly learning to trust  us.

How often in life do we encounter people that we do not trust?  Whether it is because of a painful past or that weird feeling we get from that person.   No matter what there are times when we do not trust people.  I think in a way we all respond the way Orion responded to us.  Not in the sense of attacking every person we do not trust or running away at the mere sight of them.  But we do proceed with caution.   When we are dealing with someone that we do not trust we put up a sort of wall to guard ourselves and give us the safety we need.   Like Orion keeping his eyes on us all the time, we keep our eyes on the person we do not trust, watching their move while they are interacting with us whether it is in real life or on a social network such as facebook.  The more the kitten gets to know us and realizes that we won't bring harm to him is how we respond to those we don't trust too quickly.  We take time to learn about the person and get to know them and how they operate.  Once we feel they can be trusted we open up and allow them into our lives.  We begin to allow ourselves to be comfortable with them.   As he gets used to us Orion allows himself to fall asleep on my lap or on my chest.  He is learning to trust.

Too often when we are hurt in the past it effects how we react to the future.  It effects how we react to the new people in our lives, new relationships even.  Sometimes we allow ourselves to let our guard down only to scare ourselves and run.  Sometimes we feel the need to pull up all guards and keep others out of our lives.  Other times we feel the need to fight and handle things with claws bared.  We don't allow anyone to get close to us and try to fight them when they try to do just that.  Our sweet little kitten is beginning to allow his guard to be down and allow new people to shower love on him.  Once we learn to trust after being hurt we open the door to letting someone shower  us with love and friendship.

Meet My Boys

 Meet Pop-eye; he is our oldest and most reserved.  He has the face and spirit of a lion.  He loves when daddy plays rough with him and holds him on his back.   He is a sweetheart of a cat who loves to be pet, but doesn't want to cuddle.   He does have the habit of walking on your face while you're sleeping to tell you he wants petted.  His favorite toys are his tinsel balls, his fox and raccoon and his mouse from mom.  He plays fetch, hide and seek, tag and loves the laser pointer where we can make him dizzy because he will run around in circles.  Pop-eye was rescued from the wild when he was a small kitten, he got his name because his eyes were too big for his tiny head, and they popped out.  That is no longer the case.

Second in our happy home is Falcor. He was also a rescue from the wild of the Outer Banks.  When he came to our home he was very sick with worms, but we got him all fixed and better.  He is my trouble maker, getting into all kinds of mischief.  His favorite pastime is looking out the window at the birds and other things that might catch his fancy.  He is a total love bug and loves to cuddle.  Once you begin to pet him, his motor is going and he will purr for hours.  This fat man comes when you call his name.  He loves sleeping in either the bathtub, or the bathroom sink.  When I am in the bath, he likes to push my razor into the water and try to fish it back out.  He has fallen in once or twice.   Falcor tends to be shy around new people but will warm up to you especially if you pet him.  If there is something on the coffee table or anywhere within his reach that means he is allowed to play with it.  He is a cat that can hold a grudge, if I go away for the weekend he will avoid me for at least a day.  And don't get him mad or he will fart on your pillow!

Lastly we have Orion.  He is the baby of the family and by far the softest, he feels like a little bunny.  He came into our lives because I seen him in Petsmart, and I fell in love with him.   His nick-name is skitters because he used to skitter away from us in the first months that we had him.  We think he was abused by previous owners before he ended up at the shelter based on his reactions to us when we got him.  He still skitters when he is startled, but he is beginning to warm up to us and loves to held close and tight.  He bonded great with the other cats, but mostly with Falcor.  They are inseparable.  He is a quiet kitten, but also my destructive kitten, I need to keep the toilet paper and paper towels out of reach or else I will come home to shredded paper everywhere.  He is such a kind, sweetheart of a kitten.  He is a playful kitten when he thinks that no one is looking, but once he realizes that he is being watched he stops and runs away. He likes to sleep on pillows in the corner where he feels the safest.  When he is not on a pillow or following behind Falcor he is off exploring new hiding places and making us try to find him.   I hope in time he will open up to us more and become more relaxed.

These are my beautiful boys who teach me something different each day.   With the different personality of our cats we can see different aspects in our own lives.  Come with me on a journey through life learning from the joys of owning 3 special cats.