I have a cat. I know that's surprising, coming from someone here, but I do. He's great. Sweet as anything, friendly to anyone who'll interact with him, affectionate, polite, comes when he's called. As my spouse puts it, a dog in a cat suit.

And I don't love him. I'm fond of him, but I don't love him. I'm trying to unpack why.

He was hired to keep my father-in-law, who's now dying, company, about a year after our senior kitty died. We still had another cat, but she had been mine and my spouse's since kittenhood.

I've done something big for all of the cats I've loved.

When the senior kitty had just been adopted by my FIL, he wouldn't come out of the cabinet under the sink, and I came over to do therapy. I had to chase him down after trying to pull him out. I wrapped him up in a purrito, then sat down with him in my lap petting him gently and quietly telling him it was OK, that he could relax.. he was home.

It took about 45 minutes for him to go from trembling in my arms to purring steadily and climbing up to hug me and mark my face with his own. He was completely fine after that. He was officially my father-in-law's cat, but everyone else knew he was mine.

After he'd been here a while, I thought he might have ear mites, so we took him to the vet, and ended up adopting one of the kittens who was in the "adopt us, we're ADORABLE!" pen in the vet's lobby.

She slept in our room. We raised her. I taught her that she was the kitten in the mirror, and brought her to the vet after she swallowed a foot and a half of acrylic yarn.

When she got old and sick, I spent ages concocting extra stinky messes for her to eat, and putting them in front of her face repeatedly until she would. She was hungry but she had oral cancer, so I had to hand feed her.

I held her when she died, on the first day of spring last year. I still miss her and her huge purr, and her tongue with a grit rating.

The cat I had before those two followed me home from the subway on a cold, rainy November day, and had her kittens in my sock drawer. She let me pick them up the same day she gave birth.

Current cat has no overwhelming needs. He's a social eater who follows me around until I settle down near his food. But that's a multiple-times a day pain in the butt, rather than some big, grand thing that I've done for him.

I expect it'll come in time, even if I don't do something big for him. He really is a great cat.

#cats #NavelGazing

Yearning. For who-knows-what. Feeling unfulfilled, thinking maybe you can fix it with the right food, the right drink, the right relationship, the right job... it's not just me, right? Other people must have these waves come over them.

I try to remind myself that, so far in my life, I think this feeling

Some of those things are not directly under my control, so getting a good bundle of them at once has been challenging, some decades.

#navelgazing #life #void

Feeling supremely helpless. Got a call from my sis-in-law. My brother's latest scans shows mets in his lungs and other areas. They are going to try a different chemo regime. But radiation and surgery aren't possible right now.

I want to rage and cry at the unfairness of it all. His 59th birthday was last week and my niblings are turning 13 and 15 very soon.

Please spare a kind thought, a prayer or good vibes for my brother and his family.

#personal #self #navelgazing