This is a sight I see at least ten times a day. Maurice has ripped out the corner of the screen in that door and when she wants in, she leaps up there and gives me the Stare of Death until I open it for her.
Now, the thing is, is that she has another way to get into the house which is via a dog/cat door in the laundry room. She sometimes uses that but if she has any suspicion at all that I'm in the kitchen, she'll demand my attention and test my ability to follow her commands once again.
I am absolutely certain that she asks me to do things (tells me to do things) that she is perfectly capable of doing herself to prove my undying and faithful love and obsequious devotion. Letting her outside is another of those things. It's not all about coming in. My bathroom has a door out to the swing porch and she will trot over to it and stand there until I let her out although her own private portal in the laundry room is only about fifteen feet away.
We've really started out with a bang tonight, haven't we?
No. No we have not.
I just don't have anything to say tonight. I had a fine day. I went to town and met Jessie for lunch and then we went to Costco where they had a few different types of air fryers but none of them the one I wanted and we chat, chat, chatted all through lunch and shopping so that was great.
But beyond that? I mean. Do you want to hear about the fact that I realized today that I had not washed my hair since Christmas Eve and so I took a shower and did that?
Probably not.
Let me reassure you that I do shower daily and even floss my teeth EVERY DAY so my hygiene isn't really that bad.
*******************
I just wrote a longish treatise on children and their feelings and emotions which is one of the things Jessie and I talked about today. But honestly, what I was writing was too full of the emotions I still have about the emotions I had as a child and how no one was even cognizant of the fact that children could have deep and big emotions, much less help children deal with them or explore the reasons the child was having them.
I mean- who among us does not remember crying and having an adult (usually a dad or dad-figure) saying, "If you don't stop that crying I'll give you something to cry about," which was a very thinly veiled threat of some sort of corporal punishment which of course is always a helpful way to handle a child's behavior.
Especially if you want them to resent you forever and fuck you up so badly that even years of therapy will only help so much. And please don't tell me that you were spanked as a child and turned out just fine.
Hopefully, as Jessie and I agreed, it's a different time and hopefully, parents are far more aware of how their children's behaviors are affected by their emotions and can help them figure that out without judgement or punishment. It could sure prevent a whole lot of problems on down the road for them.
And years of therapy.
All right.
Blah, blah, blah.
I'll try to be more interesting tomorrow. No guarantees, though.
Love...Ms. Moon
Dogs drool, cats rule. That's the end of my expertise tonight.
ReplyDeleteWell, that is absolutely and profoundly true. I feel I should cross stitch that on a pillow or something.
DeleteCats need to check that their humans are keeping up on their trained responses.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, children have big emotions that shouldn't be dismissed.
It's true. Cats have to constantly be on the lookout for any weaknesses in our quick and ready responses to their needs.
DeleteI have to tell you- I think of you in the very large family you had and I wonder if anyone ever had a second to consider your feelings about anything at all when you were small.
Little kids who have had their big emotions dismissed grow up to be adults who still don't know how to deal with their big emotions.
ReplyDeleteYour picture of Maurice made me laugh. That's a cat for you. They simply like to know that they're the boss of you. And until you accept that little fact of life, they will never cease trying to train you.
Debby- that first sentence is the damn truth. I'm sitting in the front of the classroom on that one.
DeleteI accepted Maurice's dominance a long time ago. She just needs to make sure there is no backsliding.
Shove over, sistah and make some room at the front of the class. I get it.
DeleteIt is hard work training a human and Maurice is doing a damn fine job!
ReplyDeleteKids and their emotions - now that is a huge topic.
That IS a huge topic, isn't it?
Delete"Parents will fug you up"...true story, even the parents who might have done parenting well-ish. It is just a given. Everyone does the best they know how- some know very little and will give you something to cry about, for sure. That is why every philosophy/religion teaches forgiveness. Forgiveness and understanding I guess- you know, after enlightenment , carrying water, and reading every self help book ever written.
ReplyDeleteMaurice adores you obviously and sharply!
You made me laugh with that last sentence. I have up reading self-help books a long time ago but I was definitely into them at one point. The problem was, no matter what I was reading about it seemed to me that I had it!
DeleteAnd you are so right. No parent is perfect. Can't be. And yes, your parents will definitely fuck you up because their parents fucked them up and Adam and Eve obviously fucked up Cain so there you go.
Animals have all sorts of ways of conveying loyalty and affection, including many that seem annoying as hell! But they mean well.
ReplyDeleteI do think the world has changed regarding kids and their feelings. There's certainly more awareness, and people are less likely to resort to physical punishment or intimidation these days. Doesn't mean bad things don't happen, though.
You are so right. Bad things do happen all the time and even great parents don't always know the best thing way to deal with their children and those feelings the children have. And we're all tainted by our own lives and experiences.
DeleteIt's a wonder anyone grows up to be a halfway decent person.
Do you really think Maurice means well? Honestly, I mostly feel like she doesn't give a damn better than anyone since Rhett Butler.
It certainly is a different time now, I constantly am impressed by how much time my son spends listening to and helping his baby daughters, explaining things to them making sure they understand stuff, they are two and a half now and most of their baby babble is actual sentences now. They're off to a good start with great parents.
ReplyDeleteI was never spanked, it just wasn't done in my family.
Your granddaughters are lucky and obviously, you did good by your son.
DeleteWow! What a very good thing to be raised in a non-spanking family during the times we were growing up.
You are always interesting. Maurice sees you as her project. She’ll get you perfectly trained yet. In our old apartment our terrace wrapped all around. The cats would go out one of several windows and then stand by the living room door yowling to be let in. The nearest open window was 4 feet away.
ReplyDeleteOh my gogbgvfd. Your cats are worse than Maurice! They have you guys twisted around their tiny little claws. Paws? Whatever.
DeleteMaurice has just come up onto the table where I'm writing this and let me give her an air kiss. I feel as if I've been blessed.
Raising kids is tricky, I think. I think I did okay usually but we all have moments that we might have done differently but hindsight...etc., etc. I like my kids so that's something. And I think most of them like me.
ReplyDeleteYour kids seem to like spending lots of time with you so that's a good sign that you did things right...
I can think of several instances, probably many if I were being completely honest, with my kids that I could have handled better. But none of us is perfect, even those who seem to be, and we all fuck up. Parents have been fucking up their children as long as they've been having children. At least I tried to treat my children with respect. I guess I didn't do too bad, they turned out to be fine people and they haven't shunned me.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's about how I feel about my own child rearing. I know I fucked up sometimes and I deeply regret some of the things I did or did not do. And you and I were both pretty young when we had our kids, weren't we? I know I was. A baby raising babies. It's a wonder my kids don't live in Hong Kong now to get as far away from me as possible.
DeleteMaurice takes a cute photo, and she loves having help. Why go through the cat flap when she can request and come through a grander entry door and have a little meet and greet with you. Maurice with a personality plus.
ReplyDeleteI believe we are each product of our past. The good, bad and everything in between. I had a difficult mother.
That said, I take great joy seeing my children thrive and become great adults.
Another reason Maurice likes that door is that when she jumps down and comes in when I open it, she's almost right at her food bowl.
DeleteWe are definitely the product of our past. AND our parents' pasts. And so on back to before we were humanoids, I guess.
I was spanked as a child and I think you know, I am not fine:) Strangely enough, it was only my mum who ever spanked us, never my dad, and I was only terrified of my dad.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad parents are improving with regards to dealing with children's emotions. I've learned a lot raising Jack, and I'm doing better with him (I hope) than I did with my own children. It's much easier raising one, rather than three, and no Katie in the mix.
I visited my other grandson this past week. He's 3.5 years old now and obviously delayed. His mom is taking him for testing this month with a probably diagnosis of autism. Sigh. Maybe some families just shouldn't reproduce, that's how I feel about my own family right now.
I think that moms sometimes had so much anger at being stuck in their roles which quite possibly they hadn't really wanted to be in nor were very good at, that spanking was for them just a way of expressing it.
DeleteSad.
I bet you are learning a lot raising Jack and as you say, it's a lot easier with one than it was with three, one with a disability. I don't know how you did it.
I absolutely believe that some people shouldn't reproduce which is probably a horrible thing to say but honestly, I don't think you are one of them.
Another reminder that you are Maurice's pet. She makes sure of that regularly.
ReplyDeleteHer pet and her faithful servant.
DeleteMaurice, like all Cats, has Staff. My Parents didn't do Spankings but they taught us appropriate and acceptable behavior, mostly from their example and ability to be who we wanted to be like when we grew up. I'm Thankful I had Fine Parents with non-traditional Bohemian ways that for their Era were not how most of my Friends were being Raised at all. Perhaps much of why we have so many messed up Adults these Days is centered in not only their Nature, but their Nurture? That said, my Dad had a horrific Childhood and he did turn out to be a Fine Man who wanted better for his own Children and did everything he possibly could to ensure a better Future for us than he had on the Rez.
ReplyDeleteSome people who were raised by very dysfunctional families go on to make sure that they do not repeat the same mistakes and I respect those people the most. They consciously choose how they want to parent. Sounds like your dad was one of those.
DeleteThere is a slightly controversial (to some) scientist in the UK, Rupert Sheldrake, who wrote several books about the 7th sense of animals and one of his experiments included a telephone survey of veterinary surgeries in London asking how often appointments are cancelled because the owners cannot find their cats. Turns out it happens in every surgery, daily, regularly and statistically significantly. He did another experiment where people reported that cats would jump and run to the phone when it rang (landline days) only if it was their owner who called. We can confirm the vet hidings but our cats were never interested in ringing phones, only enjoyed messing with phone cords.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere I had read about his study of dogs who knew when their owners were coming home and it must have made an impression on me because I remembered that. I have often thought that humans (and probably animals too) do have other senses that are very real and will someday have a scientific explanation. I can see how precognitive abilities would be very helpful in the survival of a species and may well have evolved right along with the way our vision and taste and so forth have.
DeleteVery interesting stuff.
My Maine Coon cat, Feather, knew when I was coming home from work and she'd be on my sewing machine, looking out the window as I pulled into my carport!!
ReplyDeleteThere you go...
DeleteI think, no matter how hard we try not to give our children baggage, they’ll likely end up in therapy trying to unpack it, and hopefully they have a good therapist who can help them do that. Unless they’re like my husband who went to therapy exactly once in life, with me during our first year of marriage because I asked him to go, and even he admits it was useful, but he’s never been back. Me? I’m definitely due for another round. This will be the year.
ReplyDeleteSweetie, if I want to keep on living in a way that is positive I really need to go back to therapy. I know it. I am so proud of you for taking that step. Men? Eh. They don't need that shit. Right? I reminded Glen recently of something he said to my therapist as a rationalization once when he came in for a session with me. She basically told him, "Bullshit." When I reminded him of that he said, "Yeah, I still believe what I said."
ReplyDelete