What better way to follow up spiders ‘n snakes, than with kittens?
These images are from last week. I almost forgot I took them, actually.
I had wandered out of the office into the yard and on the roof of the old decrepit pump house, I caught sight of four of the babies lying out enjoying the quiet of the day.
One day I will fix the wood around the edge of the roof there, but for now, the rotted wood played perfectly for these pictures. Because as I watched them, one moved inside the house and played peekaboo through the hole in the front.
I was particularly pleased with the two peekaboo shots (pics 4 and 5). My focus was spot on where it needed to be, so I gave myself a firm pat on the back when I pulled them up on my screen later.
The kittens have been a wonderful addition to my life although in many instances, I feel completely overrun with all the taking-care-of tasks. There are now 7 kittens … the family of five readily adopted two poor little strays that came in from the yard and they are almost brothers and sisters now.
Daisy, the mommy cat, keeps them all in check and her conversations with them are definitely something to hear. She is an amazing mother and I can’t imagine where she gets her skills and patience from.
Coco and Lola, my two original Irish cats, who were essentially my office and outdoor cats, try their best to distance themselves from all the confusion. I don’t think they are amused.
And Marty, our indoor upstairs cat, would love to escape and fight all of them. So getting in and out the door upstairs is always a genuine challenge.
There are still three of the stripey kittens I have great difficulty telling apart, but all the others are easily identifiable to me. But when it comes to those three, I genuinely can’t tell who is who.
The black little guy in these pictures is Tetsuo and this morning when I came down to the office and opened the door, all kittens ran past me in a stampede except Tetsuo.
It was still dark but I could hear his soulful crying coming from somewhere inside the office. It took me a minute, but I figured out the crying was coming from one of my desk drawers. I opened the drawer and this poor little guy crawled out.
He was so happy to be rescued. He must have been there for most of the night. Unless Daisy has figured out how to open and close drawers as a punishment routine for wayward kitties, I am guessing that he crawled up from underneath the desk but then got stuck.
For about an hour afterwards, I was reaping all the kitten hugs and cuddle rewards from him as his savior. It was wonderful.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy these pics from atop the old water shed.
So, the thought that accompanied these pics in my mind this morning was about how chaotic certain things are in our lives and how we handle them.
For me, these days, the start of each morning is unbridled chaos that in many cases is completely overwhelming.
I haven’t yet come up with a true effective method of starting all their days, but what I have now works in the short term until I find a real long-term approach.
I won’t go into all the ins and outs here, but suffice it to say that dealing with eleven cats before your have had your first cup of coffee in the morning is a genuine challenge for an old fogey like me.
In this instance, the chaos is solvable and I have no doubt that within a few weeks I will have it properly resolved.
But a lot of the chaos in our lives is unsolvable and arrives on our doorstep without invitation as a most unwelcome visitor.
There are people that handle such chaos well and others that fall apart under the weight of it.
I am inclined to think that dealing with chaos is a learned skill rather than a natural one. It comes from past experience of approaches that worked and those that didn’t.
In all of life’s challenges there are innumerous happenings that come across our paths.
Most of these require that they be dealt with, although some do genuinely resolve themselves. There are some people that rely heavily on the latter aspect and they happily stick their head in the sand hoping that all the issues resolve themselves.
But for the rest of us, the best approach is actually quite a simple one. It begins with sorting all the chaotic issues that are on us at any moment into two groups; those we can do something about and those we can’t.
Those that we can’t do anything about are generally in the hands of the gods, although there may be instances where outside help can take us to a resolution.
In any event, this side of the list should be put off to one side and, while not forgotten, be at least ignored.
The primary list is of the issues that we can do something about. These are the things that we at least believe we can have an effect on the outcome.
Our immediate task then is to prioritize that list and begin to tackle things from the top of the list only. It is important to remind ourselves that we don’t walk on water, nor do we have infinite resources.
So, spreading our resources across too many items at once is likely to get nothing done successfully.
The art of correct prioritization is not want-based. It is a function of importance and time and our ability to correctly prioritize is tied to our ability to be objective about our list and look at it from that perspective.
Once we begin to make progress on the top item on our list, we should recognize that. Recognition gives us a sense of accomplishment and peace and is an important part of the chaos handling skill-set.
While others around them are running in all directions like chickens with their heads cut off, the best handlers appear cool and focused … tackling things one at a time and ignoring the arrows that fly to their left and right.
In public life, these are generally the people that lead. In private life, they are generally the people that you count on. In truth, the one person you should be able to count on in the midst of chaos, is yourself.
… just a thought!
