"Is this how the two of you behave while I'm at work?"
Hey wait a minute.
I opened the door to the bedroom. Sure enough Sherman was waiting on the other side looking quizzical as to why he had been shut out in the first place. Even if I could tell him, in a way he could understand, "I was separating you to protect you." If he didn't give me the "what is wrong with girls' look, he would give me the "poor silly humans" look. (At least in my imagination.) Because the truth is, he and Peabody are friends. They probably play like that EVERY day. It is probably the reason I find them both passed out asleep on my bed when I come home.
It is interesting having a three-legged cat. It is changing my perceptions.
Fairly early on, my house fell into a flea problem. It is an enormous story. Full of Law of Attraction moments and significance, but to get to where we need to be, I will need to fast forward. I have acquired medicine and put it on his neck. My awkwardness and newness at holding him in my arms has positioned it a little too far back on his shoulder blades and he is fussing with it. He is in constant motion. Kicking, scratching and biting at fleas. Worse than before the medicine went on. Amazingly, I can see fleas dropping off him. I have never seen that before with the other cats. He arches his head around and successfully licks the poisonous spot! Immediately the wetness at the surface of his mouth becomes foamy.
Shit!
I wet a towel and blot at his mouth. Then I clean off the poison spot with the wet towel and wait and watch. He seems better. Still itchy, but in less distress. I think of the fleas dropping off him. I remember I have seen that before. Years ago when I had my cat Bocce who was the only cat I bathed regularly. He was also the only cat who, when I bathed him, had brown water run off him. Brown water and occasionally fleas. I can't find my flea comb to selectively drown them, but if I give Sherman a bath, that will drown them.
I fill the bathtub with about an inch or two of lukewarm water and gently set Sherman down into it. He is calm and allows me, not only to stand him in there, but to gently massage water into his dry fur. He is shockingly calm in the water. He is much less so during the drying. Eventually I find myself cornering him in my bathroom with a towel. It is an action I would take with any of my cats without thinking, but brusquely rubbing his fur to dry it, I realize I have assumed he knows I am trying to help him and not hurt him. I have seen things so completely from my own point of view, I have been in danger of forgetting that I am working with a kitty who has had some stuff happen to him. Trust needs to be built. I dry him off as thoroughly and diplomatically as I can. When it is safe to "flea him" again, I give him a slightly lighter dose than his body weight and leave for the day. I stop micromanaging him and he is thriving. I can witness the trust building.
Our inner viewpoint has no peripheral vision. Once in awhile it can include the misty vantage point of truths we know because we "used to be" that way, but otherwise we are locked into our viewpoint and our viewpoint only. That is precisely part of why letting go in life is so essential. Our viewpoint is a narrow column and there are all sorts of wonderful things that lay just to the right or left of it. When we resist and try to force everything into our narrow round column of vision, it is like those wonderful possibilities get chopped off shoving a rectangle into that circle. We narrow our field of possible outcomes.
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