You Can Never Plan These Things

Have you ever tried to make plans when it comes to cats?  I have and I don't recommend it.  Here is the sum total of cats and their accompanying plans...

 Camille

Louie

1) Louie and Camille- two sickly kittens I rescued from under my front porch.  Their mother was a mangy, starving stray and she somehow managed to give birth to two kittens.  I am physically unable to pass by an animal in need, so I caught the little buggers and fixed them up.  The plan was first to give them to a local rescue.  No dice.  All the rescues were full of kittens.  The supply is way beyond the demand for this particular product.  Okay, plan 2.  Take Camille, who was peeing on my furniture to the Humane Society.  Ah, no dice.  I got her into the building, completed the paperwork, returned to the car and began to cry hysterically.  The Humane Society could not guarantee that she would find a home and she might be put down.  My dear husband went back into the shelter and brought her back to the car.  We bought some expensive spray stuff that convinced her furniture was not a litter box.  Plan 3, try to find cats a new home.  Success!  An elderly couple wants both of them!  Wait, an elderly couple only wants Camille...  okay, Plan 4, find a home for Louie.  No dice.  We just kept him until this year when he went to what ever afterlife cats have.

2)  Shzung-  this cat literally walks in the (doggie) door and does not leave. I assumed, upon finding her on my kitchen counter one morning, that she was a confused kitty and set her outside.  She had a collar and looked healthy, she just needed to reorient and find her actual home.  That was a super simple plan, right?  Wrong!  She came back in doggie door that night, crawled into bed with us, parked it on my chest and stayed.  I put ads online, in the newspaper and put fliers around the neighborhood.  Surely someone was missing this sweet kitty, right?  Wrong!  No one claimed her!  I can't take her to the Humane Society and the rescues are always full (reference Camille and Louie, above).  So, we have a cat.  Actually, we have two cats because we still have Louie.  Please note, I never planned to have even a single cat!!

3) Shzung gets pregnant-  I, being a logical sort, made an appointment to have the pregnancy terminated and get her "fixed."  Sounds horrid I know, but we musn't forget the overabundance of cats.  My sweet husband, who also has never wanted a cat, doesn't "feel right" about my plan, so we have kittens!!  Yeah, three kittens!  Huckle, Three and Jamie, who were born in my bedroom (which, is a story in of itself, maybe I will share it later).  Jamie thought rugs were toilets, so she went to live with a family as an outdoor cat.  My daughter predicted Huckle's existence, so we had to keep her.  Truly, she told us when she was 4 years old "Shzung will have an orange and black and white kitten and I will name her 'Huckle.'"  You can't argue with foreknowledge.  But Huckle was the runt and kinda sickly, so we kept Three as a "back up cat," expecting Huckle wouldn't make it.  Huckle is now 12 pounds and larger than some dogs.  So, without planning to have even a single cat, I HAD FIVE.  They accumulate.

 Jamie, Three & Huckle

Huckle

Louie and Three

4)  Cats will be outdoor cats- oops no!  New management for the HOA, all animals must be inside or on leash.  Cats don't do leashes.

5) Okay, so we will wait patiently until we move and then the herd will be outdoor cats.  Nope!  We do move.  And into a place with 2.5 beautiful acres...  It's a cat's paradise.  No! It's not a cat's paradise!  Szhung ran away and then over the fenced portion of the yard (followed by our new dog.  That's another story, I will tell you later).  No problem, she will come back, she always came back when she sneaked out at our other house.  She hasn't come back...I am sad but cats come and cats go, right?  NO!  Not when your daughter is almost six.  She is sad.  My sweet husband tells her that Shzung went to a house with no dogs.  Alrighty then.  Our remaining cats like it outside and we figure the loss of Shzung was a fluke.  Then Huckle is gone for two days.  Yep, that's 48 hours.  Not cool.  I am heading outside to look for her again, expecting to come up empty handed.  When I open the door, she is there, standing on her hind legs with her paws on the front door.  "Meow," she says to me.  I have never been so relieved to see a cat in my life or any other animal for that matter.  Even more than a lot of humans.  Sigh... not cats outside ever!  The laundry room, which has space for crafting will now be devoted to litter boxes and cat supplies.  So much for Mom's craft room!  Plan has gone awry.  New plan is that small girl will not be sad because her cats disappear.

Why all this talk about cats, becoming a crazy cat lady and planning?  It is because you can never plan these things.  And by "these things,"  I mean anything that we encounter while on this Earth.  While we were living this cat saga, we were going up and down, back and forth, and generally all over the place with our other "plans."  Plans to buy a house, plans to pay off debt, plans make changes to our jobs.  Not a single one of those plans worked out.  We are in a new house and we are almost done paying off our debt, but not because of our specific plans.  We accomplished those things because we had a goal and identified what needed to happen right now to get closer to that goal.  We also, foolishly, tried to identify all the steps to completion of our goal.  Then we felt horrible when those steps did not take place.  When we thought we had a plan and every plan from that step did not materialize, it made us feel as though our plan would not happen at all and we would not reach our goals.  This is not true.  Just because one aspect of how you thought it would go, doesn't how you expected does not mean that the goal is unachievable.  It means that you must rethink the next step necessary to move closer to the goal.  When making grand plans, we lack all the information needed to have a detailed, step-by-step framework.  What I have learned is you only need to focus on what you are doing right now. You need to have a general game plan and some sense of the big picture, so you know what you are working towards but a detailed plan isn't going to cut it.  There are too many unknowns and too many surprises. Because living a life is a lot like having a cat.