How My Cat Helps

My little cat is tearing around the house. She's attacking the rugs, the bedclothes, the couch, the floor. It is so much fun to see her play.

It is frustrating to her to play with things like yarn and dangly toys because she is blind in one eye and it seems the vision that she has is failing. She will get upset and bite her own legs.

She has seizures. She has been having them about every two weeks. Last Tuesday I was going to rejoice that it had been an entire month since her last one but she woke me at 4:30 in the morning with the plaintiff yowls that signal that she has just seized.

Seeing her speed through the house today reminded me of an article I saw this morning. It is about saying "to heck with it" and living in the moment.

Finding that article was also serendipitous in another fashion.

Earlier, a friend and I had been commiserating about the ways our illnesses were similar. We both just want to feel normal. We are both so tired of fighting. We are both so tired of having to be strong when our illnesses make us feel weak. We are both tired of the undertow taking us out when we are swimming as hard as we can.

We read the article and we agreed that sometimes you just have to put everything else aside and do something nice for you. It made us feel a bit better.

It also made me look for other articles on the joy of living in the moment and I found this one about what dogs can teach us.

But, today, it was my little cat that made me laugh and feel like things are good for the moment. When everything else seemed handcrafted to get me down, watching her go a little crazy made me smile.

My cat and my dog are not luxuries. They are my links to living for today. Sometimes it's a case of living just for today, and worrying about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

My cat helps me stay in the here and now. That's how my cat helps me.

How do your pets help you?