Quiet

Sometimes emotional regulation is hard. It's something I have to do daily, ever since I made the decision to not be medicated for my bipolar disorder. Small things will still set me off, like the noise of motorcycles or trucks with loud exhaust, screaming children, my neighbors doing yardwork.

But then there is quiet. Warm rays of sunshine that Calypso curls up and naps in, the sound of birds outside, the stillness of everything. It's calming. The peace of being able to sit on my couch in silence, reading manga, with no one bothering me, no phone ringing, no one (not even my cats right now) demanding my attention.

Lately I've found myself annoyed with everyone. Annoyed with people calling their situation a "quarantine" or a "lockdown" (it is neither) and acting like they can't leave their house. Annoyed with stakeholders that call me for stupid shit. Annoyed with coworkers that are working from home but still manage to step on my toes while I bust my ass in the office. Annoyed at people complaining about being home when I would love, love the break and the rest.

The quiet is welcome. Because of all those people working from home at my office, it has been blissfully quiet. I've even turned the ringer of my phone down because I can actually hear it with no one there. When I come home I enjoy the quiet, especially on nice days when I have the kitchen window open while cooking dinner, listening to the sounds of birds heading to bed. Quiet afternoons on the weekend, curled up with my cats in a sunbeam. Quiet is a blessing.

TV is Bad for [Your Cat's] Health

Last night, I settled in to bed, not ready to sleep for a while, but as I normally do, I popped a movie in and grabbed my book, ready for a night of cuddles from the cats. Calypso hopped up on the bed, walked all over me, purring and shedding (thankfully, not drooling this time) and then she sat on the edge of the bed to watch TV. At this point, it was just previews, but she was rapt, her satellite dish ears fully forward, big eyes fixed. And then I hit play on the main menu (tonight it was Snow White and the Huntsman) and she kept watching, even through the parts that were slow, boring, or otherwise known as Kristen Stewart trying to act. All jesting aside, she was watching the parts where there was no fast movement or sound that would otherwise keep a cat's attention.

Amongst her other hobbies, knocking over stacks of shoe boxes

This isn't the first time she's sat and watched TV. She used to love Ugly Betty, sitting by her water cup on the side table to watch. If anything, Calypso always sits a safe distance from the TV. That's what makes it so hard to get photographic evidence. She's not one of  those cats that wants to get up and chase what's on the screen. She watches. Sometimes I wonder what's going on in her head. How much she understands.

She also enjoyed Hunger Games

Now, Eden will sometimes watch TV, but I don't think she has the patience for it. And some cats will only watch stuff that's obviously grabbing their attention, like action sequences. I had a  cat named Spunky once who would watch an entire episode of Xena with me on a Saturday because it's all action. It's like watching birds to them, I guess. But what would possess Calypso to sit and watch a movie? She watched maybe a half hour of Snow White and the Huntsman last night until she decided to nap, then woke up and watched more. I have no idea how much she actually watched while it played on repeat while I slept.

Eden, watching Hoarders

 

Eden did watch half an episode of Hoarders with me on my laptop one evening. I think she can relate, since she steals things and then hides them in her favorite hidey-hole. She did leave, with an angry brr midway through, though; I think she got frustrated with the people in the episode and their obstinance.  But why would a cat sit and watch Hoarders? It baffled me, but she sat there, on the back of my bed, eyes glued to the computer screen.

So I propose this: cats are using media to learn more about us in their eventual takeover of the planet. Based on what they're learning from, it's not going to be pretty.

The Neuroses of the Cat, Part 3

Eden is emotionally dependent on tunneling. I think it goes back to when she was a tiny kitten, and I had just brought her home. Calypso was very aggressive toward her, so I would carry her to bed with me, being too high up for her to jump off of at just 8 weeks old. My headboard is open, and while I slept, she would crawl in it, behind my pillow, and sleep there. The first time she did it I freaked out because I couldn't find her, until I heard her tiny kitten brrt.

So now, she will occasionally go around the house (usually my bedroom) and nose into stuff and brr brr brr brr brrt all over the place and generally drive me crazy, until I notice she's tunneled completely in the leg of my shorts on the floor. But this offers her no succor, so she will move from box to box in the living room, curl up on her paper plate in the dining room (don't ask), bat at the blankie I'm curled up in on the couch, then she'll go exploring back in the bedroom. Then I hear the brrt brrrr brr brr brrrt  and maybe a whiny meow and the rattle of a plastic shopping bag and I grumpily get up off the couch to remove her from it before that becomes an issue. And the cycle continues. Then I realize her favorite reusable cloth Walmart bag is crumpled up under the computer desk, because Calypso is kind of a jerk about the bag (she's a box cat; every time  she gets in a bag I end up having to cut her out of it), so I straighten it out and flip the handles back and sure enough, Eden comes running from wherever she has been looking for a place to tunnel and happily runs into the bag and usually falls promptly to sleep.

I don't have a problem

Sleepless Night

It is going to be a Very Bad Day for anyone who crosses my path. I already have it out for the asshole neighbor's son whose car alarm went off at 6:30 this morning. I lay in bed, drafting the perfect passive-aggressive note to leave under the windshield. We live in a small town. No one is going to steal your precious Volkswagen. Stop arming the alarm because the fucking thing always goes off. I have it in for this kids parents too, and their useless yappy poodle-mutt. That was at about 8am as I fantasized about throwing every rotten tomato from my plants at its curly white fur until it shut the fuck up. This is after I had hurled every verbally abusive insult and threat to my cats. Why am I in such a foul mood? Because as I write this, it is 9:37am and I still have not been to sleep.

Granted, since I have nothing to tire me out and give me a "normal" bed time, I sleep a third-shifter schedule: bed around 4, awake around 1. It works out reasonably well for me at present, and I get a lot of reading  done. But last night I tossed and turned and even Pandora pissed me off with the music it was giving me (Loreena McKinnet? Really? Useless pseudo-Celtic wailing that all sounds the same. I thought I told you never to play her again, Pandora. We're fighting.). It was too warm, so I did the one leg covered thing. Then I was too cold. Then the fucking cats wouldn't stop their running bullshit. Even when the crows woke up it didn't ease me to sleep. So I pulled out a book, a bodice-ripper, but that made me mad, because it had to be the stereotypical Scottish Highland setting and the author just had to write in dialect. Jesus fucking Christ, I just wanted to sleep!

I gave up. I screamed at the cats one more time and felt bad so I brushed them and told them they were good girls but they just need to stop already. Hopefully soon I  can pass out here on the couch but man, if I don't get some sleep, violence will probably happen. Either that or a long drive to loud music to calm me down.

My Sloth Spirit

A combination of being bipolar and having nothing to  give me a normal sleep pattern has me up until 4 or 5 most mornings, and sleeping until about 1 in the afternoon. I don't particularly like it, but until I can get a job to regulate that, it's pretty much my life. I get a lot of reading done. But sometimes I struggle to even fall asleep then, and that's when times get really bad.

Because of my medications, taking something to fall asleep is tricky, plus I  don't like depending on a sleep aid. I'm allergic to something in NyQuil, diphenhydramine (aka Benadryl) works okay but I always feel like I sleep too long, and Tylenol PM gives me the most fucked up dreams ever. Plus, there's research to be done before taking anything to ensure there are no interactions with the prescriptions I take. Oh, and I don't have a medicine cabinet, so I don't want any more pill bottles and boxes floating around than I already have.

On her back, under the covers, like people

Enter Calypso. The cat who will spoon with me and let me put my arm around her and cuddle her like a stuffed animal. I'm probably the only person who could do that, by the way; anyone else would find their faces bitten and clawed off. She's a little... touchy. In any case, Calypso  can, with almost scientific accuracy, come cuddling up to me on any given night (or afternoon, or any time she damn well pleases) and almost instantly I am asleep. It's just her, other cats can't do this. Sometimes Eden will condescend  to lay with me at night, under the blankets, and I'm all tense, not wanting to bother her, not relaxed or sleepy at all. But no, Calypso just flops down (yes, she flops) with an air of "you sleep now" and I am powerless to defend myself. If I'm waiting to go somewhere, sometimes I have to shoo her away.

I was almost asleep last night when Eden decided it was annoying rambunctious play run time and scared the shit out of both of us and Calypso went to sleep in her favorite box instead.  She seems to know, though, when I'm having trouble sleeping. But if I ever need my faithful furry Sloth Spirit, she almost always comes to my call (never always, let's please remember, she is still a cat).

Sometimes suffocation helps you sleep too, right? Right?

The Neuroses of the Cat, Part 2

Most house cats will have a favorite toy that they play with a lot, carry around, and "kill" until it just looks terrible but you feel terrible throwing it away because it's your favorite, so you let them keep it and get grossed out every time you step on it in the dark. Most cat's favorite toy did not sprout from their body.

This past winter Eden's fur matted really, really badly. I'm not a neglectful pet owner by any means and tried to brush her (she put up a fight, but I managed to brush some mats out) but the mats got big and they were tight to her skin, so cutting them would have been risky without another set of very steady hands. When I saw that they were loosening, though, I could get at them and all was good. There was no issue with dirt, waste (they were all in the front) or parasites, so I just kept an eye on her and all was well. One night, I noticed she was missing a huge one under her arm; it had either fallen away naturally or she had chewed it out. I didn't think much of it until she carried it into the living room later that night, meowing and meowing like she had killed it. I tossed it out with a laugh. I went away for vacation and left the cats in the care of my aunt/landlord and she reported that there was another mat shed. Good! I came home to find it (or a different one) on the floor and a completely mat-free Edens bugging the hell out of me for pettings. That night she carried the mat out into the living room, carrying on like before. It was so cute, though, I didn't have the heart to take it away.

Oh what have I done?

Yes that's a Christmas tree. Yes it's almost July. Accept it and move on. Also, awwww.

Almost every night (and as I sit here writing, it's almost time for her to start) I hear some distinctive sounds you can only recognize if you've ever seen a mother cat interact with her kittens. It's that sort of low brr that gets a blind kitten's attention as the mother comes over to the litter-- this is when she is picking up her baby. Yes, that's right. This mat of her own fur is her baby.

She will carry this mat of fur from the dining room/cat play room to the living room, brring and meowing nonstop. Nonstop. She doesn't shut up. Sometimes she runs with it in her mouth and launches herself into the window sill, in which I threaten to call child protective services on her.

Then she destroyed my soul

See her paw there? She will use her hands to put her baby in and out of her mouth. She uses her motherfucking hands. I swear to god, one of these days I'm going to grab her paw and see a thumb. She will hold her baby in her hand even, and groom it. That's right. She will lick that mat of fur like it's a kitten she's holding. In her hand. Have I mentioned cats don't just pick up their kittens in their hands to groom them and then put them back down? Yeah.

Using. Her. Fucking. Hand.

At this point, I'm so afraid she'll walk around the house making that seeking noise that mother cats make that I can't stand to throw that mat of fur away, but this can't be healthy. I mean, she's obsessed with lights and has a not-kitten. If I find a rotting horde of cat food hidden away somewhere I'll have a veritable Miss Havisham (granted, she never carried around a faux baby).

The Neuroses of the Cat

Eden needs an intervention.  She is obsessed with light.

Light? Where? Begowb!

And I'm not talking about laser pointers (I have one) but I mean the honest-to-goodness sun moving across the sky light moving across the wall that happens every day. On occasion this is punctuated by the reflected light on my laptop, screen of my phone, or, if I'm wearing  them, my diamonds, but otherwise, yeah, just the natural light on the walls. She goes nuts. She will start to chitter and brr and circle the room, trying to reach these lights. Then one night she targeted the ceiling light. The same ceiling light I turn on every night after the sun goes down (my living room windows face west so I don't have to turn this light on until late, which is awesome).

If she was a human, I would be concerned and wonder if maybe she needed a behavioral therapist. OCD tendencies and neuroses. The fact that she carries around a mat of her own fur and treats it like a baby is an entirely separate post.

But she's so damn cute. And yes, she was looking at lights on the wall

Whether my cat has a Serious Problem or not, it is pretty funny when I'm wearing my diamonds and watch her try to chase hundreds of little lights all at once. Have you ever refracted the lights of one of those laser pointers in a round-cut brilliant diamond? An obsessed cat's dream...

The Oprah Factor

You start to realize your desperation when you start scouring the Internet to find an address to write a letter to Oprah Winfrey, hoping that your sob story will be the one that will win out over millions that she hears every day and that, from the kindness of her multimillion dollar philanthropic heart, she will help in some way.

She is, after all, the richest woman in forever. And a handsome woman to boot.

As a brief history (pay attention, Oprah!) I used to work for a multi-billion dollar telecommunications company that won many J.D. Power & Associate awards for customer service. I worked there for about 5 years and then things started to... disintegrate. All of a sudden the business wasn't doing so hot, morale was crap, and the parent company clearly wanted out. My mental health started to struggle (on top of the fore-mentioned migraines) and I realized I was at serious risk of abusing a customer or having a flat-out trip-to-the-hospital panic attack. So, I jeopardized my job by just not going. I did this under the guise of a pending leave of absence but when those LOAs didn't go through, I got fired. That was the only way I knew I could survive; if I got fired, I could collect unemployment while I got my shit figured out. I talked to my doctor, a therapist, got diagnosed with bipolar... and here we are. I did what I had to do.

I live in an apartment in the upstairs of my aunt's house, which was my Nana's house. This is the house my mother and aunt grew up in, the house we had get-togethers in, Christmases in the back room, baby and wedding showers on the porch. It's a pretty sweet deal. For $600 I have everything included. But this is an old house, and oil is very expensive. My aunt is not able to keep up with the bills and oil despite my rent and working overtime (which her boss doesn't allow, so she sneaks it by filling in for people) and may have to sell the house. I am stressed the fuck out. She is too. We both had a cry at the dinner table when I came downstairs to settle rent for the month. I'm 32 years old and I don't want to move back in with my parents. I have a household full of things and 2 cats. I'm used to living by myself and having privacy. And I really thought the next time I'd move would be into my own house. No other landlord is going to give me the setup I have (paying weekly) on such a cheap basis. I even offered the $200 I have saved to finish my tattoo as emergency money for bills or oil.

I have been searching for a job for months. I want to work. I'm not one of those schlubs who is abusing the system and just living on unemployment. I want a job. I want to get out of the house on a daily basis and earn more money than the unemployment I get each week. But for my searching and applying, I have had no luck. I even had an employment agency look at my resume and tell me "we can't help you." This is an agency that was advertising a ton of administrative jobs but they looked at 6 years of call center experience and assume that's what I want. They didn't even give me a chance. I am so frustrated and I am exhausted and so tired of crying.

So dear Ms Oprah Winfrey, if you read this, a job and a winter's worth of oil would be awesome. This is how desperate I feel.

Cat Physics

She looks serene. Trust me, she was only sitting next to me for pettings

I have two cats. The above pictured is Calypso, whom I've had since she was an itty-bitty hissing, spitting half-feral kitten orphaned under my brother's trailer. She socialized pretty quickly but it became abundantly clear early on that she was my cat. She will randomly strike out at people (my mom will tell you that she is 100% of those people) and hiss and generally be unpleasant to them. But me? She will cuddle  and purr and let me hold her like a stuffed animal at night.

Calypso has been one of the stable things in my life. If people tell you animals don't have complex feelings like empathy, I ask them to look at the night that she tucked her favorite toy in bed next to my arm the first night I cried myself to sleep over finances. Of the times that I've been sick and she's lain with me through my medicine- and fever-induced comas. Shit, sometimes I  can even get her to knead my abdomen when I have cramps. She is the best friend a crazy cat lady could ever want.

But she is an insufferable bed hog. And she snores.

Anyone with cats can attest to the fact that all cats, everywhere, are bed hogs. I don't care if you're an 80lb anorexic in a king bed-- you will wake up with a bare 6 inches on the edge to your name. If you're lucky, you have a blanket hog like my other cat Eden, who gets underneath and burritos up so that I'm grasping for blanket and shivering to death. There's that something about cats, how they absolutely defy the laws of physics and nature and expand their bodies to take up an entire bed. Calypso particularly loves to get me into awkward positions too, where I have no room to move to make myself comfortable. Curling up between my legs, or making me look like some even more tormented version of the Hanged Man, with one leg crossed.

It's even more awesome when they gang up on me. Twice the cat = 2x less room. That's Eden on the left, by the way.