Blessings Of A Furry Alarm Clock

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I’ve never been an early morning person and for the most part I’m still not, but I’ve had to adjust to being one anyway. In late July of 2024 I lost my best friend, who just happened to be a very large (in size and personality) orange cat named Wooka to cancer. That dear boy had been with me for the rough years I mentioned yesterday, and frankly I have often wondered how I would have gotten through it all without him. He laid at my side (or on top of me) through the lengthy time that I was in bed most of the time due to the effects of medication, got me through an ugly break-up, saw me through the depths of grief, and then we made a long distance move together. Losing him was deeply painful, and I swore that if I got another cat that it wouldn’t be for a very long time.

Fast forward a whopping two and a half weeks. I had thought that if another cat happened at some point that I’d like to adopt a black cat if one were available at the animal shelter, because they are more difficult to find homes for. Well, I had been looking through the animal shelter’s site for a few days and who popped up? An adorable little five month old, black male kitten. I spent the rest of that day, telling myself that it was too soon. The next day, I was talking to a neighbor and his mom about the kitten and she offered to take me to the shelter to see him. We got there, and the shelter employee led us back to the cat room. There were so many beautiful cats in that sunroom, laying on perches, swinging in little kitty hammocks, roaming around the room, and there at the back part of the room on a perch looking right at me was the kitten.

I spent some time there petting him, and he was very sweet. When I went to walk away to think about what I should do, he reached out one of his little paws and tapped me on the middle of my back. Turning around to give him another pat on the head I see him reaching for me with his entire body hanging from that perch to the point that he was about to fall. Closing the distance before he could tumble, he climbed into my arms just as soon as I was close enough. Something about this filled my heart with love and my eyes with tears, and I didn’t even care how silly it might have looked for me to be starting to cry at that moment. Needless to say, he came home with me that day. It would be an understatement to say that he’s different from Wooka (I didn’t expect him to be the same). The contrast is so stark!

This guy is adorable, funny, sweet, has the softest fur I’ve ever felt, and he’s an absolute hellion. He’s into everything he isn’t supposed to be (more than the average cat), has used curtains and the coats hanging on the door as his personal Tarzan vines, knocks things off of anything he can reach (including paintings on the wall), makes it almost impossible to cook or eat a meal unless you put him in another room (example: I still have a mark on my arm from a few months after bringing him home after catching him mid leap in an attempt to jump INTO the oven when it was open for all of five seconds), and he rarely lets me sleep past 6am which finally brings us to the title of the post.

For the first several months after bringing him home, he woke me up every morning at 5am on the dot which was hell. He still does this way more often than I’d like, today for example. When he has let me sleep until 7 (which used to be early for me) on rare occasions, it feels great, as I am a lifelong insomniac and it usually takes me no less than an hour to fall asleep but typically much longer. With all of that being said you might be wondering where the blessings come in. Trust me, I often do too. A lot of the early morning wake-ups are done in the sweetest way. He will gently pat my cheek with his little paw until I wake up enough to snuggle with him for a few minutes. I love that part, as he’s not much of a snuggler most of the time. He loves being petted, but just isn’t really a lap cat (unless I have yarn or a pen in my hand). The big thing I’ve grown to appreciate about getting up at such ungodly hours, as long as I’ve had more than just a few hours of sleep, is that I usually have the world to myself for a while. It’s nice to be able to enjoy so much peace and quiet before most people start moving about.

Being able to have the world to myself for a little while is something I have needed for a while, and still do. Having that peace first thing really helps me to start the day in such a way that makes for a better day overall. On the days when I feel up to doing something, it comes in handy to be up before people are starting to want my attention or the world gets too noisy. So, while my furry alarm clock has been a lot to handle (please let him mellow a bit with age), there are sweet blessings too in the form of affection, laughter, and early morning peace.

What are some challenging things which also hold blessings in your life?

Dipping My Toes Back In The Water

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Hi there! It sure has been a long time since I’ve been here. So much has happened in the period that I’ve been gone that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Frankly, life has been pretty crazy. This isn’t the time to go into it, and I’m not even sure that I want to anyway. The short version is that there have been quite a few life changing events as well as health challenges which have consumed pretty much the last five years. Things feel like they are stabilizing, and that’s why I’m here today.

While I’m not making a full comeback at this point, I do intend to come here from time to time and get back to writing about all kinds of random stuff. I have been blogging off and on for many years now, and have always enjoyed being able to share whatever pops up at any given time. Yes, I’ve tried narrowing things down into a particular theme or niche, but I find it a lot more fun to keep it random (with several recurring themes, I suppose). Back in the time that I was here pretty much every day for years, you could come here and find encouraging posts about life’s challenges, spiritual stuff, art or other creative projects I was working on, random tarot or oracle card readings (sometimes daily for extended periods of time), poetry, etc.

The idea when I first created this blog was to build a welcoming, uplifting, creative, and cozy place. Even after all of these years, that’s still my vision for this space. The past years have definitely created some changes in me, and I still don’t even know exactly what all of the changes are, nor how they will play out as they are fully discovered or explored. Who knows what types of content I’ll create as it all becomes more clear. Should be interesting! Anyway, it has been such a long time since I’ve done much other than be in survival mode that all of my skills and interests feel very rusty, including writing.

Whether I find a stride before April rolls around or not, I am planning to exercise my writing muscles (and my brain) by participating in the A to Z Blog Challenge and National Poetry Month, which are both in April. I have always loved both, so I’m looking forward to that. A friend and I had a long discussion yesterday about the state of, well, ME! This friend reminded me that I have talents and experience to offer, and this blog was one of the things she mentioned. So, here I am stating my intention to do both challenges in April and I hope that some of the OG readers are still around to join me for that. Of course I’m always tickled when new people find their way in too. In the meantime, I’ll be back here when I can!

Side note: I no longer have a social media presence and at this time have no intention of doing so. I apologize for any inconvenience when it comes to discovering new posts for readers, however for the foreseeable future the only ways to do so will either be to follow me here on WordPress or simply bookmark the blog and come directly to look for new stuff.

Trust and Knowing

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These days, a lot of us are experiencing waves of uncertainty and fear, which can easily make us feel as though we will be dragged beneath the surface of the stormy sea which is life. Pandemic, losses of multiple kinds, unrest, feelings of instability, and a diminished sense of security can be more than a little overwhelming. Times like these are when we most need to draw deep from our inner reserves of trust and knowing in ourselves and in something greater. During times like these though, it is often the most difficult to remember that we can do so, or to feel as though there’s even anything to draw from.

The levels of stress crackling through the air for quite some time have worn a lot of us down, including myself. For a prolonged period I, like many of you, experienced so many difficult things that I had become increasingly ill and depressed. I had completely lost touch with my greatest sources of joy and comfort, which are my creativity and spirituality. Increasingly I am remembering that I am neither helpless or hopeless. I’d simply relinquished my power to remain strong, at peace, and happy. Yes, I used the word simply. Even though it feels a lot more complicated than that, it really isn’t.

I’ve recognized that many age old spiritual and philosophical sayings exist for good reason. It isn’t that I didn’t believe so in the past, I just still had more growth and learning to do in order to more deeply understand. It’s as though everything had to be stripped away in order for me to fully grasp certain concepts. A major one for myself was to learn that taking care of yourself first is a necessity. In looking back on my life, there have been many times I’ve repeated some lessons over and over again and thought that I’d finally gotten it, only to find myself in similar circumstances. My initial responses after those issues reared their ugly heads again were to be very hard on myself about it and/or to sit in a state of shock over how life can be so cruel. It has become a lot more clear in the last while though.

We each have our individual, as well as our collective issues which are so ingrained and deep that it can take many times of experiencing them to finally heal and move on from. Sadly for some it doesn’t happen at all, while others seem to get through it all faster. Is it due to personal failing? I feel it goes much deeper than that. It’s always easier to say from the outside that a person hasn’t tried hard enough, didn’t get it, was stupid, and so forth (or to think those things about ourselves). However, none of us know the full extent of a person’s traumas, indoctrination, what their wiring is like, or any number of factors. For many of us, it takes years to realize the extent of all of those things in our own lives.

In closing I want to say that I’m seeing the low points as big opportunities to make huge leaps of learning and to move on even better than before. Sometimes it doesn’t feel or look like it, I know! Next time a low hits, I’m going to do my best to remember this, and I hope that someone else who might need to hear it comes across this post at just the right time. Be gentle with yourself. It’s okay to feel upset, sad, angry, and hurt. Those are cues that we can look at when the feelings pass to see what we need in order to move forward feeling strong, happy, fulfilled, and at peace. In my own experience so far, the biggest hurdles I’ve had to leap were words and thoughts which were never my own to begin with, but had gotten so deeply and repeatedly put in front of me that I adopted them. I’m sure that many of you can relate. Don’t give up. I know that I sure won’t.

Wishing you all peace and happiness!