A conscious parenting lesson….from a cat

I want to publicly thank someone for impacting my life, and my family’s life, in such a positive way.

Thank you, Jackson Galaxy, for doing your life’s work.  I am forever grateful for you.

(this is a long post, but I promise, I do tie this into a lesson in the end)

This is my cat.

She is about 2 1/2 years old and the first cat I’ve ever really had.  Other than the one who looked JUST like her when I was a child but we only had it for one year before he met an untimely demise from a car.  (That does not qualify me as a cat person.)

Her name is Katerina.

We got her one day on an impulse when we took a day trip to Julian to check out the apples, and the fall leaves.  While we were waiting the one hour for our lunch table to become available, we wandered over to the one winery in town to do a wine tasting and kill some time.  Plus they had some munchies we could snack on in the meantime.

(you know where this is going)

Thanks to two little girls with a carrier full of free kittens (and some wine), we now have a new family member.

And mind you, this was not MY idea.

My dear husband could not resist the cute fest that happened when our daughter spotted the box of free kittens.  Cuddles ensued.

We rationalized the acquisition by thinking that we ultimately wanted a dog, but couldn’t get one because of where we were living, and the current cirumstances of our busy lives, so we figured a cat was a great middle ground.  Cute, cuddly, funny, and much easier to care for than a dog.  And our daughter was 4 now and could help learn what it is like to be responsible for another living thing.

So when we were having the discussion about whether to adopt her, I did set out some ground rules for my husband.

First, I don’t want her to be an outdoor cat.  They have significantly shorter life spans, contract more diseases, and live more stressed lives because of the “dangers” of what comes with being outdoors.  But my #1 reason was that my daughter had just lost her 2nd dog in less than 2 years, and I was afraid that she would not do well if she lost yet a third pet in a short amount of time.

Second, she is not allowed in our bedroom.  I’ve heard too many stories of cats puking on people’s beds, or peeing when they are mad at you.  No thank you, my bed is off limits kitty.

Thirdly, I don’t want her on the counters in the kitchen.  Images of her paws stepping in litter box with pee and poop and then walking across where I prep our food just grossed me out.

I didn’t think that was too unreasonable or difficult.  He agreed.  Done deal.

So we bring her home and it was just a delight.

She was such a sweet, loving, cuddly little kitten.  She got lots of love and attention and just spent days on end cuddled on mine or my husband’s lap while we worked (we both work from home).  All she did was snuggle, purr, and look adorable in between play sessions with the toys we purchased on the way home from Julian.

I thanked our lucky stars that we got a GREAT cat.

One of the reasons I have never been a cat person is because I’ve had some attack or swipe at me and I just don’t like that meanness and unpredictability….and I was afraid to get one of THOSE cats.

But, we got lucky.  Dear husband and I would smile and say “awwwwwww” for hours as we watched our then 4 year old playing with the little ball of fur.

Wow, personality and sweetness all in one!  We scored the jackpot!

……or so we thought.

Little by little, this adorable, sweet, loving picture of perfection kitten turned into this:

We would describe her to others as “she’s got QUITE the personality” as a nice way of saying she was nuts.  She would bite, and scratch – and many a year was wiped from the face after a swipe or a bite out of the blue.  Oh, and then off my daughter’s face also.  🙂

Thus began a love/hate relationship with this cat.

I desperately wanted to have my little snuggly kitten back, but what I had was a cat that at best was neutral to me.  Once in a while she’d be snuggly, but then I’d be waiting for the shoe to drop so I never really trusted her to not swipe at me at close range.

And being a flower essence practitioner, and understanding energetics, I knew in my heart that she was reflecting my energy back at me – it had really nothing to do with her.  Animals (and children) are such wonderful mirrors.  I’ve even told my husband that I feel a sort of kinship with her because I feel like she and I are both prickly at times, but desperately wanting to be loved and accepted – we just don’t know how to show it.

The interesting part of it is that she ALWAYS wants to be with us.  She greets us at the door every time we come home, or wake up, and always wants to be close to us.  As long as we aren’t trying to touch her she hangs out nicely.

Fast forward 2 years later.

I’ve kept an emotional and physical distance in a way from the cat because of this behavior.  In addition to her feisty-ness, she constantly jumps on the counters and scratches our sisal dining room chairs thinking it’s HER personal forest of scratching posts conveniently located in our main living area.

Having been a dog owner in the past and growing up with a well-trained dog, and then asking other cat owners, I thought that you COULD train cats to not go on the counter.

Just not ours.

Dear husband just tells me to give up and just let her do it.  But the stubborn Scorpio in me does not give up.

Meanwhile, I am sad about not having a great cat in our home, and I am mildly frustrated at her pretty regularly for reminding me that she is not trainable.

Enter Jackson Galaxy.

He is the host of the show “My cat from hell” on Animal Planet.

How could I NOT watch that show with THAT title?

So I did.

And it changed my life.  And as it changed my life, I was ultimately reminded of how this lesson applies to conscious parenting.

What shifted for me was my paradigm – and my lack of understanding of this little creature.  What made the biggest difference for me was learning from the show about cats’ natural habits, and how cats view their world.  Why they do what they do, and how to work with them in a manner that they understand.

Light bulb!  As soon as I understood WHY she was climbing on the counters, and onto the backs of my sisal chairs – it did not frustrate me anymore.

MY energy shifted, and I saw her in a whole new light.  I no longer viewed her as a self-centered, disobedient cat who was waiting to prove to me she can’t be trained.  Instead, I saw her as a little creature who wanted to connect and be part of our family, and was only following her instincts.

It’s like that story of observing a mom on the subway with 3 unruly children, and she just sits there.  Most people would think she is a bad mother.  But if you learned that they were on their way home from the hospital because their father just passed away, would that change your impression of her?   Same idea.

What we observe, and the story we tell ourselves about what we observe, is EVERYTHING.

It’s the same thing with parenting.  What I do naturally with my daughter, I was not doing with my cat.

When my daughter is misbehaving, rather than focusing on the external behavior, I immediately try to understand what is going on underneath the behavior.  Having her feel heard and understood, and my understanding the cause of the behavior, ends the “bad” behavior.  I don’t have the image of her as a misbehaving bad child, I view her as a person trying to figure out how to express difficult to understand feelings, and she’s going about it the wrong way.  And it’s my job to help her find a better way to express them.

Once I started understanding my cat’s behavior in this same way, it all shifted.  I now see her in an entirely new light.

And she is NOT the cat from hell.

At ALL.

Even when I thought she was, she was an angel compared to the difficult cases that are on that TV show.   Our entire family watched those shows together and we all left with much gratitude for the great cat we have.

Everything’s relative, huh?

In any case, I now have this…

 

Well, pretty much this most of the time.  She is still a cat after all, but I have to say we have major improvement.

Thank you Jackson, and Katerina, for reminding me of this important lesson.  Our family is forever grateful.