So this is un-fun. For them and for me. It is a chore. Unpleasant for all involved...but them having a disease that would destroy the lining of their stomachs...is worse.
As I was giving the numerous (I am not going to tell you how many I currently have...) cats this liquid medicine that is taxi cab yellow, and smells like butterscotch...I thought that this exact thing is so metaphorical for my life.
How many things do I have to do every fucking day that are good for me, but suck in the doing (eating, showering, going to the gym) and there are many other things that don’t really feel like the benefit me all that much (grocery shopping, house cleaning, laundry) but don’t really rise to the level of “good for me”. They are more social, life obligations that must be attended to...and they suck.
And it occurred to me that I, even though I know better, operate not unlike the cats who are not fooled at all by the “butterscotch” flavoring...who believes that cats even like butterscotch and if they do, how the hell did the medicine manufacturers figure that out? A cat taste test? Anyway, back on track...
I am like the cats, stubbornly resisting the things in my life that are good for me, or benefit me, or need to be done in order to keep moving forward in life. I get all pissy about them and then buck at the system of delivery because I am not in the mood for butterscotch flavored life bullshit. I feel you cats, I really do.
And it occurred to me that perhaps God feels like I do...like irritated that the events and happenings in my life are occurring for my own benefit, but I miss it so often because I am over there spitting taxi cab yellow butterscotch shit all over the place. I get it stuck in my hair, and make a huge mess in my life, (just like the cats) and then I am all pissed off...(also like the cats, one of them is actively avoiding me right now).
There is no reasoning with the cats, no matter how I explain it, treat them afterward, pet them and play nice, once I shove that syringe in their mouths they are going to react the same way every single time. But I can reason, I can evaluate, I can do mental gymnastics the cats appear unable to do, well at least they are unable to share about it in any other manner than a less than silent protest...me telling them that it is good for them and will be over in 7 short days...means fucking nothing to them.
And again I am brought back to my relationship with Divinity...I wonder how often God thinks I act exactly like the cats and am just as incapable of reasoning out my life. Seems ridiculous but there is an uncanny parallel that I cannot overlook...I behave a great deal of the time like a cat being given medicine. And no amount of logic or past experience is going to make me understand that even though this moment sucks, it is vital to me having more moments later on, that are much more pleasurable than if I do not receive the required dosage, life becomes precarious...and again, no amount of communication or reason seems to compel me to see that this life shit that is coming at me, often disguised as butterscotch flavored crap, makes me stop and wonder if there is not, perhaps, a Divine purpose in all the yellow stickiness raining down on me.
Because, see, unlike the cats, I am capable of self reflection. I am capable of connecting things that are not perhaps connected for them. They just see me as this benevolent factor in their lives which sometimes, for no apparently good reason, likes to ram things down their throats, then return to being all sweet and nice. And while I am capable of higher thinking, I still behave exactly like the cats when the universe makes life hard for me, for reasons I do not understand or cannot fathom.
Life is lifey, for all of us. Always, no exceptions. I have yet to meet a person alive who has not walked through some sort of shitstorm and had to survive it, all the while wondering, “Why me? Why the fuck me?”
Perhaps, just maybe, it is just our turn for the medicine, the stuff that tastes like shit but cures the inner ill.
Anyway, this is what I thought about while I rammed 20 millimeters of yellow goo down their throats (see what I did there, so close to knowing how many cats I have...yet so far).
What I concluded was that I am glad that I am not a cat, and perhaps I could start using my higher intelligence and thought capacities to not react exactly like my cats the next time, God, the universe, Divinity, sends me my dosage of unpalatable nastiness...perhaps, having had this mad rant, I can remember that sometimes the shit I have to swallow is the same shit that will save my life...
And maybe I can just accept it as a benefit and move on...and I will right after I go pet all my sticky cats and tell them how much the medicine helps them...I mean it can’t hurt right? Someday they might just get what I am doing, and perhaps some day, I will understand God’s will for me too, with or without the attendant fit throwing over all the yellow yuckiness.
