Every Christmas, the British Medical Journal publishes a Christmas article which is slightly amusing and tongue-in-cheek. I thought that it was only fair to produce my own offering of a Christmas article that has nothing to do with Christmas.
Recently we became proud owners of a cat called Monty. Here’s a picture of him.
He’s six years old and used to belong to my sister who works as a vet in Cheshire. Consequently he’s been well looked after and well-trained (if you can train a cat!). They say that you never really own a cat, the cat owns you and this is true to my mind. It’s interesting to observe them interacting with the environment and I think we can learn at lot from them. Here are five things that came to my mind.
1. It’s ok to go back for a second look at something if you are not sure about it. We live in a society of fastness (if that’s a word) and there is often a compulsion to do things quickly so that we can move on to the next task. Cats spend a lot of time visiting and re-visiting parts of their territory to check they are safe. They examine everything carefully, from all angles to fully understand it. Monty will ask to go out into the garden, sit on his butt for 2 minutes and then request to be allowed back in. Once in, he wants to go out again. I did wonder “Why on earth can’t this animal make a firm decision?” The reality is that he’s monitoring his environment to make sure he’s safe. We can learn a lot from this. Allowing ourselves to carefully examine our environment to the right degree keeps us in the present moment. We make better decisions, consider new perspectives and over time feel calmer and more in control.
2. Make time for rest and activity. Monty seems to spend most of the day sleeping. He has moments, interestingly when we are just about to go to bed, when he goes mad and charges around the house. This takes up quite a lot of energy for him and before long he is kipping on the sofa again. As a society, many of us are chronically tired. Some of this can be due to medical issues but more often that not I suspect that part of the issue is that we have lost the ability to relax. We live in a 24/7 society and if we rely on environmental cues to teach us when to switch off, we’ll be sadly lacking. Nothing external turns fully off anymore. We have 24 hour news, shops and screens. We need to learn how to balance our rest and activity internally through listening and knowing our bodies. Regular meditation is a way of doing this. Once we become aware of our internal CPU usage, like Monty seems to be able to do, we can manage our energy more effectively.
3. Ask for what you need directly. If you’ve ever watched the Simon’s Cat videos on YouTube, then you will know that cats will not hesitate to inform you if they are hungry, peed off or simply want to go out for a poop.
Simon’s cat produces this distinctive miaow and points to his mouth with his paw. Monty isn’t quite as sophisticated as Simon’s cat and will stand by his empty bowel, look from you to the bowl and repeat for however long it takes to get food. A similar routine is performed with “asking to go outside” and indeed with most other human-feline interactions that take place within our home. It’s direct and we know where we stand with him.
Humans are not always this predictable. Often we don’t know what we need. We are so busy that we forget to eat and wonder why we feel cranky. Or we say yes to requests when we really mean a big flat “No”.
Firstly we need to become aware of what we need and this ties in with the points above. Tuning into ourselves and our environment and emotions is a good place to start. Working out what is most important to us in life is also useful. And thirdly, asking ourselves how we can get these needs met helps us to focus on what we need to do (or be) more of.
4. Spend quality time with others. Monty hates devices such as phones. In fact, if one of us is using an iPhone or Kindle, he will sit on the screen so that we are forced to give him attention. Obviously this would be a drastic measure to use on another human but the point is that we spend far too much time on our devices and not enough time making eye contact and talking to real people. I know many people who have built-in phone detoxes for parts of their day. It can feel difficult at first, but the rewards are well worth it.
5. It’s ok to say “no” and do your own thing. Have you ever heard the expression “It’s like trying to herd cats?” I was reminded of this the other day when we were attempting to introduce him to the cat-flap. We followed the instructions and had one person situated on either side of the flap so that we could “guide” him through. There was a lot of protesting and so we abandoned the idea thinking he needed some time to get used to it. As soon as our heads were turned, he merrily trotted up to the door, used the cat-flap and came promptly back in. The lesson from this is that we don’t have to follow the crowd like sheep. If there is something that you want to achieve in life, then go ahead and do it. It’s far better to take the plunge and do something (regardless of the outcome) that to regret not even trying.
We hope you have a wonderful Christmas!
For amusing animated cat videos, go to the Simon’s Cat channel on YouTube
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