clearbluecup

Do you have a problem that haunts you day and night? Something almost entirely out of your control, but which impacts on your daily life no matter where you go or what you do? The sort of thing that follows you right into your dream life, so that you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, and realize that you had been dreaming about cleaning up infinite trails of cat spray? (I'm not exaggerating on this one. Well, maybe just a little, but I did actually wake up one morning from a dream of cleaning up cat piss. It's almost worse than dreaming about selling accidental death insurance.)

I like Louis, I really do. He's a generally sweet, good natured cat. A bit sensitive, even neurotic perhaps. Maybe lacking self-confidence, and you know, who can blame him really? I mean, it's not every cat that travels across the Atlantic and has to acclimatize to a new cat community and deal with frozen water for the first time and cope with invading neighbour cats. He's had a challenging cat life, but if he doesn't stop pissing on EVERY.SINGLE.THING in my house I am going to freak right out.

It's getting to the point where I am starting to have a not insignificant amount of social anxiety about going out and having other people over to our house, because I'm afraid a) my coat, shoes, stroller and backpack stink of cat urine, which they do and b) my house, especially the front door and foyer, stinks of cat urine, which it does. I've tried vinegar and cat pee cleaner with magic enzymes, we've taken him to the vet and left him outside and given him extra attention and rubbed his nose in it and shouted at him and had pretty much every possible reaction from rage to indifference and STILL I wake up in the morning to find cat piss on the floor/stroller/shoes/coats/backpack/bathtub/diaper bucket/recycling bags/bathroom sink/speakers/raingear/etc etc etc. I know this is turning into a massive rant but I am seriously at the end of my rope on this one.

Does anyone have a solution they've found that worked for their cat, especially a territorial indoor/outdoor male cat? The only other solutions I have yet to try are Feliway (I am dubious about the health & safety of using a plug-in of synthetic cat pheremones in the house), leaving him outside 24/7 and finding him another home, which I must admit has crossed my mind. Please help me save my relationship with my cat! Because right now he's not exactly my favourite feline.

Tonight an hour slipped by unnoticed as I sat on the couch spinning a yarn. My first skien of handspun was lumpy and bumpy and not the peaceful, meditative experience I had hoped for, but somehow in the space between washing and plying and setting that first skien and starting my second my brain whizzed away at learning the unconscious movement. From the start of this second attempt my yarn has been smoother, more even, more peaceful, more meditative. Somehow now my hands know where to hold and where to release, when to pinch and when to smooth, and even the spindle seems to spin and spin without such frequent encouragement from my hands.

I really like spinning. I like feeling the fibers slip past one another, each eager to join his already twisted fellows. I like the momentum that gathers when I'm spinning, like it's easier to keep spinning than to stop. I like watching the energy transfer from spindle to yarn as the twist travels up into the fiber on it's own accord. I like that when my fingers allow some unsmoothed fiber into the twist, there is a very short period of time in which I can tease and pull that twist out before the slub is a permanent part of the yarn. My yarn is like my life, with thin bits and thick bits and every little blob there now and then sliding past and eventually wound up with the rest for all of eternity.

Oddly enough, spinning yarn makes me feel like writing fiction. Words slide out one after the other, the momentum of the yarn itself pulling them out of the unformed mass and into the perfect spiral of life.

Pink boots on the oily black road
raindrops, cement trucks, hard hats

Remember!
look both ways before crossing the street

That innocent baby smile and royal wave
makes strangers grin behind their steering wheels