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Hey Gang!
What can I say – it’s been another challenging week for running. I’ve joined the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” camp and been trading in my running days for cross country skiing and gym classes. I know many of you have been valiantly training through all this – huge respect. Whatever you’ve been doing … you’re all doing great.
I think my cat Heather is a very good representation of where many of us are right now. She is an indoor/outdoor cat, and in the summertime we barely see her. She travels around, all the neighbours know and love her, she manages and protects her territory from enemy cats (they’re all enemies to her). She comes inside to eat and sometimes to sleep. In fact, she has become so much more ‘outdoor’ than ‘indoor’ cat that at some point I realized she hadn’t used her litter box in a year, and so I just got rid of it. Heather would so reliably ask to go outside whenever she needed to pee or poop that we all just kind of forgot that she even had biological functions. However this winter has transformed her completely. She is currently fully an indoor cat. She tried to go out a couple of times but the snow was 4 times over her head, and she couldn’t get anywhere. I realized that I had to step in, so I went out and bought a new litter box and all the accoutrements. That sort of felt like both of us giving up. Poor Heather. I feel like it’s humiliating for her to poop in a box in her house, and I feel like she must miss all her neighbours and paths and trails and sites and sounds from outside. She just sleeps all the time and stares out the window. Sometimes I push her out the door, but she takes about four steps and turns around and asks to come back in. I feel like we are all Heather right now in a way.
However, the other day as I was petting her, I noticed a large amount of fur coming off. Although she is still mentally fully in winter mode, her physiology is getting ready for the spring. I looked this up – cats’ fur thickness is governed by the amount of daylight outside. She doesn’t know it yet, but spring is just around the corner, and when it comes, she’ll be ready in her new spring coat, feeling light and fresh and ready to go!
I think it’s normal for us to retreat a bit and lay low when nature seems to be telling us to. And I think we have to trust that our bodies and minds will wake up again in a few weeks when the snow melts and the sun comes out. We are not far off. So don’t let Heather be a step ahead of you in spring fashion – go buy yourself a new spring outfit so you’re ready to enjoy it when the time arrives! It’s closer than you think. (And I can’t wait to get rid of the litter box again).
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