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Personal Reflection

There are mornings when I wonder why anybody pays for entertainment.

I have cats.

That means programming begins whenever the hell they decide it begins, there are no reruns, and apparently nobody in management has heard of reasonable broadcasting hours. One minute the house is quiet enough that I can hear the coffee settling into the cup, and the next there is a thump from another room followed by the unmistakable sound of something sliding across the floor that was never designed to slide across the floor.

Then comes silence.

If you live with cats, you know that silence is not reassuring.

Silence means somebody is thinking.

Sooner or later, one of them strolls into the room wearing the particular expression cats have perfected over thousands of years of domestication: I don’t know what happened in there, but I suggest you investigate the other cat.

No subscription required.

The strange thing is how easily their nonsense becomes part of the architecture of your life.

There is always something happening just beyond the edge of whatever I am trying to accomplish. A tail crosses the bottom of my monitor. Something furry occupies the notebook I intended to write in. A cat becomes fascinated with a cardboard box despite the perfectly good bed sitting three feet away. Then, without warning, one of them launches across the room as though an invisible assassin has entered through the kitchen.

I don’t ask questions anymore.

Some mysteries should remain mysteries.

We spend an awful lot of our lives searching for something to distract us. We subscribe to this, stream that, scroll through another thing, and complain when there’s nothing worth watching. Meanwhile, life keeps performing these ridiculous little scenes around us without asking for our attention.

Cats understand this better than we do.

They can spend twenty minutes studying a dust particle floating through sunlight as though the secrets of the universe have finally revealed themselves. They can turn a paper bag into unexplored territory. A window becomes television. A moth becomes mortal combat. A cardboard box becomes beachfront property worth defending with their lives.

Maybe they know something.

Maybe we’ve simply become too sophisticated to be easily amused.

Or maybe we’ve forgotten how.

Then there are the quieter moments.

The house settles. The evening comes down. Whatever catastrophe happened earlier has been forgotten, although I may still be wondering why something is lying on the floor. One of them curls nearby. Another finds some impossible position that appears medically inadvisable but apparently constitutes comfort.

For a little while, nothing needs to happen.

That may be the part I would miss most.

Not the chaos itself, although I suspect I would miss that too. I would miss the presence behind it—the small sounds from another room, paws crossing the floor, the sudden weight beside me, the ridiculous interruption that forces me out of whatever cavern I’ve wandered into inside my own head.

We tend to think life happens during the important moments.

Maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe a good portion of life is happening while we’re waiting for something important to begin.

Sometimes it looks like morning light across the floor.

Sometimes it sounds like something falling off a shelf.

Sometimes it is a cat sitting three inches from your face at an unreasonable hour, staring at you with the intensity of someone who has been trying to reach you about your vehicle’s extended warranty.

And sometimes you look around at all this completely unnecessary, inconvenient, beautiful nonsense and realize the house would feel terribly empty without it.

So, no.

I don’t need cable.

I’ve apparently been renewed for another season of What the Hell Are You Doing Now?

The ratings remain excellent.

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Reflective Prompt

What ordinary nonsense in your life would you miss terribly if everything suddenly became quiet?