Context is everything!
Moving house tends to bring out the worst in us (Danita & me) and when you do it on a day where the temperature is 30 degrees, the Universal energy is Halloween and it’s the end of a highly stressful week things can be a bit more challenging than usual.
The week started with an episode where a couple of cats attacked Sancho and things got more challenging from there.
Attack of the feral cats
Last Sunday we went to do our briefing for the next house-sit. It starts mid-November and because it’ll be at least 6 months, possibly longer, Danita and I are quite looking forward to it.
All went very well until we were leaving.
The house has a high wall along the street frontage with a solid gate. On opening the gate we were confronted by two snarling cats.
There we were; Danita, me, Sancho (on his lead) and the two owners of the house.
Usually, Sancho and cats have a bit of a stand-off, check each other out and then basically ignore each other.
Not so, in this instance…..
The two cats attacked Sancho. There was a black one and a grey one. The black one was clearly the vicious ring leader and he had grabbed onto Sancho and was trying to claw at his neck.
The grey cat was a bit slower but getting in on the action as well.
I got into the fray, managing to get the grey cat off and the black one ran away. In the process I had my arm clawed and a significant amount of blood was spilled.
As far as I could tell the black cat got away unscathed.
A woman on the corner of the street then started yelling at me demanding that I not hurt the cat.
There was something of an intense discussion between David and the woman on the street which I decided to keep out of.
It occurred to me that she knew nothing of what had just happened but felt qualified to pass judgement on us – she knew nothing of the context and made no effort to find it out.
Once things settled we found that David (the house owner) and I were both bleeding significantly.
Sancho had blood on him but we suspect most of it was human.
Interestingly, the house we were staying in, at the time, also had a black and a grey cat and Sancho was still very comfortable with them (and they with him) even after being attacked by a similar combination – very serene and forgiving of him, I thought.
In the three and a half years we’ve been house-sitting (and a number where there’ve been cats) we’ve never had a situation like that.
That incident has made us a bit uncomfortable about the house we’ll be in for some time.
Consequently, we’ve asked the owners to discourage those cats from hanging around – they had been feeding them even though the cats don’t belong to them.
We’ve put the cats on notice. As far as I’m concerned they’re feral. (Fortunately we didn’t have a young child rather than a super-calm dog that they attacked. Things could have been much worse.)
So, if we find them around the house we’ll be taking action – Danita’s talking about getting the council involved whereas I’m more inclined to embrace my dark side and resolve things more directly and permanently.
Anyway, we’re on guard for a couple of unwelcome cats.
Moving on Halloween
As I understand it, Halloween is about embracing your dark side. Not sure about “embracing” but it certainly brought out our dark sides.
Friday was moving day. It was hot and we were under significant stress and so it managed to bring out the worst in Danita and me.
Normally, when we move we take our time and pace ourselves so we can get things done comfortably.
This time was a bit different.
Danita had an important She Business event which she needed to attend on the Friday afternoon and so had to be ready to leave by mid-day, feeling calm and ready to be the great representative of She Business that she normally is.
However, as we were moving into a serviced apartment we couldn’t get access until 2pm.
I had hired a van for our move and it needed to be returned by 4pm.
So, the scenario I was facing was having one hour to unload the van on my own – a job which normally takes the two of us a couple of hours.
I contacted the truck hire company in the hope that I could delay the return of the van but it was booked out to be collected at 5pm and so that wasn’t an option.
I arranged with a friend to meet me at 2pm to unload (that’s a real friend for you).
As you can imagine things were going to be tight, but doable.
And then a miracle occurred.
Danita managed to get the apartment people to rearrange their cleaning schedule which enabled us to move in at 10am instead of the planned 2pm.
That totally rearranged our day, in the best possible way.
So, by 12 o’clock the van was unpacked and Danita was off to her meeting, relaxed and cheerful.
I did the various errands needed to properly settle in and by Friday evening life was looking pretty good again.
Embracing the dark side
We hear a lot about how we should embrace our dark side.
While I get it that we need to accept and love all aspects of ourselves we can still find parts of our personalities which we’re not proud of.
It’s times like this we get to see who we really are. I’m grateful that Danita and I can share these situations and still have a great deal of respect, love and care for each other – which demonstrates the strength of our relationship.
And now our request to the Universe: we’d like some quiet time together – thank you very much.