Adjusting

The new cat is a joy.

She loved her new room, and explored it thoroughly under the eye of my younger son, who has been glowing with pure bliss since Saturday, when we took the kitten home.  She found and appropriately used the catbox. She ate, delicately, and purred, loudly, and stretched and rolled and snuggled with us whenever we were around.  She slept in bed with my younger son last night, and he proudly came to wake me up this morning, announcing “I hardly slept at ALL, Mom, she was right in the middle of the bed!” all hollow-eyed and practically translucent, like the besotted mother of a brand-new baby who’s been up all night.

And perhaps I’m still sun-addled from Honduras, or perhaps it’s something else, but suddenly I have a different feeling about everything than I did before I left. (And trust me–everything–in the form of financial aid forms, doctor’s appointments, antibiotics, taxes, bills, assignments, impending relatives, would-be renters, fallen-over birdfeeders, and so forth–has been wildly in my face since my plane touched down and my beloved consoling-windows friend picked me up at the airport.)

While I was away, I decided not to list the house this year, and when I got back, there was a message in my inbox from a professor wanting to rent a room a few nights a week next year. (He came by. He’s English. He promised to teach my kids to play cricket.) I also decided I was definitely going to get some chickens, because you couldn’t swing a toucan without hitting a couple of chickens in Honduras. And then there was the cat, this little kitten from the shelter who clawed her cage to stay inside when my consoling-windows friend first spotted her and hauled her out, but who sat cheerfully in my older son’s lap the whole way home. Her eyes are a bit rheumy, and she’s sneezing, but she’s game. She’s friendly, but exhausted. The people she’s seen since she was found (just a little over a week ago) have spayed her, poked her, put her in a cage, pestered her. Frankly, her first day, she could have been with anyone–she hid when she could, interacted when she had to, ate very little, slept with one eye open.

And now, two days later, she’s ours.

Look, make fun of me if you want. I’m a sap, I know. I’ve got all this work to do–both kinds of work, the hard kind where you have to be smart, and the boring kind where you have to be stupid but punctual–and I’m sick, kind of, with some sort of sore throat gone mad. And the financial aid forms force me to confront the cruel reality of my present situation, which is not really the kind of financial situation one wishes oneself were in. (Plus I’ve had to call my ex-husband a dozen times today to make sure he, and I, are getting things right.) But the truth is, this little cat (and oh, I don’t want to make a big deal–I know bad things can happen, kittens adopted from the pound can die, cats can get hit by cars, all can go horribly wrong in the blink of an eye) has suddenly changed everything. We’re not the dregs of my old marriage, around here. We’re something new, an entity that adopts cats. We’ve got things ahead of us. We’re full of potential, my unwanted house and my two kids and I.

And thank you for your help, those of you that sent me tips for how to cope with a kitten–the whole last week feels too good to be true, quite honestly. I’m overcome with a feeling of contentment I haven’t known for ages and ages.

I’ve been bluffing. But–possibly–all shall be well?

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