jellicle songs for jellicle cats

I do not have a good history with cats.

Cooper hated me, probably because I put him in the closet once and forgot about him for many hours. Or because I liked to hold him like a baby, aww, da wittle beebee Coopy. He used to hide behind corners and attack my legs when I walked past. Once he bit me and then I grabbed him and bit him back. I got a mouthful of fur and he walked away like he was smarter than I was.

Dinah did love me, until I had her declawed and spayed. Then she didn't like when I touched her, as though she held me personally responsible for her loss of womanhood. I imagined her thinking something like, "I like to think you will disappear someday when I open my eyes." Instead I made her disappear.

The cat we have now we never named, because we couldn't think of one. We've had her for 7 years and she's fat with a little head and little legs that spread far apart when she sits down, because there's so much fat in between them. "Kitty, sit like a lady," I tell her. She looks at me, legs apart, and then I say, "Kitty, you're stupid." I call her Stupid now. Especially when she meows directly outside my door at 6:30 in the morning because she wants to be fed. As if she needs food. "Kitty, you are fat," I tell her, poking her belly with my toe as she lay on the floor. One time Brother tried to feed her tuna juice with a turkey baster, cradling her in his arm like a newborns. One time I smushed her face with my hands so that her ears were over her eyes like little awnings and her cheeks scrunched up around her eyes and made them all squinty, and then I proceeded to laugh so hard that the tears streamed down my cheeks. I don't really like her very much. "Kitty, I don't like you very much," I tell her, as she walks into my room. Then I throw in for good measure, "Stupid."

Then let's not forget Demon Cat who, just yesterday, attacked my arm in the same place where the scar from his previous savagery still lingers, a light purple reminder of how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away by a bengal spy cat. 

But even with my unfortunate past with kitties, I want one. I want it to be a boy and I have several literary characters' names listed out to name him, depending on what he looks like and what his personality is like. Dad won't let me get one, because he knows I'll be leaving sometime and he doesn't want to get stuck with another cat. But I want one, as soon as I move out and have enough money to support us, me and my feline refugee. We are going to be best friends, and he is going to sleep on my bed and purr, and his breath is not going to smell like Meow Mix, and when I say, "Who wants a fresher house?" he is going to raise his paw. Because my cat is going to be perfect.

k...now what?

After driving 9 hours on 2 hours of sleep with an entire summer of non-stop child-caring-adventure behind me, I'm back in Wisconsin. When I pulled into the driveway, Mom came out to tell me there was spaghetti on the stove, Dad came out to tell me my room was the one on the left at the end of the hall, and then they went back inside and I carried all my stuff in while my brother watched football and said hello to me every time I walked passed the room. Welcome home.

Classes started today, and for the first time in four years, I wasn't sitting in a white classroom looking at pastel sheets of paper with the next 4 months of my life printed on them. Graduating is an odd thing. I didn’t ask to graduate. I didn’t really particularly want to graduate. It’s as if you’re sitting down to dinner one day, and some strange person walks into your kitchen and takes the plate of delicious food away from you, and then says, “Congratulations!” And then he walks away, and you’re left sitting there staring at the blank table in front of you, thinking, “Oh. Well…thank you?”

Sometimes I feel kind of numb, sort of frozen, like those dreams that you wake up from and have to figure out whether they were real or not. And when you realize you aren’t really pregnant or your teeth haven’t really fallen out, you feel such a sense of relief and thankfulness that you’re willing to devote your life to playing with children or something else humane in sheer gratefulness for being alive with teeth. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and realize it was all a dream, and I still have two years left, and I will be flooded with that relief and thankfulness. But I’ve woken up in the morning several dozen times since May 8^th, and I have yet to discover it was a dream. And so I try to figure out how to leave something I never really wanted to end, and live a completely different life, when I really loved the one I had.

I don’t really know how to do that.

I know college is just a chapter, and if the entirety of The Hobbit was one long chapter of Bilbo making tea in Bag End, not only would that be boring and a waste of paper, but then the volumes of adventure to follow never would have been written. The hard part is turning that last page of The Two Towers before the chapter titled, "The Breaking of the Fellowship." I don't know how to face it. And frankly, I feel very much like that giant stone man in The Never Ending Story, who stares down at his empty hands after the huge wind storm carries away the kids he was holding and says, "They slipped right through my fingers." And I don't know how to move on from here.

what's in an adventure?

A trip by any other name might sound as sweet....but won't be.

I was thinking about adventures this morning as I sat with God at my college roommates' kitchen table. (I can say things like this now, because we have graduated from college, and they're no longer my roommates. Don't I sound adult?) I had just eaten a peanut butter granola bar for breakfast (thanks, former college roomies) and was waiting for God to say something. He sat there, verbally silent, but looking at me with that look on His face like, "You already know what I'm going to say, so I'm just going to raise one eyebrow at you and wait until you sigh resignedly and write it in your journal." You can tell God and I have this "conversation" a lot.

I've been on a few adventures. Enough, anyway, that I've begun to realize what classifies an experience as an adventure. Is it the circumstances? The destination? The people?

I think the only thing that determines what is an adventure and what isn't, is the attitude of the adventurer. Some qualities of an adventurous attitude:

willingness
flexibility
determination
whatever characteristic ducks have when water rolls of their backs
laid-backedness
joy
optimism
chocolate covered raisins

An experience without those things is just something to trudge through, withstand, or tolerate. Experiences with those things are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. You come out of adventures with nuggets - and scars - that you'll take with you for the rest of your life, changing you and shaping you.

I can't say, like Johnny Cash, that I've been everywhere, man. But where I go doesn't determine my adventure. My cousin Christine, married and with two kids, told me yesterday that she envied my situation. I can go wherever and do whatever, for however long, with whomever. It makes me want to pack all my stuff and move to Wyoming or Maine or Canada, since they have free health care.

But this is where God's knowing expression comes in. And I sigh and write in my journal, because I realize why I'm depressed as I think about the un-stability of my life instead of being excited about its adventure. I answer people's questions with, "I have no idea what I'm doing with my life." And therein lies the splinter in my finger, the gaping gorge I'm balancing precariously on the side of and ready to plunge into at the slightest tremor:

It isn't my life.

I realized that for the past 6 months I've been trying to find a vocation that I'd enjoy but would still be serving God. I'm good at that, AND God's involved! I can go there, AND be with my friends AND serve God! But I have it backwards. If my hands are too full of my life, I can't hold onto His robe. If my ears are too full of my own plans, I can't hear His voice calling to me. I need to surrender my plans, my desires, my will, and then the REAL adventure can begin.

He called Andrew to leave his nets.

He called Peter to walk on water.

Talk about adventure!

Bilbo said it best when he said in The Hobbit that adventures are not all pony-rides in May sunshine. And, as my 12-year-old camper from Africa sang in the sweetest voice I've ever heard, it's not going to be easy to leave. But I feel like Moses in Exodus 33, when he tells the Lord, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us from here." I'm banking on the Lord's answer here being His same promise to me:

"My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."

just a few standards for my next relationship

After spending the past nine weeks with two-through-14-year-olds, I have made note of a few qualities in the younger generation of men that I would like in my own future and potential soul mate. In my marriage to come, I would like it if my husband:

1) Responds with a whispered “Yes!” of achievement when discovering that I will be staying with him at the rock wall and not departing with the other kids to the game room. (Translation: Desires to spend quality time with me and enjoys my company.)
2) Gives up his swing on the playground for me when another little boy gigglingly steals the one I was going to use. (Translation: Looks for ways to protect me and sacrifice for me.)
3) Lets me into the “No Wimin” fort made out of chairs in the corner of the classroom, even though I’m definitely a wimin. (Translation: Desires my presence at his football-game-viewings on Sunday afternoons, even though I’m a girl, and for more than just the cookies I will bake him.)
4) Scours the campsite for wood to start a campfire, without being asked. (Translation: Provides for me.)
5) Not only requests to sing Justin Bieber, but is my backup singer while I play it on the guitar. (Translation: Supports my gifting and talents, and is my partner in using them.)
6) Tells me about the times he’s climbed his uncle’s rock wall with only his arms, then proceeds to try 3 different times to climb the rock wall with only his arms, and only when I’m there to coach. (Translation: Is humble, strong, and desires to share his accomplishments and struggles with me.)
7) Buys me a fake, stick-on mustache from the gift shop. (Translation: Surprises me with little things to let me know he thinks about me.)
8) Calls me “Dinosaur Lady.” (Translation: Shares my affinity for Jurassic Park.)

I think I’ve had more 10-year-old crushes this summer than I ever had when I was 10 years old. Sometimes boys under 10 know better how to treat a lady than boys over 20. Then again, sometimes they don’t wear underwear for an entire week and think pooping in the lake is cool. Maybe I'm just turning 23 soon and feeling a little undiscovered....