FELINE FOUNDATIONS

No, this is not about me setting up a foundation and naming it after my cats.  That would go in the Donor Notes section of my web site!  Besides, everyone thinks I have a foundation already.  Which I don’t.  I’ve written about that too.  Hey, maybe you should check out other posts on my website after you read this?

My beloved new babies, Laptop (aka Lappy) and Tablet (aka Tabby) have been with us for a year now.  Life changed for the much MUCH better once Ernie and I brought them home from PAWS.  They were at PAWS about an hour, since their foster mother had just brought them in.  We’d been looking for kittens for several weeks.  After waiting while another indecisive, and much younger, couple spent time in the kitten room, we zoomed in, checked to make sure both females would purr when we cuddled them, and that was that.  Kittens adopted.  

Once Ernie was sure they both knew where the litter box was, I spent the next two hours with two kittens cuddled on my shoulder.  I may have dozed off with them.  Happiest nap I’ve spent in ages.

It took me a while to be sure we were ready for another pair of kittens.  It had been over twenty years since we’d done it the last time.  Our last kitty, Dally (of Dilly and Dally) died at the age of 21.  I then spent the next two years making and unmaking the adoption decision.  Ernie and I were now in our 70’s.  When cat health problems started, which usually do once cats get to 12-13 years of age, we would be in our mid-80’s.  Would we both be able to cope?  What about all the bending and lifting that comes with litter box cleaning in the meantime?  Wouldn’t it be better to just spend the next years of our lives quietly and not ask ing for trouble?

I’m so glad I didn’t let those negative voices win.  Lappy and Tabby are the best kittens we’ve ever had, and they bring me more joy and fun every day.  However, the reason I’m writing and sharing them with you today is because I want to tell you why I think they’re different from my other cats, and what that means to me, and maybe to you, and any other survivors of childhood trauma out there.

Lappy and Tabby came straight from a wonderful foster home to PAWS.  They never lived on the street, and they never had to live in a cage.  They were rescued as part of a litter with their mother, who was too sick to feed them.  They were bottle fed from their earliest moments.  Their foster mom told me that Lappy would climb on my shoulder and purr in my ear.  Which she does at least once a day.  She loves visitors and is quite a flirt.  Tabby usually hides from visitors, unless they come back more than once or twice.  In some ways, she is the needier baby.

While all of our kitties have been very affectionate and loving with us, these two are different.  And I’m as sure as I can be it was the home fostering.

Several years ago, when sexual abuse issues were piling up on me, I decided to take a three-day virtual workshop from Onsight, one of the leading lights in trauma-informed therapy.  I was several years post-cancer and post-Covid, and at one point I knew I was about to lose it.  I’d worked as hard as I could on my own, and I knew I needed more help.

During the first day of the workshop, I shared with my therapist that I thought my life had been defined by three traumas – losing my father and brother to a plane crash as a child, sexual abuse from a family member, and violence and abuse from my stepfather.  I have written about this many times, and I’d never really got past the point of feeling hopelessly “marked” and damaged by my childhood.  I ‘d described myself that way for over thirty years.  That came to an end after the workshop.

My therapist asked me to draw a tree, a tree that would represent my life.  She asked me to pay particular attention to the roots.  After some time, she explained one of the purposes of this exercise to me.  She told me that a good childhood “foundation” would be seven years.

Since my father’s plane went down when I was four years old, my growing tree trunk had been damaged at that age.    However, I’d had four of the seven years.  More than half.  I was not as marked, or permanently damaged as I’d always thought.  I’d had four out of seven years of a good childhood foundation.

I think of this every day when I hold and play with my babies.  Lappy and Tabby have had an excellent foundation.  They lived in a wonderful foster home, and then came straight to me and Ernie.  Where they live as rich a life as any two kitties could have.

If only we all could have been as lucky.  Many of us have not had the roots and trunk we needed.   But we are all still capable of growing that trunk, greening that tree, and passing on what we know and live to someone else.  Even if they’re cats.