Sometimes the Cat Eats Your Ranch Dip

When things don’t go quite your way — at least the cat is happy!

Meet December. He is a celebrity cat. A marvelous cat. He’ll be glad to tell you so himself. (Photos by the author.)

This morning I awoke to the terrible pain I’ve been dealing with the last few weeks and decided there just weren’t enough “soft” foods in the house. (Dental pain from a particularly awful "erupted" tooth — whatever that is.)

At the store, my jaw set and dogged determination to get sustenance, I gathered in my cart the crucial supplies for survival when chewing is difficult: Spaghettios, Ravioli, soups, low-sodium broth for making egg drop soup (we have chickens after all,) the softest baked chips I could find (because I am quite addicted to Baked Lays) and my favorite Ranch dip.

How are you today ma’am?

I’m doing great, thank you.

The lie slid so easily from my tongue, although getting past my crooked, pursed lips it came out in a bit of a slur.

The weather was beautiful but it was hard to concentrate on that. I hauled myself and the few bags of groceries home. Too spent to make anything, I settled on the chips, the dip, and to plop myself back in front of the 37 tabs of articles I had opened on the laptop to read.

Chewing — oh so carefully. Read. Comment. Close out the tab. Read. Comment. Close out the tab. Bookmark this one for later. Eh, that one looks boring. Catch up on emails...

Sliiip Sliiip Sliiip Sliiiiiip…..sliiip sliiip…

The cat is licking my Ranch dip.

Sigh. *Insert your favorite expletives here.*

December is a fabulous cat.

He is pretty certain that he is a celebrity cat, although the Paparazzi has never come calling. He’d put them to work if they did.

Here, sir. Yes. You scratch there, and I’ll lick that salty amazing spot on your arm.

He is fat. Faboulous. And entitled. And, he knows it.

Case and point:

How December helps out. (Photos by the author.)

The point here?

Not to give December more credit that he is owed — and to him that is a substantial and often exhausting amount — it is to deal with this “ranch-dip-licking” disappointment in stride. You know every day is full of its ups and downs right? There really are those moments when you’ve done all you can think to do, taken all the BS from the world that you think you can take, and that one more thing happens.

That flat tire.

That phone call you’d been dreading.

Worse yet — the internet …goes…out.

How do you deal when you are sapped of strength, sapped of energy, sapped of the patience to handle one more thing? Life can hand you a basket of burden but you don’t have to analyze the contents so closely that you forget to notice the sun shining down on you, a glorious day going on in spite of your burdens.

Set the basket of burdens down. Take in the sun. Feel the breeze lightly across your cheeks — and deal with the contents one at a time.

• Is there something I could have done to avoid this?
• Now that it is here, how can I handle this with a measure of grace?
• Is there a way to diffuse the situation without making the problem worse?
• Can I deal with this a bit better if I’d just take a deep, cleansing breath and steady my resolve?

Burdens are only burdensome if we forget these are just temporary things that we can manage carefully, with our emotion in check. Keep the Negative Nancy that’s raging in your mind strapped to a chair. She does not own you. And if you tell her to be quiet, she will often listen.

Thanks for reading this “a-day-in-the-life-of” and take some time today to share the ranch dip with your cat.

After all — the cat is happy!

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