Posts tagged with "Dolly"

Days At Trolley's, Phases, Etc.

I woke up at 3:33 ante merid­i­an and, unable to sleep, decid­ed to write.

I’ve been busy. I spent the last three days at Trolley’s, sleep­ing on his couch, and gen­er­al­ly stay­ing up late play­ing Wind Waker. It’s been an amaz­ing game so far, and even though it seems to be too short, it’s been an unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence. I met Adam and Matt on Friday, so we went out to Minglewoods and sat out on the patio, even though it was­n’t quite patio weath­er yet.

Dolly and Nala did­n’t get along togeth­er well. When they saw each oth­er, they tried to stare each oth­er down. Nala’s tail dou­bled in size as she made a low growl. Dolly just hissed back. Apparently, cats intro­duced to the same liv­ing envi­ron­ment are sup­posed to spend around the first two weeks with­out face-to-face con­tact. Dolly stayed for a few hours at Trolley’s any­way.

My trip to Hong Kong has been can­celed, due to the lung virus that’s been going around. Yet anoth­er time that my trip has been can­celed. Visiting Hong Kong at least once more has become one of my goals in life now, some­thing I feel the need to do before I die.

I am now offi­cial in one of my typ­i­cal “Jeff” phas­es, where I start to freak out near the end of the term. Progress on my final project has been dif­fi­cult, not some­thing which is not com­plete­ly (or at all) my fault. I found out that I was too late in request­ing a marks shift in my graph­ics course, so my 35% midterm now counts. This means that I will need rough­ly an 80% to pass the course. Since this is my final term, I may not be grad­u­at­ing until I can make up the three cred­its. I believe I have a back-up plan, which involves tak­ing a soft­warre engi­neer­ing course dur­ing the sum­mer that I can use towards my total cred­its. I think that means that I won’t be attend­ing the grad­u­a­tion in July. Things seem very fucked up for me aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly right now, and I’m wor­ried, one of the many rea­sons I can’t sleep.

I tried rock climb­ing on Tuesday, and even though my left fore­arm was dead from hit­ting the L trig­ger too much, I was still able to scale a few walls. It was a great time, some­thing that I could def­i­nite­ly see myself get­ting into. Even the act of belay­ing is fun, in the sense of a trust exer­cise. It’s just not some­thing that I can get into right now with­out a job, or any con­ve­nient way of get­ting to the rock climb­ing stu­dio.

I Cry

I came home yes­ter­day with a note on my desk, and it said that Dolly was being tak­en for a walk.

My first reac­tion was dis­be­lief. I could­n’t under­stand how some­one could just take my cat for a walk. I was beside myself with shock. I felt vio­lat­ed. I felt insult­ed. I felt ter­ri­ble.

I had­n’t walked Dolly yet, for sev­er­al rea­sons. First of all, I did­n’t have her microchipped, so any chance that she gets away would be dev­as­tat­ing. Secondly, I had­n’t decid­ed whether I should take her out yet, since she might miss being out­side too much after her first time. That was a big deci­sion for me, one that I had­n’t made yet, but one which was made for me.

The most impor­tant point is that Dolly had her first walk with­out me. I was­n’t there to see how she reacts with the world, I was­n’t able to be the first per­son to let her out­side.

I stood in my room for ten min­utes in dis­be­lief. I could­n’t even wrap my head around how some­one could do such a thing, to walk into my home and vio­late my feel­ings in such a way. I put on my head­phones, put on my fuck off playlist, and sat under my desk, shak­ing my head. This was the most offen­sive thing any­one has ever done to me in my life.

When the real­iza­tion that there was no oth­er first walk sunk in, I start­ed to sob. The shock segued into depres­sion, and I slumped onto the ground, pulling my hair, still in dis­be­lief. I cried for a good while, some­thing I haven’t done for eight or nine years. I cried so hard that my tear ducts felt like they were being sucked of their flu­ids and the walls were start­ing to touch each oth­er. By the end of it, my eyes had the old famil­iar swollen feel­ing, and I was exhaust­ed. I show­ered and tried to wash the mucus from my hair.

The whole sit­u­a­tion has made me more ful­ly under­stand how much I care about Dolly. I already knew how much I cared about her, and I appre­ci­at­ed her before, but I nev­er real­ized the extent of it until now. I don’t see her as a pet. I see her as a child.

It’s also made me think about the nature of good and bad, and how much of a bal­ance there is. I nev­er real­ly believed that either exist­ed, since one bad thing gen­er­al­ly spawns a good thing, such as mur­der help­ing to con­trol over­pop­u­la­tion, or geno­cide lead­ing to beau­ti­ful art/culture. Of course, I’ve nev­er been through either, so my thoughts are quite lim­it­ed.

I just can’t see the good in this sit­u­a­tion. I can’t see how this can be any­thing but bad. I haven’t learned any­thing from this, one of the only pos­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for it hap­pen­ing, and I have lost even more faith in human­i­ty.

Seeing the good in this would be healthy for me.

Imbalance

I think Dolly may be inter­est­ed in hav­ing anoth­er cat around the house. I’ve been play­ing some cat sounds, and no mat­ter where she is in the apart­ment, she’ll com­ing run­ning into my room. A sec­ond cat is some­thing I only start­ed to con­sid­er this term. Last term it felt as if I would­n’t be able to han­dle the chores, let alone dou­bling my annu­al vet­eri­nar­i­an bill. Sometimes she seems lone­ly though, like when she imme­di­ate­ly starts to cry when I walk in the door after a day of school, her protest­ing only being soothed after pick­ing her up, and being replaced by a low purr. I’ve always seen myself as a one cat per­son; I think I’d feel a lit­tle imbal­anced if I had more than one. If I do decide to get one, it will def­i­nite­ly be after I grad­u­ate, def­i­nite­ly after I find a sta­ble job, and pos­si­bly after I can pur­chase a con­do. It would be more for Dolly than for me though. I can’t imag­ine find­ing anoth­er cat that is as well-adapt­ed as she is, so the idea scares me a lit­tle.

One time I dis­cussed with Pita whether he would ever con­sid­er get­ting two dogs. He said that he could­n’t, not just because it would be much hard­er to han­dle, but because he would feel more favourable to one or the oth­er.

The idea of favour is one that I haven’t been able to under­stand. How can par­ents love all their kids with­out lik­ing one more than the oth­er, espe­cial­ly when one fol­lows the desires of the par­ents more close­ly. It might be some­thing I don’t under­stand, being an only child. If such a bal­ance is pos­si­ble, would­n’t polyg­a­mous rela­tion­ships work as well? I think part of the mis­un­der­stand­ing stems from my con­fu­sion of rela­tion­al love and parental love as well.

For love is the root of my imbal­ance.