Prysmcat's Feline Family, Foster Furkids, Random Ramblings, Cat Q&A, and gratuitous games with language

Posts in category Thoughts

Ideas for the Future

Feb07
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Prysma

Plans? Not exactly, not yet… but maybe the seeds of plans.

I’ve been considering what my real goal actually is.  Cat rescue seemed obvious.  I think, though, a better way to phrase it would be, I want to reduce feline suffering as much as I possibly can.

Being in a shelter and doing what I can for the cats there after they’re lost, neglected, abused, or surrendered, is important, and I intend to keep that as a part of my future.  But… wouldn’t it be better to keep them from getting lost, neglected, abused, or surrendered in the first place?

I’ve spent a lot of my life with co-workers, family, friends, all asking me what to do about cat issues.  So often, it turns out to be a simple thing, and when that’s resolved, it makes life better all around.

How many cats could be saved from illness if their humans understood that distemper has nothing to do with temperament, and how nasty panleukopenia is?  How many cats could be saved from declawing if their humans understood what’s involved and the alternatives?  How many cats could be saved from being lost or kidnapped or hit by cars if their humans just understood how short an outdoor cat’s life is?  How many bored understimulated overweight cats don’t need to be?

So, along with trying to help after the fact… maybe I can do something to prevent it before the fact.  Education.  Will it work?  I have no idea.  I’m going to talk to the Humane Society’s volunteer coordinator about possibilities… maybe starting out with some basic flyers to send home with everyone who adopts a cat, maybe holding informal “classes”.  Admittedly, the people most likely to pay attention are the ones who might be doing things from lack of understanding, but it’s a start… and I don’t think education is likely to help much with the hard-core abusive types.  Is there likely to be a paying job in this eventually?  I haven’t the foggiest idea.

My cats are the centre of my world, and my bond with them is very intense.  I don’t expect everyone to want or need that tight a bond, but it would feel so rewarding to help a few more people be able to see cats as the wonderful complex individuals they are.

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Roads to becoming a Vet Assistant

Jan14
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Prysma

Like a lot of people, I’ve spent a lot of my life wondering whether I’ve made the right choices. Individually, I can’t think of many decisions I regret — although there are a few — but collectively, what direction have they led me in? In the last couple of days, I’ve found myself looking at it in a different way: not so much that I’ve been making wrong turns, but that I’ve been picking up assorted skills that are ultimately going to make me more effective when I get… where? Is it where I currently am trying to get to, which is rescue work, especially with cats? The way things change, who knows, but it’s a good goal right now.

I spent a long time on welfare, with undiagnosed recurrent depression, unable to muster the motivation and energy to really get into motion about anything except writing. That was a combination of outlet, escape, education, and vocation, and was the one thing that gave me hope for the future and a sense of self-worth. Was all this a waste of time? I used to think so, or at best consider it in terms of my own psychiatric state at the time. Technically, maybe, I wasn’t doing anything that would give me a place in the world. But, in that time, I finally began more of the social development that I had very little of in high school, where always the outsider. I was one of the first volunteers at a needle exchange program, and I learned that I could be valuable. I made friends, and learned to talk to the friends of friends who might become new friends. Twice, I found the courage to start a bi-weekly social group for other outsiders — the first time trailed of after six months,the second never really took off, but I learned about talking to people who were shy to help them relax, and about taking responsibility. I learned, in bits and pieces, mostly self-taught, about computers and the Internet and the social opportunities it provided. And, the whole time, I was writing, and my ability to manipulate words, to tell a story, to edit what I create (the hardest part) was growing stronger.

The retail jobs taught me about handling cash, and also that I could do very well dealing with the public, when I’m doing it about a subject I know well. The used bookstore was particularly good for that, I spent a lot of time talking to some of the customers even though the owner wanted me to be dusting shelves instead. The two-year medical office assistant program gave me office skills and computer skills, medical terminology and, ultimately, a work placement that led to a job. That job, even though it was part-time hours, taught me how confident and competent I can be when I’m in an environment where I feel sure of myself. I learned that I can help people who are anxious and frightened to be less nervous, and help people who are sad to feel like someone is listening and caring. I learned to deal with patients that made me frustrated and angry, and with phone calls that made me wish desperately I could give a different answer, and how wonderful it felt when I could be part of making someone’s life better or easier. Switching to the transcription job, my last one, the one that was such a part of my last depressive episode, taught me to be wary of jobs that look too perfect, and to get more information, and that sometimes job descriptions don’t quite match the real expectations, and sometimes being good at what you do isn’t enough.

So where am I now? Working towards becoming a vet assistant… but that isn’t precisely right, because even when I finish this year, I’ll still have my diploma that says I’m a medical secretary. No matter how many programs I take in school, I’ll still have my skills with words, and I’ll still identify strongly with cats and want to help them, and I’ll still be the same empathic person.

It seems obvious, and I’ve heard it in many variations, but somehow it finally kicked in on a level where I’m really starting to believe and truly understand it: what we are isn’t defined by most recent job title or diploma/degree/whatever. We are everything we’ve done, everything we’ve learned, everything we’ve experienced, all our successes, all our mistakes. I’m not here in order to become “a vet assistant,” I’m here to add a new set of skills that I can add to the old ones to create a new whole, in search of a place in the world that needs that particular whole.

Now, all I have to do is get through the next eight months or so, which is going to be a lot less easy than the medical office assistant program was. To see what I’m learning, take a peek at my other blog, “Dr TinyCat’s VA”.

Oh, and what triggered this? My first class held at the Humane Society, and a conversation with the volunteer coordinator afterwards, during which I got the impression that my combination of skills and interests will make me very useful to them even while I’m still learning the VA side… it was a very intense day, this past Monday.

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Reflections on reflections

Oct19
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prysma

I don’t know why I ever bother trying to figure out what’s going on in my head, really, when all I have to do is sit down and start writing something.  Anything.  And just let it go in the direction it wants.  There’s generally an answer at the end.

This was proven to me again yesterday.  As I said, I’ve been having trouble concentrating on any one thing for long.  I went for a walk, came home thinking about autumn leaves and times of rest, and ended up writing a blog post that basically answered my confusion about the trouble concentrating.

I think my mind, my subconscious especially, is essentially recompiling, adjusting to a radically different chosen path for the future.  Adjusting self-image (from Steph-the-secretary to Steph-the-animal-worker-to-be), goals for short term and long term… all that kind of thing.  Preparation on a deeper level, I guess.

Now maybe, if I can put my motivations for getting things done in terms of that kind of preparation, I can actually concentrate.  We can hope, right?  Not getting things done that need doing is getting a tad stressful, and getting them finished would make life so much nicer.

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Reflections on a fall walk

Oct18
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prysma

Being totally unable to concentrate on what I should be working on, I gave up, found my mp3 player, and went for a walk.

Until the last year and a half or so, when I started to feel the draining effects of the depression, I used to very much enjoy walking.  I could get lost in the music and the pleasure of my own body moving, just wandering around the city.  It’s a pattern reaching all the way back to when I was 17, when just before we left my dad, I would take my walkman and a couple of extra cassettes and make the hour-long walk to the village just to be out of the house and alone with my thoughts.  I’ve been known to get… almost high from it, I guess, from the increased adrenaline and blood flow and the enjoyment of it all.

So, with a mixture of Depeche Mode, Heather Alexander, Evanescence, Roxette, Nickelback, and assorted other music to listen to, I went wandering.  The posters of missing cats made me sad, and the coolness of the air reminded me that summer is over.

Still, it wasn’t so cold that after a few minutes of moving I was uncomfortable in a lightweight sweatshirt.

Then I happened to step under a maple tree just as the sun came out from behind a cloud.

If you’ve never seen sunlight hit a maple turning in fall, I don’t know the words to convey the sheer beauty of the sight.  I’ve seen it compared to fire, but I think it’s a bad analogy.  Yes, it’s yellow and orange, but the glow is far more mellow and soft than fire, I think.  There’s something almost unreal about it, and yet, it’s absolutely real and elemental, the product of the earth and the sun.

My mood changed instantly.

Everywhere around me, for the rest of my walk, I couldn’t help noticing maples in all stages of changing.  Some still almost entirely green.  One that was a fascinating motley of green leaves and yellow leaves, even right next to each other, and another with great swathes of green and swathes of yellow.  Some that were farther along and turning from yellow to orange.  Some red maples that were all but black now.

Being me, I of course started getting all philosophical about time and cycles and all that stuff.  It’s cliche, of course, but some cliches become that way because there’s truth in them.  It’s the twilight of the year, a time for thinking about rest and shelter and preparing for winter.  Which made me remember a really fascinating Wikipedia article I saw a couple of weeks ago:  Segmented sleep And while Wikipedia is of course not the source of all knowledge, what I can find from other sources seems to confirm it.  Here’s part of the beginning of the Wiki entry:

Segmented sleep, divided sleep, bimodal sleep pattern and interrupted sleep are modern Western terms for a polyphasic or biphasic sleep pattern found in medieval and early modern Europe and many non-industrialised societies today, where the night’s sleep is divided by one or more periods of wakefulness. This is particularly common in the winter.

The human circadian rhythm controls a sleep-wake cycle of wakefulness during the day and sleep at night. Superimposed on this basic rhythm is a secondary one of light sleep in the early afternoon (see siesta) and quiet wakefulness in the early morning.

<snip a paragraph on various names>

This period of wakefulness was often only semi-conscious, as the French term implies. It was highly valued in medieval Europe as a time of quiet and relaxation. Peasant couples were often too tired after a long day’s work to do much more than eat and go to sleep, but they would wake later on to talk and make love. People would also use this time to pray and reflect, and to interpret dreams, which were more vivid at that hour than upon waking in the morning, and even to visit. This was also a favorite time for authors and poets to write uninterrupted.

What have we lost, I wonder, as we’ve lost touch with natural cycles, both of the individual day and of the year?

Winter has stopped being a time of rest for humans–and I’m not romanticizing this, I know winter is a harsh season, especially on the very poor, but it’s also down-time for farms, a rest period after harvest and before the next year’s calving, lambing, foaling, ploughing, sowing, and so on and so forth.  Now, we go-go-go all year round, except those lucky enough to have a job with vacation time, and even then, I’ve heard more stories of non-restful vacations than restful ones, no matter how fun or satisfying or productive it might be.

Sleep expectations have changed, too.  How many of us fall into bed, sleep until morning, drag ourselves out of bed still tired after less sleep than our bodies insist we need?  And, more in line with my current subject, how many of us feel tense, anxious, stressed all our waking hours, from waking to sleeping?  By sacrificing that hour or so in the middle of the night, a quiet time for introspection, sharing with one’s nearest and dearest, creativity, spirituality, in favour of more productivity, what have we lost?

Does modern life’s lack of these slower periods to regenerate, rest, recharge, have anything to do with the prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders, I wonder?

Ah well.  There are no answers on any of this.  There are countless factors that contribute to making modern life rushed and fixated on frequently destructive values and priorities.  Still… can’t help but wonder if this is one of them….

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Post-depression… then what?

Sep30
2008 3 Comments Written by Prysma

Depression is very treatable in most cases.  I know this.  Heck, I was a psychiatry secretary for three years.

Meds help, regardless of who says otherwise.  I would not be writing this without them.  I would be pretty much completely non-functional still.  Therapy helps, I have a wonderful therapist that I’m very grateful for, and a family doctor who wants full updates every time I see him and is always encouraging.  Family support helps, beyond words.

But what happens when you’re no longer “depressed,” per se?  When you no longer fit the criteria for diagnosis, and can be considered to have recovered?  What if, at that point, you still don’t feel like you have a grip on your life again?

What if you look around, and see a year’s backlog of housework, not done because you just didn’t care and didn’t have the energy and because your beloved partner physically can’t do it and there just isn’t anyone else?  What if you find yourself feeling so lonely that you want friendly and supportive company more than anything else, except maybe a few good laughs, and you end up spending just-a-little-longer online to fill that need, instead of doing things you should be doing?  What if, even though you’re “all better,” you still feel lost and scared of life, because you’re terrified of making the wrong choice and crashing again?  What if your self-esteem is trashed by not working, by a nagging feeling that you’ve somehow failed, by a weight increase due to too much junk food and no exercise, by a lack of enough energy to do anything about the weight?

*sigh*  I don’t know.  Probably I’m just whining.  Or something.  After all, Sean’s having another bad pain day, and it’s fall and it’s been gray and rainy for a week or so now, which is really not helping my mood — I like fall, but only when it’s the clear crisp weather, and this steady wet stuff is just dismal.  Maybe it’s just low blood sugar or something, I wonder what I can find to make for supper… something that doesn’t require too much energy or concentration….

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