Home alone...

"If you are lonely when you are alone,

you are in bad company."

- Jean-Paul Sartre

Most of us are home this week. That would be Leah, Hannah, Sarah and me – four/fifths of the household…80%, as it were. The 4/5ths ratio is not uncommon here, but I am usually the 20% that is away.

Yep, most of us are here this week, and one would think when the house is almost full, things would run right on schedule. I mean, we all eat and drink and digest and do personal things…although it is true that this week I have the responsibility for most of what happens in the house. I have been mindful that outside of long morning and afternoon naps between which the girls find their way to the powder room, things are not always as they seem.

If it were not for the cats, I would be alone in the house while Molly is on holiday visiting her brother in Tulsa. She and her brother Mark are very close. They call one other often, just because they feel like it. No weekly, predetermined schedule, just whenever the spirit or some idea they want to share, strikes them, they make a call. It happens pretty frequently.

I was, however, talking about the ratio of cats to humans and the running of the household. 

A side, but related step…

Over the years of our marriage, Molly and I have moved a number of times. I suppose our first apartment doesn't count, because we started with nothing, but the first house in Missouri required transporting a fair number of things we had accumulated. Decades later it was to Detroit, Michigan, and a few years after that San Diego, California. Five years on the West Coast ended when we moved to Oro Valley, Arizona nearly three years ago.

All these changes in location, from the beginning, seemed to go remarkably smoothly. All of the moves that is, except the most recent one from San Diego to Oro Valley.

One might make the argument that getting to the desert was harder, because Molly and I are no longer spring chickens, and that time and gravity naturally had begun to take their toll. One would be wrong and could not be further from the truth!

The move to Oro Valley was the hardest of the bunch because this time, I actually participated in the activity! Sure, I was part of the family in earlier years, but I traveled a lot and wasn't always around when the planning and packing happened.  Things just got done, and when things ‘just got done,' I did not appreciate what it took to get them done. I thought moving was kind of a straightforward and fairly easy process.

I realized in coming to Arizona that actually somebody has to make things happen, and in the past, that somebody was Molly. This time, I was an active part of the process, and realized it was a heck of a lot of work!

Back to the cats.

Cleanliness and godliness…

I do have some minor duties with our small clan of felines, mostly the morning shift of cleaning litter boxes and changing absorbent floor pads, the presence of which are needed because our dear geriatric family often indelicately ‘miss the mark' in the boxes and spray outside the contained litter. Yep, clean the boxes in the morning and move on with my day. 

What I did not fully appreciate is that this litter monitoring deal happens several times a day, not just in the morning and at night. As it turns out, 'no cat odor' in the house is NOT an accident!

Putting out the eats…

Then, of course, there are the early morning wake-up calls. Molly is the 'go to human' for breakfast. If she is not up when they think she should be, the three of them, all using, what I believe to be conspiratorial methods, make sure she gets out of bed and opens the restaurant.  Leah knocks things off the side table…Sarah gets in her face and occasionally licks her hair…and Hannah? Well, she just howls in the living room as though she is in the final throes of end stage starvation.

I usually sleep through Hannah, because I have not been prepped by the other two girls as they break moments of Molly's contented reverie through their unrelenting tactics.

I have fed the girls any number of occasions, and administered insulin to Sarah our diabetic, but there are other regular daily/weekly injections for her. Leah requires oral pain medication on a daily basis to help her with chronic low back pain resulting from a spontaneously fused lower spine, that causes a stiff and sometimes painful gait.

It turns out, there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes!

It is all about me…

With Molly gone for a few days, it doesn't take rocket science for the girls to figure out I am now the 'go to' restaurateur. My surrogate morning duties now include breakfast, appropriate injections and the provision of mid-morning and evening snacks. I have also come to appreciate that these cats can't be fed the same food for every meal. If that happens, up go their noses, and they just walk away - Sheesh!

If one had asked me whether taking care of three cats was much of a burden, I would have said, "Naw…cats pretty much take care of themselves."  What I did not fully appreciate is the work it takes for our group of gently aging companions, to live and enjoy the life to which they, and we, have become accustomed.

Me? I love these girls, but my joy in seeing Molly walk back through the door will be enhanced when she reassumes the routine she has created. Also, she will return with increased respect for the way she gives the appearance that taking care of our little family just happens.

I wonder what else goes on around here that I don't fully appreciate?

ted