{"id":11411,"date":"2014-01-04T04:50:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T09:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/?p=11411"},"modified":"2014-01-03T19:53:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-04T00:53:12","slug":"cats-boxes-and-the-inventory-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/cats-boxes-and-the-inventory-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats, a Couch, Boxes, and the Inventory of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Warehouse<\/a>At year-end where I have my day job, it means the grueling and thankless job of taking inventory and it takes days and days. The company was founded in 1978 and some of the inventory is so old I think it dates back to then. Boxes, totes, pallets, and containers are filled with product and small parts and many of them are caked with dirt and grime as they wait for the annual counting ritual. Heaven forbid we throw any of the old stuff away in case we might need it for some obscure reason and I come home exhausted \u2013 every bone in my body aches and all I want to do is shower and crash on my favorite spot on the couch to watch some mindless TV.<\/p>\n

As I was driving home after finally finishing the count yesterday it got me to thinking about cats, boxes and the inventory of life. All the stuff we accumulate throughout the years \u2013 photos, clothes, shoes, knick-knacks, paperwork, furniture, technological wonders, jewelry, books, appliances, and on and on – we store it all in boxes of one sort or another that become a metaphorical Russian babushka doll. You know what I mean \u2013 those hand painted nesting dolls that decrease in size with one placed inside the other.<\/p>\n

\"babuska\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For example – the shoes fit into the shoe box. The shoe box fits into the closet. The closet fits into the bedroom. The bedroom fits into an even larger box called our house or apartment. The house becomes part of the neighborhood, the neighborhood part of the city, the city part of the county, the county part of the state, the state part of the country, the country part of the continent and on and on. Face it \u2013 we all live in a box of one shape or another and we are all part of the grand inventory of the infinite universe. Come to think of it – we are born in the most amazing box of all, the womb, and when we die we are also put in a box, whether it be a casket, an urn, or something less conventional.<\/p>\n

Wow. Profound and overwhelming to say the least. But there’s more – we have the boxes such as our car that is nothing more than a box with wheels that takes us to other boxes such as a job with an office or a cubicle. Or maybe we take an airplane shaped box to lands unknown to explore stuff that other people have. Or sometimes we get tired of our boxes and our stuff and buy new stuff or we move to a new box.<\/p>\n

\"KizmetBox\"<\/a>

Seen here is Kizmet in the proverbial “cat in the empty box” photo!<\/p><\/div>\n

All these boxes and all that stuff and yet I find that I spend the majority of my time in a very tiny box and I find the same to be true of my cats. Not in the traditional sense that cats love boxes – I am talking more about all the stuff my cats have accumulated as inventory via me. They have all kinds of cat condos and pet beds that they love. They also have comfortable human beds to sleep on, sun puddles to nap in, and counters and book shelves to nap on. Their favorite place to be? On a very overcrowded 4\u2019 x 5\u2019 elongated cushion that Dan and I share on the couch each night.<\/p>\n

\"Lots-of-cats-on-a-bed\"<\/a>

Happy cats snuggled on a bed… but eventually all will end up on the couch with Dan and I.<\/p><\/div>\n

But the same goes for Dan and I. We have a nice home with lots rooms, but unless we have company, we invariably spend most of our time in the living room\u2026 next to each other on that 4\u2019 x 5\u2019 elongated couch cushion that we share with seven cats. Typically I am covered with one or two of them on my lap and the others are either next to us or behind us.<\/p>\n

\"selfie\"<\/a>

Pardon the horrible quality of this photo, but this is an actual “selfie” to illustrate an evening on our 4′ x 5′ piece of real estate. L to R – Mia, Zoey on my legs, Rolz, and Dan’s feet. Not seen, but with us, is Harley next to my chest, and Peanut, Zee, and Kizmet on the other side of Dan!<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s an interesting observation \u2013 all that space yet we seek out the company of one another. And all that personal stuff that we have accumulated \u2013 yes, some of it is very nice, but not withstanding the everyday essential items to life, very rarely do we use or appreciate everything that we have. We have a storage shed filled with stuff, a garage filled with packed boxes that have not been opened for years, and a guest room with a closet jammed full of more stuff.<\/p>\n

\"Opened-Boxes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All I know is that years ago it all seemed so important. But the older I get, the more I truly realize it\u2019s really more about the love, friendship, and relationships we have, both human and animal kind. That kind of inventory can typically be counted on one hand and the value is priceless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At year-end where I have my day job, it means the grueling and thankless job of taking inventory and it takes days and days. The company was founded in 1978 and some of the inventory is so old I think it dates back to then. Boxes, totes, pallets, and containers are filled with product and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1265,621,747,745,748],"class_list":["post-11411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration-healing","tag-cats","tag-companionship","tag-inventory","tag-lessons-learned","tag-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/KizmetBox.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11411"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11428,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions\/11428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}