{"id":7487,"date":"2012-09-29T06:50:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T10:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/?p=7487"},"modified":"2012-09-28T18:21:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T22:21:25","slug":"birthdays-cats-and-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/birthdays-cats-and-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays, Cats, and the Passing of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> I celebrated my 52nd birthday this past Wednesday and so naturally it got me thinking of the passing of time. We are told to live each moment as if it could be the last, with quality and purpose, and yet so much of time is spent waiting to get from one point to another, with seemingly no purposeful meaning at all. Standing in the wrong long line at the grocery store, waiting on hold to speak with a live human on the phone for a customer service issue, sitting in the doctor\u2019s office, waiting for your name to be called, and on and on. How much of our time is collectively spent in those often very frustrating moments?<\/p>\n

I try to make the best of it \u2013 I preplan when I can with a book or by staying connected to the world with my iPhone as I multi-task with technology, but I think the worst\u00a0loss of \u00a0time is the one of agitated anticipation which is not the same thing as joyful anticipation, such as the wonderment of a child waiting for Christmas morning to come, for\u00a0example. How many of us have a job or we are in a situation where we are\u00a0 counting the minutes, long, excruciating\u00a0 minutes of our life that we will never, ever get back to jump forward in time quicker? 4:45 pm\u2026. Ugg\u2026. Please, please, please become 5:00 so I can go home.\u00a0 Somehow those 15 minutes seem like an endless, painful hour and yet those 15 minutes are a precious gift of time that I am just throwing away because I want to be somewhere else\u2026. Such as home with my cats who are waiting for me, ironically, like clockwork to feed them dinner.<\/p>\n

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This is what I am greeted by when I come home from work - a very impatient and hungry crowd of kitties waiting to be fed dinner!<\/p><\/div>\n

The tick tock of a cat\u2026 they do seem to understand time in a basic sense marked by the milestone events of each day – dinner time, bed time, play time, nap time, grooming time \u2013 all of these moments contribute to the concept of what a cat perceives as time and they are incredibly intuitive without the need of clocks, email reminders, or alarms like us humans are accustomed to. In fact, if it were not for my own paranoia, I am certain I would wake up each morning in time to get ready for work because my cats already know what my schedule is and they are diligent in telling me to get up, moments before the alarm goes off.<\/p>\n

Now obviously cats don\u2019t think of time in the same way we humans do, based on the rigid structure of 24 concise hours in each day, but that is not to say that they don\u2019t understand moments of time outside of the norm of their everyday life. An unexpected lizard that inadvertently wanders into the house causing delightful chaos, the onslaught of holiday visitors that disrupt the peace of the household, the disappointment of a Saturday morning outdoor jaunt cruelly halted by a rainstorm, the delicious sound of a bag of new cat treats being opened for consumption, or the unspeakably horrible sound a cat carrier makes as its doors are being opened to hold a cat prisoner \u2013 those moments are the equivalent\u00a0to the unexpected highs and lows of the predictable timelines of our own human life.<\/p>\n

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There is always time to take a break for a tasty treat when you are a kitty!<\/p><\/div>\n

But, for the most part, a cat has a very well organized day that is not consumed with the harried and frustrated sense that we humans often feel in today’s hectic world, rushing to get\u00a0 one task done, only to immediately start another.\u00a0I think the only time my cats really feel that sense of frustration is dinner time which is to be served by me\u00a0at 6:00 pm sharp. If I am late, Peanut will come and find me to tell me in no uncertain terms that it is time to be fed and I don\u2019t need a clock to tell me that \u2013 her agitated body language is more than enough proof that cats understand the concept of time because I have tampered with her internal clock. And, of course, the irony of that anticipation is like that of Thanksgiving dinner –\u00a0that wonderful meal that you have waited all day for to enjoy\u00a0is eaten in a blink of an eye, a mere fraction of time…<\/p>\n

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Jazz is 14 years old and has become increasingly possessive with my time as he ages. I respect his increased need for my companionship and always make the time to give him extra loving and attention.<\/p><\/div>\n

Older cats and cats that are near to passing on to the Rainbow Bridge also have an uncanny sense of time and the fact that it is not infinite. The ability for a cat to comprehend that its life is winding down is amazing to me and how they communicate that to us is even more extraordinary. They tell us with a simple honesty in their body language and behaviors that we need to slow down and pay attention to them, as each extra day, or hour, is precious and they want to share the last moments they have with us.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t care that we have blog posts pending, or bills to pay, or laundry to be done. They teach us the most important lesson of all \u2013 that each moment we do have, even those minutes that might not seem to have a useful purpose \u2013 all those moments truly are precious and we do need to remind ourselves on occasion to just take a break, pet the cat so to speak, and treasure those 15 minutes, however long or short they seem to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I celebrated my 52nd birthday this past Wednesday and so naturally it got me thinking of the passing of time. We are told to live each moment as if it could be the last, with quality and purpose, and yet so much of time is spent waiting to get from one point to another, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1271,1265,454],"class_list":["post-7487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration-healing","tag-behavior","tag-cats","tag-time"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Treat-time.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487","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=7487"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7510,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions\/7510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}