Rolling with the Punches

My cats have had a rough two weeks. No wait, hear me out—I promise this isn’t a post about my cats … entirely.

When The Hubs and I bought this “mansion” of a house 4½ years ago, we knew we wouldn’t fill it all ourselves, but we felt called to open it up to family and friends who might need a place to crash for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years. So we bought the house with that intent … and The Caller got to work. Since then, we’ve had three roommates grace our home and countless other family and friends cross our threshold as they’ve needed, and next weekend, we’ll welcome in our fourth roommate. This roommate is a little special, though. He'll stay significantly longer than any of our previous roommates and require significantly more care.

Taking in this new roommate has required some big changes around the house, changes that really didn’t affect our cats, Scout and Nala, until two weeks ago. The litter box move came first, and it was a nonevent met with more confusion than anything else (Approaching old litter box space and not seeing a litter box. “I could have sworn …” Lightbulb goes on. “Oh that’s right! I get to do my business in this big closet over here!” Scampers off.) Then came the food and water bowl move. This raised the something-fishy’s-going-on-and-we-don’t-know-what red flags. Scout and Nala started moving with more caution in their steps, staying closer to “Mom” and “Dad,” and dragging their security blanket around the house more. Then last week came.

Our new roommate needs to live downstairs, so we had to kick our current roommate out of his cushy digs and shove him into a room upstairs … a room that Scout had claimed as her “domain.” I was at work when the territory’s conquest occurred, but the tales recounted later say that Scout didn’t go down without a fight. The little spitfire apparently sat outside the room hissing at the usurper every time he carried a load of his stuff in and batting at him every time he tried to soothe her with pets. By the time I got home several hours later, she had (very) begrudgingly waved her white flag and was curled into a ball in the corner of the office, glaring out at the world like it had betrayed her.

It broke my heart to see her react this way, but as I reflected on it, it occurred to me that I myself don’t act all that differently when faced with significant change. I’m a creature of habit, and when my world is turned upside down for reasons I don’t understand (and sometimes reasons I do understand), I generally face my circumstances with a heavy dose of cynicism laced with a tinge of pessimism and a pinch of self-destructiveness. I have my own way of hissing and batting that can last anywhere from a few short hours to several days. I definitely don’t approach change with “pure joy.”

But I’m a work in progress, and although I’ve come a long way from how I used to handle significant change (a heavy dose of undiluted self-destructiveness), seeing how my little furry mini-me has been handling this whole change thing has made me realize that I still have a ways to go in making progress with my own approach. I need to more readily give up control in faith and ask questions with a less grudging heart; I need to swallow bitingly sarcastic remarks and replace them with prayers. I’m gritting my teeth as I type these words because it’s a whole heck of a lot easier to don my armor and put up my defensive walls than it is to relinquish control and go with the flow, trusting that things will turn out as they’re meant to. But life isn’t always about trodding the easy path. In fact, it’s often about going down the unbeaten road that has been less traveled by. That’s the path that produces perseverance, which, if left to finish its work, results in a mature, complete person. And ultimately, I’d rather be someone who rolls with the punches than the person who comes out swinging.