Adaptability With Integrity

I was on the phone this morning with a professional whose job it is to save me from myself.  He was suggesting to me that there is such a thing as a “strong” person.

Poor man.  I must be quite the challenge.  I insisted on pursuing the theme some of us have been discussing here in prior posts; i.e., that we really are quite frail and vulnerable beings.  Anybody can be taken out, at any moment, by a mere tiny virus or some other biological disaster or being hit by a bus or suchlike.

So my professional and I compromised.  An aspiration I am willing to live with is:  I would like to feel myself becoming more and more adaptable, while acting in a manner that is true to my integrity.

As we were debating this proposition, Bugsy woke up from Long Bed in the bedroom.  He has this way of ambulating and vocalizing, when he’s just woken up, which sounds a whole lot like complaining – a kind of rusty grouchy voice.  “Dadgummit ma would you mind doing something about this rain already?”

At such times his mission seems to be to express himself fully, and then find another, more hospitable place to deposit himself.

Now my team of home-improvement-inclined friends, and I as a devoted mom who wants only the best for her kids, have gone to considerable lengths to accommodate a whole host of depository options.  Each and every setting is expressly designed to put one feline hiney in one bed at a time.

Like, for instance from the other day, Long Bed and Short Bed in the bedroom.  In the living room, this is the way it’s supposed to be:

It has happened like this, however, maybe like once, just enough to get this one picture.  This morning it was not like this.  It was what’s become the usual:  Fang in Top Shelf.

Now this is a situation that really pushes Bugs’s buttons – because Bugs owns Top Shelf.  In the pre-Fang good old days, it’s where he used to live for 23.5 hours of the day.  Here’s a representative example:

So while my advisor and I were haggling on the phone about “strong” v. “adaptable with integrity,” Bugs creaked in complaining.  He looked up at Top Shelf.  He complained some more.  He disdained Bottom Shelf.  Fang or no Fang, he jumped up into position to achieve Top Shelf.  He waited there, complaining some more.

He then gave it up – adaptability! – and repaired to the bed in the East Window instead.  Integrity!  Rest must be persevered-with!

But all this palaver roused Fangie.  Now Fangie is not one to spend 23.5 hours in Top Shelf.  Not if there’s any action to be had.  Bugs awake means there’s action to be had.  So here comes Fangie, hurtling down from the heights game on.

Bugs, however, has repaired to the East Window bed.  That only fits one feline.

To Fangie this is of no concern.  Up he hops, into East Bed and pretty much onto Bugs.

Here we have Cat Mash-up.

But did it end in tears?  Not hardly.  We are adaptable!

Here’s Bugs after the brief mash-up.  Retaining solo splendor in East Bed.

Here’s Fang after mash-up.  Game on Fangie.

Adaptability with integrity.  It’s working for us!