Holiday spirit shouldn’t reign seasonally

MAXINE COHEN

It’s hard to miss that Christmas is coming up fast. Driving around

Newport-Mesa is like being trapped inside a pinball machine. Cars,

trucks, pedestrians, bicycles coming at me from all sides as people

rush around trying to get everything done. Feels frantic. I hate it.

Seems to me, Christmas, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving should be about

love, peace, joy, being grateful and appreciating one another. Too

often, of course, they are not. Difficult family relationships, life

transitions, geographical distance, death and divorce can make the

holidays an especially sad, lonely and stressful time. There’s also

the stress we bring on ourselves. We can be so consumed with trying

to make the holiday “just so” that by the time the day arrives, we

are too exhausted to enjoy it.

So this is what I’ve been thinking about, as I do this time every

year. But this year, my daughter, Carolyn, and her cat seem to

epitomize what I think ought to be the essence of the holidays.

If you recall my Mother’s Day column, I’d gone to San Francisco to

visit Carolyn, and she took me to Pets Unlimited to see Shelby, the

cat she wanted to adopt. Nice- looking cat. Gray. Not too big. Nice

mark- ings. Turns out, however, this cat had been living at Pets

Unlimited for eight of its 10 years! I nearly fell over when I found

this out.

At first, they’d housed Shelby in the big cat room, which was

right next to the big dog room. All the barking and so many cats

moving around made her crazy. She hissed and swiped, and not

surprisingly, no one wanted to adopt her. After several years, her

caretakers decided to try a different environment and moved her into

a small, private room. This worked much better. She was way less

aggressive, but as time passed, she made less and less contact with

visitors and refused to groom herself. Every six months or so, they’d

have to sedate and shave her, leaving only a mane and little puffs

around her paws.

Enter Carolyn. Drawn like a magnet to this little outcast. She

went back to the shelter, over and over, to spend time with Shelby to

see if they’d fit. Carolyn would go into the little room, sit down,

and Shelby would come over and sit on her lap for just a few minutes

before she’d move away. Carolyn felt sure they’d connected.

I was not so sure. I suggested we might want to see what other

cats were available for adoption, given Shelby’s track record and my

concern that it might be a hard adjustment, indeed, after so many

years of being in this one little room. Carolyn, true to form, was

not concerned about this, but she agreed to go anyway.

So we went to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

Animals, which was bulging with cats, 69 to be exact. Carolyn got

through the first 10 and right there, in the middle of cat heaven,

she burst out in tears. How could she desert poor little Shelby? If

she didn’t adopt her, no one else ever would. (That’s for sure!)

Now I know this child. I stopped dead in my tracks and put my arms

around her as she sobbed.

“We don’t have to see any more cats,” I said. “Shelby is your cat.

It doesn’t have to make sense. It just is.”

At that, Carolyn pulled herself together, we saw a few more cats

and left.

Fast-forward to September. Carolyn went back to the shelter.

Shelby was still there (of course). She adopted her. The poor little

dear was so panicked that she pooped in the cage on the way home.

Carolyn took the cage into the bathroom, as she was instructed to do

by the shelter workers, and let her out in that small space. Shelby

sat shell-shocked on the floor, not knowing where to go or what to

do.

Carolyn was overwhelmed. Her heart was full, and it overflowed out

her eyes.

“I gave her a brand new life in that very moment,” she said when I

spoke to her.

Little by little, Shelby found her way. She walked back and forth,

back and forth between the two rooms that Carolyn calls home. It must

have seemed like a football field to her. She discovered the places

she likes to burrow into, the bottom drawer of the dresser, the top

shelf behind the sweaters. She found the kitty pad that Carolyn had

placed at the foot of her bed and started to make biscuits. That’s

when Carolyn knew they were going to make it.

But you’d have to know my daughter. My highly emotional, sensitive

child. She’s right there. You can feel her. And so could this cat.

Pure and simple, Carolyn loved her back to life. No two ways about

it.

Shelby now climbs onto Carolyn’s chest to greet her each morning

when she awakens. She puts her little mouth right up to Carolyn’s

face as if to say, “I love you, thank you, thank you,” and she lets

Carolyn brush her a little.

She has even begun to groom herself, as Carolyn is finding

hairballs all over. The sweet little thing had given up on herself

until Carolyn loved her and gave her a home.

We can all have life breathed back into us if only someone takes

the time and care enough to see what we need, how we need it and give

it to us. Love heals. It repairs, and it regenerates, whether you’re

a cat or a human being.

And so the holidays are great and all that, but the holiday spirit

--cherishing one another, letting others know how much you care about

them, treating one another with loving kindness -- is all there to be

lived 365 days of the year. And it’s a darn good prescription for

living, day in and day out, if you ask me, and not just during the

holiday season.

* MAXINE COHEN is a Corona del Mar resident and marriage and

family therapist practicing in Newport Beach. She can be reached at

maxinecohen @adelphia.net or at (949) 644-6435.