New targets of irritable intolerance

A couple of posts ago I wrote about using the tag cloud to one side of the page to see what sort of content was falling out of my fingers most frequently, and what sort of identity this blog was evolving. (I’ve since removed some posts about music and the internet and may well post them somewhere else – I felt that passionate cultural comment was somewhat diminished if I then spoke with the same gusto and vitriol about biscuits and polar bears.)

One of the tags that did seem to float prominently to the surface was ‘grumpiness’, about which I was slightly wary. I used to think I was fairly tolerant over all. Stuff didn’t really wind me up, and I was reasonably stoic about life in general. Things just weren’t really worth getting worked up about, and problems wouldn’t be resolved by stressing and moaning about them.

But I’m starting to actually find that many new targets of irritable intolerance are actually just by-products of being enthusiastic about other elements of existence.

Take cats.

Previously, I have always been heartily positive towards cats: for the most part they seem calm and don’t require lots of energy. As long as you feed them and let them in and out of the garden, they prefer you to be reasonably inactive so that they can find you easily and sit on your lap. I like all of this. They encourage dormancy and relaxation. I’ve always liked cats.

But I own a house now. With a garden. With a nice pond with plants and fish and gravel along one side.  And a cat living next door. And no matter how charming that cat may be to others who know it, I can’t stand the bugger.

It’s not the pond that’s so much of the issue here – it’s deep and wide enough for all the fish and other assorted life to be safely out of paws reach - but the gravel itself. And its apparent convenience for the neighbour’s cat whenever he fancies going to the toilet. Which nature requires he do quite regularly.

Anyway, this isn’t a post about poo in particular, but more about the fact that I’ve realised that certain simple elements of my life (a big active pond with gravel around it) bring with them a grumpiness towards random factors that marr my enjoyment of them (cats). Random factors which I otherwise had a lot of time for.

My growing animosity towards cats is purely because I’m sick of cleaning up after one in particular; or rather tired of regularly and liberally spraying the garden with lemon juice and garlic to discourage it. But I’m aware that if I don’t acknowledge this, I’m like to end up with a hearty bah humbug attitude to the lot of them. And when grumpiness grows like this, it’s very difficult to reign it back in again (particularly as random bursts of it can be so damn self-indulgently enjoyable).

But I’m not prepared to entertain continued dislike on such a grand scale on the basis of one unpleasant, albeit reocurring encounter. Harbouring resentment towards an entire species seems a little daft, (unless you’ve been formally insulted by the elected representative of all the world’s butterflies or something).

Cleaning up animal mess isn’t a great time to try to calm down with a few deep breaths, but I do recognise the need to remain calm and mature and keep things in perspective. At least, that’s what I try to remind myself, whenever I’m cleaning up the gravel in my back garden.

And flinging cat poo over the neighbours fence.