We live in an age of indignation.

Much of it is necessary.

But much of it is just noxious.

Somewhere along the way, we got bad, this species of ours, at the ancient art of Letting Things Go.

I do not mean the big things. I do not mean the terrible things. I do not mean the things that cannot be let go without great harm to the letter-goer. I mean the little mundanities and inanities of life with other living beings.

I mean the sorts of things that cats let go like so many late dinners. Mimi will yowl and scowl at you as you scurry over at 4:05 (four oh five! Late times FIVE!). But at 4:07 she will lavish you, love you, forgive you so much that she’d be hard-pressed to describe what you did wrong.

I mean the sorts of things that cats sweep off the counter like so many crumbs. Angelo will waddle across your desk (OK, my desk) like Godzilla, knocking things hither and yon until I pick him up rent a crane to pick him up and deposit him in his bed. He will gaze up at the crane operator and me forlornly — “Stomping is loving is fun is good!” — but before he even needs to blink, he’s fully, freely over it.

And I mean the sorts of things that come from living with large-live-rs like the ladies of Adoption Room #3.

Before this gets dicey, Be It Known that I am not including Director of Operations Danielle (whose office is the once and future Adoption Room #3) among such ladies.

That cleared up, there’s enough personality to pack a punch in AR3. We’ve got Jackie. We’ve got Reese. We’ve got Virginia, Zencada, Maca-“Still Big Mac Even Though I’m Littler”-roon, and Miss Missy Rosenberg herself.

A large and sunny space, AR3 is perfectly ample for this many cats. Everygirl has her food, her litter box, her cozy dozy-spots. There’s a window wide enough to survey the landscape, the grand panorama that is The Front Of Tabby’s Place. Life is good.

But “life” defined by each of these ladies is so large, so puff-painted in neon orange, that it scarcely seems it would fit in such a “fitting” space…much less sixfold.

Let’s be honest, kittens. If you or I were shuttled into a cottage — even a perfectly ample cottage — with five other people we didn’t know well, we’d have to work on letting things go. Late dinners. Crumbs on the counter. Hasty words. Misunderstandings ranging from minor to nuclear. Smells and sounds and sights and sighs and NCIS marathons.

But picture sharing that cottage with five other people who are all an awful lot like you.

Sound stellar? Oh, you sweet creature. Buckle up.

As we all know in those deep, spider-webbed corners of our souls, the people who peeve us the most are the people who remind us of our own rank, stanky selves. They are the smudgy mirrors of all the Stuff We’re Working On Inside. They are us at our best and our worst and our most unavoidable. They are hideous. They are glorious. They are intolerable.

Until we let things go.

I don’t know how the six spitfire egos of AR3 do it. Each convinced of her own queendom, still they politely work around each other without delivering death-blows at the feeding stations, or glitter-bombing the litter boxes. If this was a room where we reasonably expected fighting, we were sorely disappointed.

All of which makes me want to work on “disappointing” the world.

Maybe the next time the wrong word comes out at the right moment to pounce, we won’t.

Maybe the next time our opponent fumbles and falters in front of us, we’ll swallow the storehouse of Things We Could Bring Up.

Maybe we’ll choose, like Virginia waiting patiently behind Reese at the kibble bowl, to let indignation dwindle.

Maybe not.

But we’re not without inspiration.

More Blog Posts