Sarah Strudwick draws interesting analogies about pets and humans in her new blog post. Read Cats or Dogs on WakingYouUp.Wordpress.com.
- Menu
- Skip to right header navigation
- Skip to primary navigation
- Skip to main content
- Skip to primary sidebar
- Skip to footer
How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
cats —— i listen to a PTSD visualization CD when i go to bed. there is a part where you have a companion with you, and more often than not it is my grey mister 10 years gone. i was listening to it the other night and i just sobbed.
i have been without an animal in my life for about 5 years now (the parent’s doxies) and i am still in shock about that. and i miss my grey mister so much. it’s hard to believe that it’s been a decade……makes me feel really uneasy about how fast time goes and how little there is left. yup, i think about that a lot. i was thinking i should make a list of all the things i think about like that – just to get a good psychological profile of myself.
i was thinking about grey mister last night and how his armpits were soft like bunny hair. i am trying to remember the good things now – i still hold so much emo drama about his illness and death. i feel very bad that i put him down, and somehow i have a hard time accepting his death because of it. he was 18 and other than the kidney disease, in great shape….but the kidney disease (by the time i put him down) would have killed him within a short time anyway….so why do i carry this? and he would be dead twice over by now – it’s weird. i wonder if i feel responsible for his death? i am literally…but he was dying. this is where buddhism has fucked me up – feeling responsible for something I would have done sadly and with great pain in the past (and had), but somehow i am now more guilty….one set of values says, end the suffering, and the other set says i just messed up my and his karma.
one – 18 years is a very long life for a cat, so I would say you did something wonderful keeping him alive that long – I will always feel guilty for having Harley put down, but I also feel guilty for not doing it sooner he was not a happy wiener the last year or so..
I miss him terrible like you do your Mister….One, I so wish you could get another cat..
Oh One…..
No….you did the right thing!
Funny reading about Misters armpits. Just last night as Holly cuddled up……she rolls over on her back for a belly rub. I like to rub her armpits because they too…..are so very soft.
I went without an animal for 1.5 years after Allie passed. And Iwasn’t sure I was gonna get another…..and thank golly jeepers divine intervention hit us…..and we found Hol’s. She’s so different, but so wonderful.
I’ve never had a dog so protective of ME like this one. I’m her girl for sure. She keeps an eye on the kids…..but both eyes on me! She sleeps all spooned up to me….all night. If I get up to roll over, she’s up and alert….standing in a split second. She won’t let me leave her sight.
I don’t know what i’m gonna do with her when I go back to working ona schedule…..at someones house. I guess in the winter, take her, she likes my car. She just hangs out…..but not so much in the summer.
Some things have so much value to themin our lives, they might outweigh the bad effects.
Maybe babysit or just play with a doggie in the park for starters.
I’m sooooooo glad I took the plunge with Holly!
EB – i am now allergic…..to cats and dogs.
i do have a small crush on noodle head (my pet name for the dobbie next door) and get to pet him for a minute or two a few times a week…then i have to come in and hose myself down. 😉
hens, i so wish i could have a cat.
Russian Blues are hypoalergenic…..according to my client?!?!
Hehehe, I’m a cat lover… I cannot live without a cat. I can see the logic of the comparison of the article, and yes I know that my Darwin, and my Nelson before that, were loving to my parents during their stay and would have remained happy if I would never hve returned from holidays to take them back home. And the key is food supply.
But when I do take them home, I also know they keep me company in a way they don’t with my parents. They follow me around everywhere, and prefer to sleep and sit as close to me as possible. Even my parents note that their cat Midas responds extremely affectionate to me, in a way he does not treat them. Of course he knows he’ll always get a little bitty something to eat from me when I come to visit. But I was also the one who raised him as a kitten. My dad used the punish method to train the cats, and they ended up being fearful of him. He didn’t abuse them, but to correct them he used the frighten tactic where they identified him being the cause, instead of the action. When they took Midas I promised my father to train him, because I would eventually move out, and then he’d have a cat that wouldn’t be afraid of him. I used the water spray and correction tactics a mother cat would use. Hence, Midas is loving and affectionate to my father (and my father loves him to bits for it), while I’ve got mother cat status. It is the same for Nelson and Darwin who came after Nelson died.
There is one thing though that I do not agree with in the article. The example of cats bringing home prey and toying with it, not even eating it is misrepresented. Watch a mother cat teach her nest of kittens and you’ll notice she starts her hunting lessons by first taking home dead prey and toys with it showing how to bite it and hurtle it in the sky. When the kittens are older and less at risk of ending up wounded by the prey, she brings home live prey and does the same game. The moves though are necessary kill tactics or numbing tactics. So, when your cat brings home their prey, they bring it home to teach you how to hunt, because they normally do not see us kill any animal.
A special prey are mice… we see it as toying, but what cats do with mice, is an important tactic on rats. Rats are dangerous and when not exhausted and numbed down, they’d attack the cat fiercely, possibly even killing them. Mice could not do that to a cat, but either a cat treats them like rats for training purposes or because they are similar to a rat (just much smaller).
So, the ‘toying’ with prey has no selfish or cruel intents, but is done for training purposes: either to train the human caretakers or themselves.
Midas was nicked ‘killing fields’ by my parents for all the birds and mice he brought home into the garden (and he regards the garden as playground for his humans, because he often hopes to lure my parents or myself into the garden to play with him). It lessened though after he brought home a wounded blackbird. I mercy killed it in front of his eyes and then gave it back to Midas. Midas made no problems about giving me his prey and watched me intently to see what I would do with it. At some point the blackbird made a run for it, but it was wounded in such a way I knew it could never survive. So I caught it again and then killed it (only animal I’ve ever killed in my life with my own two bare hands and I decided the same day to become vegetarian over it). Midas never interfered, he watched me with great interest all the time. When I gave him back the dead blackbird, he had no interest at all anymore in it, but he has not brought any prey to the garden for me anymore (he does for my parents though). When I catsit at my parents’ house while they are on holiday, Midas never brings any prey into the garden at all.
The worst reaction is to take prey away, scold the cat over it, and then release it in front of their eyes and keeping them from catching it. Then cats regards you as not just a non-hunter but utterly clumsy too. They’ll keep bringing prey to the home but will refuse to surrender it. So, best response is to praise them, get it away from them, keep it with you as long as the cat can see, then put them in a room so they cannot witness you releasing it if they prey is salvageable. If the prey is non salvageable and you have the stomach for a mercy-kill, do it while the cat can witness it, and show off the kill. Problem solved after that.
I woke up this morning hearing myself tell “IT” on his way out the door, the last time I saw “IT”, when he said: “Oh, but you know I love you!” Standing there with tears in his eyes, all the while laughing! I told him this: “You truly DO think this is all funny or comical; don’t you? And, you speak to me of LOVE? YOU don’t even know what that word means. Good bye.” And, I turned my back on him and walked away.
It isn’t easy severing your right arm off. But, sometimes it is necessary as evidenced by the many people who have gotten trapped with climbing rocky mountains and get stuck in between ridges…I know you have all heard of those stories.
With a person as is the likes of a psychopath, they don’t understand or relate to ‘lifes lessons’ the way most of us do. When they get burned by an experience in their life, they turn it against the next person in line. They have an endless supply of victims, even though we might all want to believe we are somehow ‘special’ and that just is never the case. *Sorry to hurt your feelings* We were targeted for any number of specific reasons.
This process we are and have come through was a built in ‘time bomb’, meant to go off after they have left our lives. We need to see it for what it really is. In my case, “IT” manipulated me for several years, all the while, keeping the flame alive by constant attention, 24/7, almost…and semi yearly visits. Not one time did I hear the truth in the years prior to meeting him, about himself and his live(s). MANIPULATION is the word here folks. HUGE RED FLAG. HUGE. Like the most important. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
After six months of NC on the 1st, I have had all those layers of that onion skin peeled away from my eyes. And, I think I learned, firsthand, NO BACK DOORING! What you find out at once may give you resolution but it may also seal that door to hell shut once and for all…be careful at how much you look at, because you may not like all the ugliness you actually see.
When you see that ugliness and lay your eyes upon it, it enters your soul through cog diss and will take you on a journey through that rabbit hole. It is a strength and an empowerment we must achieve within ourselves if we are ever to defeat this horrendous nightmare we have had attach itself to us. It takes discipline and being aware of ourselves but I believe we can and that most of us already HAS stepped through the other side of that ring of fire, already, proof: being HERE, on LF, looking and searching for the answers – psychopaths don’t need the same validation. They just don’t care.
I hope that all of you are well and doing alright.
I try to come and read as much as I can.
I am doing well. Getting all my medical issues under control now. I am happy to report I am doing very well, according to my cardiologist. I am still waiting to be scheduled for my colonoscopy, as they are looking for malignancy. Hope it’s just to rule it out; hmm? 🙂
We have to be the strongest people we could or can ever be to survive a spath attack. Trust me, I know – but it CAN be done. You just have to be honest with yourself and see them for what they truly are and explain to ourselves how we could ever ‘love’ something like that – something so false and deceitful…
mwah~!!!
and muahahahahahahahahaha too~!
Happy Halloweenies to all…
Dupey
xxoo
DUPED
Can you please clarify what you mean by no back dooring?
Good Morning callmeathena: it means once the relationship has ended, that you don’t go ‘looking’ for ‘answers’ anywhere but inside yourself. It means NOT trying to find things out about “IT”. What you find out may not necessarily be a ‘help.
Welcome to LF.
I found my soul again, here…
Happy Weekend
xxoo
Right on DupedNOMore! That was a powerful read.
(Duped: When some one has gotten over on you.: tricked.)
I am an animal lover, I have yet to meet an animal that has not taken to me. There is something to be said about people who don’t like animals and if any one has noticed.
the soul snatcher is either indifferent or does not like animals.
There is a huge difference in a domestic cat, dog and a path.
Dogs are always forgiving, they are grateful when they get that little piece of treat. They are so willing to please you.
When you walk in the house from a long day, the cat will rub up against your leg. The dog will greet you as if you are the most important human in this world.
I do understand the comparison. Of course the animals have motives.
Don’t we all? paths or other wise?
It is the intentions that these people have that are just no good. The lack of remorse.. Damn it , even a dog feels” guilty when he goes into the trash.
Not these people, cause they are entitled…..
Namaste”
Me