It was nearly 1:30 a.m. by the time we collapsed in bed, hearts pounding, sweaty. Neither one of us thought we’d be able to sleep. The carpet burns and throbbing scratch marks were almost too much to bear. Then the moaning started again, and I knew it had been a mistake to get a cat for Jasper and Simon on Valentines Day.

Our first mistake was probably renaming the cat. It was 6 years old, after all, and had gotten used to “Button.” We just weren’t a “Button” family. But the cat had arrived suddenly after a friend called saying that her 10-month-old son was hospitalized with a respiratory infection. The doctors had told them to get rid of pussy cat.

So Puddy landed at our house, confused, and perhaps a bit freaked out by the eager new owners (me and Jasper). And to add to the confusion, I kept referring to Puddy/Button as a he, even though she’s not. New house, new name, new gender — all in one day. And a brain the size of a half-can of Fancy Feast to process it all.

We were told Puddy was declawed (which isn’t actually a word), but apparently this practice only applies to the front paws. I found this out the hard way when trying to pick her up. Someone at work today looked at me seriously and asked me if I had “had enough.” When I asked what she meant, she said, “Of life” and pointed to my scratched-up, swollen wrists.

Puddy’s first night was an ordeal for all of us. She spent 8 hours mewing and howling at the top of the stairs outside our bedroom door. By 1 a.m. I had indeed had enough. Button was going to the basement. And “Puddy” was gone; it was fully Button again — someone else’s annoying cat that was going to be Fedexed home in the morning. But try as I might, I couldn’t get the little arse-hole (vernacular recommended by Suzy — I was going to say “Little Fucker”) into the basement.

Here are some lessons: 1) You can’t catch a scared cat with a bath towel. 2) They really don’t like being shoo-ed from under the couch with a broom. And, 3) If you approach a cat from below, coming up stairs, it may very well jump at your face. What declawed cats lack in tools they make up for with confidence.

After about 15 minutes of after-midnight mindless hysteria, otherworldly shrieking, and hissing, Button had vanished. At one point I caught a glimpse of shadow and spun around with the broom, nearly knocking Suzy off her feet. It was a surreal family moment – like some wee-hour spontaneous paint ball game, in our house. The night was clearly toast. My heart was in my throat. Suzy looked like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on a bad hair day. “We can’t do this,” she said. “The cat is going back.”

Button was deep in hiding. So we went to bed, hearts still pounding, wide awake. We should have taken advantage of the moment (and the fact it was still Valentines night) and had sex, but it honestly never crossed my mind at the time. All I could think of was cat scratch fever, the searing carpet burn, and irrationally how sure I was that Puddy/Button was just waiting for us to fall asleep so she could scale the baby gate and mount a cat counter-attack.

“It’s just a cat,” Suzy said. And suddenly I was so glad to be married this Valentine’s eve — she’s so rational. And she loathes pets. We agreed that we’d return Button in the morning.

Not even an hour later, the howling and mewing began again, and continued all night.

Jasper woke up just after 5am — “Mom! Dad! Puddy is calling! Isn’t she awesome?!”

“We were there to suffer. The suffering wasn’t a by-product; it was the point. I started to accept this, and quit fighting it. I realized that facing anxiety and pain without any way to escape is the course’s primary teaching tool. After hours of struggle, my mind settled. It began to observe my situation objectively. And then the physical torture and mental anguish started to melt away.”

See full article in Macleans.ca

Thank God that’s over. The temptation has passed.

This time of year reminds me of the early ‘80s in Charlottetown. I had just gotten my drivers license and was discovering mobility and sudden popularity in a province with no public transit. It was inevitable that stupid things would ensue, so mid-January weekend wee hours often included screaming through the streets of old neighbourhoods around Victoria Park, headlights off, with at least two people leaning far out the passenger window of my step-dad’s lime green ’82 Cutlass Supreme, flicking lit wooden matches at tinder dry Christmas trees that were discarded at the end of driveways.

The up side is we weren’t drunk. Honestly, I wasn’t really even aware of alcohol until I landed on the beaches of southern France for second-year university (that’s another story entirely). Tree torching was fuelled by long nights hanging with friends, drinking coffee and eating pita sandwiches with wedge fries at Cedars Eatery, which 30 years later remains Charlottetown’s best Lebanese restaurant. Back then I spent more time at Cedars than in school, yet I didn’t discover shish taouk until the mid-nineties. Shame.

As the caffeine-addled driver, it was my job to swerve close enough to the curb so that the matches would arc and drop deep into the dry needles. I’d already established myself, at least with my family, as a bit of a pyromaniac, having lit several grass fires by the tender age of twelve in the open fields behind my house in Winsloe. I used to love how neighbours would dash from their bungalows as the delicate licks of flame danced with the wind across the tips of sun-browned April field weed. One little spark could become a rapidly advancing line of fire a few hundred feet wide in a matter of seconds. Nothing brought the community out faster than a grass fire. Everyone suddenly had a flat spade beating the flames back from BBQ tanks and cedar decks. Up until that point in my life, I had felt no greater power. And I still love the smell of a good grass fire – fragrant, sweet and familiar.

Back in the Cutlass, we knew that tree torching would be sudden and violent, but we figured that needle fires would also be short. And since Christmas trees were at the end of driveways, half-buried in snow, the risk of collateral damage would be relatively low.

But we never found out. No trees burst into flame. Looking back, the fun was in the flicking. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately.

A few years later, on graduation day from Colonel Gray high school, I was met in my homeroom class by two police officers. They hauled me off to the principal’s office. The plywood smoking shelter that was built to protect smokers from the cold (imagine that) had been set on fire the night before. The police had determined that the fire was started with my math scribblers.

“Why would I light a fire at school with my own scribblers?” I asked. I was released.

They never found out who did it. I really hated math.

A wise old man once gave me two life-saving pieces of advice: “Stuart, wherever you go, there you are.” And, “If you ever need a new perspective on something, lie down on the floor.” It totally works.

Not only does going horizontal help show things in a new way, it’s a good stretch. And maybe the kids will love you more because for a moment when they walk into the room they will think that you’re dead. And then they’ll be that glad you’re not. Sorry, Jasper. Or if they don’t, that too will provide some valuable insights.

There’s also a great submission in lying down. Think about it: There are whole spaces of our lives where we think things are a certain way just because our eyes are a certain distance from the floor. Like the senses themselves, we accept things are the way they are because of the construction that provides the input. You and I may not be able to agree on how to define the colour “blue” but I can tell how disciplined you are with your kids by checking out the underside of your kitchen table.

To take this a step further, imagine how much better we’d know places if we didn’t just observe them from our cars. Sometimes I like to think I have a certain kinship with Pierre Trudeau because I drive a couple of times a year between Ottawa and Montreal along the 30′ wide space on the highway in a narrow physical band of space/time within which both of our bodies have certainly passed. Our roads are like fibre optic cables. We’re on the way somewhere. I’m often tempted but have never pulled over and randomly stepped into the corn fields past Casselman before the Rigaud bump. And I’m pretty sure PET didn’t either. Think of how the world might be different if people started suddenly doing things that were one slight step outside their normal pattern, their “natural” path. Do you drive the same way to work every day? Always eat the same food? Be honest: Isn’t Missionary getting a little tired?

At one of the lowest points of my childhood I was surrounded by really unhappy people. One day it occurred to me that a few of these lost souls could transform their lives by walking barefoot in the wet grass between the car and the house. Yet, every time, they always, always waited for the rain to abate and dashed hurriedly along the square paving stones. Joy was that close. The sensual delight of wet feet.

This is another reason I love Walden Cabin. The first thing Jasper, Simon and I do after we drive up that narrow winding drive to the cabin for the first time each summer is pee outside. This is not ceremony, just habit. We’re home. We’re comfortable. We’re off the path.

The last two weeks has been a relatively dark time, again, and what has kept me going is this simple perspective. No matter how bleak my mind gets, all I have to do to reconnect with joy is peel off my socks, or stare into the flickering embers of a wood fire, listen closely for the creak of ice in the trees, or lie spread eagle on my back on the floor of my kitchen.

And, bonus! There’s a gummy bear under my fridge, and I’m gonna eat it.