scaredy cat

I'm really not a cat person. And by that I mean that I hate cats. They scare the shit out of me. I don't know why, I can't explain it, but when I see a cat all I think is "run" and when I catch a cat's eyes I get shivers down my spine...

Now my Parisian lives alone in a big apartment on the ground floor of a building in the middle of Achrafieh, with a garden and a balcony that both connect to the streets. A few months ago, he saw pee and excrements on his father's bed --which has a door that opens into the garden, that he must've left open. This happened on more than one occasion. Cats were constantly roaming through his garden then, and he kept trying to scare them away.

Then one day in May, we heard miaowing coming from the garden. It was small, young sort of miaow.  The garden was pitch black and we could barely see a thing, but we kept following the sound until we found a newborn black kitten entangled in the bushes. My Parisian helped it out, trying not to touch it with bare hands so that his smell didn't rub off on it. Once freed, he put him down and we waited for the mother to collect it. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the mother appeared with two other kittens by her side, and they were reunited.

The next day, my Parisian went to Paris for a few days. When he came back, there was no sign of the three kittens or their mother. I was relieved, as I really didn't want cats constantly around me seeing how much they scare me. On a Sunday, as he spent the afternoon cleaning his garden, my Parisian saw something odd in the small fountain: there he found the three kittens, who had drowned.

The very same night, he heard a noise coming from his father's bedroom. He went in there to check, and there he found a female cat who had just given birth to three kittens. In the bedroom! The mother panicked as she saw him and fled the room. He carefully put the kittens on a pillow and placed them outside in the garden for her to collect them, and closed the connecting door.

One morning a few days later, we were walking to the kitchen when we smelt a horrible stench. We looked everywhere for what we were sure to be cat excrements, and finally, after about 10 minutes, hidden under a pillow, was a huge pile of shit on the couch. It was so disgusting I almost threw up. We cleaned up and closed the windows, as it seemed cats came in from everywhere.

Later that day, he heard a sound coming from the living room. And sure enough... there were the kittens! Two of them, not three. Behind a big trunk. Again, he carefully placed them outside, and barred all the doors, all the windows, once and for all.

Now the family of three took refuge in the garden. The two kittens never seemed to leave the garden and the mother come and goes. My Parisian, being a born animal lover, couldn't help but feed them, giving them a box of tuna every morning, and some milk.

This morning, at about 7am, we awoke at the sound of a kitten, miaowing and miaowing and miaowing. We ignored it and went back to sleep. Then, later, when my Parisian went outside to give them their morning tuna, he couldn't find them anywhere. Until he saw one of them completely flattened on its stomach, and the other with an odd foam coming out of his mouth, both looking dead. Or almost. He called the vet and they both concluded that they must have been poisoned, although they don't know how. He carried them in a cardboard box and drove them to the veterinarian, but both of them died.

Kind of disturbingly weird, isn't it?

quitting your job is like breaking up. sort of.

It's my last week at a job I've had for the last two years. It's not the first time I resign, I've done it before, yet there's something about quitting that reminds me of breaking up.

Think about it: staying in a bad job is just like staying in a bad relationship. You've been there a few years, the routine has taken over. It's not exciting and as new as when you first started because, let's face it, you know all there is to know and nothing unexpected ever happens anymore. But you stay because it gives you a sense a comfort, of security. You know you're going to get that pay check at the end of the month just like you know you have someone to watch TV with on Sunday afternoon.

I remember the beginning: I felt like I could change the world. The possibilities were endless and I was avid to learn and give it my all. And then somewhere along the line, I got bored. I stopped making an effort because I wasn't motivated anymore, and slowly but surely, I realized I was unhappy. And once you admit that to yourself, there is no turning back.

And so you start thinking about other possibilities. What else is out there for me? Is there a chance I could find something I'm really going to be passionate about? There's the fear that you wont. That you will not find anything else, just like when you break-up there's that fear that you're making a mistake, that you might never find someone who wants to be with you again. But as the weeks pass, you somber more and more into your unhappiness and decide you must leave even if it's scary. And so you collect all your courage and finally do it. You quit. You break-up. And the relief feels wonderful. The other party might be stunned... many times, they don't see it coming --and many times, they do. In any case, they will try to convince you to stay. They will tell you that it's scary out there, that times are rough, that jobs aren't growing on trees and that there's one man for every seven woman. And you will hesitate, because its human nature.

But most of the time, you will be so proud and relieved that you finally had the courage to end it, that you will not hesitate long enough to change your mind.

You will look ahead and get excited about all the new possibilities.

I spend a lot of time wondering what I'm doing with my life. I ask myself a lot of questions, which you know if you've been reading my blog. And I know I'm not alone because I have these conversations with people around me all the time. It's become harder and harder to make a choice about the future. To commit to one job is like committing to one man. In order to know what you want, you have to explore, change, learn about what you like and what you don't like. And each time it takes you one step ahead in your journey.

Wish me luck in mine!