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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. Why the cat is always right about the importance of habit by J. G. Fabiano
There was no way in hell I was going to let my cat jump up on the couch - but I knew how he felt. For the past seven years of his life he has fallen asleep at the foot of the couch, beside my wife, as we watch an hour or two of television together before bed. But this Christmas all that changed and the cat's life turned upside down. Until this year the cat had always gone to sleep under the same red woolen throw my wife had used for years to keep her legs warm. Now, the cat is mad at both of us because I bought my wife a new down-filled throw for Christmas and the cat can't adjust. The color was almost the same red but the throw had a completely different texture and, apparently, the cat doesn't like it. Almost every night now, when the cat realizes we won't be bringing the old woolen throw back just for him, he turns his back on us and, in a clear expression of contempt, shows us his butt. If the cat could spell it out any more clearly I know exactly what his words would be. I can sympathize because I am a creature of habit too and anything that upsets my routine has the potential to upset my entire day. One of my most important routines is bedtime. For the last couple of decades now my wife and I have gone to bed early - around nine-o-clock. Our friends laugh at us because of this and I remind them that we go to bed early because we get up around 4.30 in the morning and when they hear that they laugh even louder. But, if there is one event that will keep us up late, it is when the Patriots have a night game. Unfortunately, because the games rarely end before midnight, the next day is total chaos for both of us. I stagger out of bed, bleary-eyed, bump into things on the way to the bathroom and generally wake up only from the pain of jamming my toothbrush in my ear. One morning after a late night Patriots game I got into the shower with my pajama pants still on. I also forget what it is that I do for a living, which is embarrassing because I know people somewhere are relying on me to be there. My wife is the same. She tells me that after a late night all of her appointments the next day are a nightmare because she has to pretend she knows why people have come to see her when she can't even remember their names. That's the problem with upsetting a nightime routine. There's a domino effect that upsets the morning routine and then everything that comes after it goes all to hell too. A morning routine is clearly something that was never meant to be meddled with, especially mine. Which is no longer a problem because the Patriots also didn't seem to know what they were doing this year so there won't be any more night games for a while. As soon as I'm awake in the morning I get up, have my shower, get dressed then go to the cat's room, which is also the TV room, and put on the TV. Of course these mornings, as soon as the cat sees its me, he turns his back on me. I always keep the TV tuned to Channel 6 so I can get the local weather forecast because if I don't hear the weather man give me the wrong report for the day I know my world would come crashing down. I used to pat the cat too but only briefly because he has the kind of fur that permanently attaches itself to me. These days that's not a problem either because the cat won't let me touch him. I then go and make the coffee and get my newspaper which is always at the furthest end of the driveway. I then drink my coffee, scan the paper, kick-start my brain and then I'm ready to hit the road. If anything at all is disrupted in this routine my intellectual performance suffers. I find myself losing control of the entire day and this control does not return until I go to bed that night at precisely nine-o-clock. Another important part of my evening routine is that I always place my glasses on the right hand corner of the breakfast island in the kitchen. If, for any reason, my glasses are not there in the morning I am sentenced to spend my entire day in a fog, bumping into people and things. Habit breeds loyalty too. For 20 something years I did business with Freeman Oil when it came to keeping my aging furnace alive and supplied with oil. I never questioned the price of the oil or the repairs to the furnace. Like habit, loyalty has a tendency to be mindless. I am sure that's what we like about routines. Dependable routines mean we don't have to think and, as human beings demonstrate every day on the road, they don't like to think. A couple of years ago Tiny Freeman and his wife decided to get out of the oil delivery business. This put me into shock because I do not adjust to change easily. I took Tiny's advice and went to another service he recommended but it hasn't been the same. With Tiny, when I needed oil, I could always call after hours and get a recorded message asking me to leave my name - and that was about all. Like magic the delivery truck would roll up the next day and fill up the tank. Sometimes I think I forgot to leave my whole name, I would say something like: `It's Jim over on Iris Avenue and I need some oil as soon as you can get here' and Tiny always knew which Jim it was on Iris Avenue. The new oil delivery service is fine, I guess, but now, when I need oil, I have to call an answering service that has no clue who I am. I have to spell out everything in detail and tell them it would be great if I could have some oil sometime in the near future. Then two or three days later, or sometimes more, a truck will show up. Unlike the days of Tiny Freeman I rarely let my oil tank go below half-full now. Grocery stores and gas stations become parts of our routine too. Shop `N Save is only five minutes from our house and ever since they opened up it is a rare day that either my wife or myself doesn't stop by to pick up something we need. The other day, my wife and I were in Portsmouth and decided to stop at Market Basket to do some shopping but we both got lost. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. Not like `our' store. We gave up and drove back to York and Shop `N Save to pick up what we needed. We had just got used to the way everything is at Shop `N Save. The way a store is set up becomes a habit in itself that is difficult to break. If the managers ever decided to move the milk or, even more important, the beer I probably wouldn't be able to cope. And yes, I still call it Shop `N Save instead of Hannaford's, which is an indication of how little I like change. I also use Irving Oil on Route 1 to get my gas. Before that I used the Sunoco Station that was where Irving is now and I always use the same pump. If I am ever in need of gas and someone is using `my' pump I wait until they are through. It is not that I can't figure out how the other pumps work, it is just that I have established a relationship with that particular gas nozzle. I am sure therapy could break me of the habit - but I don't want it to and I know why. Routine affords an illusion of stability, which is something all of us crave in an unstable world. So I know exactly how the cat feels and I guess one day soon we'll get tired of looking at its ass and bring back the red woolen throw!
The End
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