A Scare.

So I had a fabulous day today – it was a great “life in California day”.. sunny, warm, beautiful… you could not ask for anything more. On top of it, friends call me and ask me over for dinner… Honestly, life doesn’t get any better.

But on my way home, I’m driving, in my euphoria, and an animal darts across the road. My heart stops beating and I slam on the brakes. I’m ready to swerve into parked cars… and I realize why: this animal looks just like my Sophie. My cat. She is short haired, spotted and striped, not so thick around the middle like a racoon… but still, very close. I realize at the last minute that its a racoon… but my heart is already racing.

My heart, my head, all think that something is happening to ‘my kid’. I have all the responses of danger… but in the end I realize that its just a raccoon. Just a raccoon I say… and I feel bad – Raccoons are struggling to live, make a living, do their thing in growing, expanding suburbia… and then I remember.. I hired an “exterminator”” to remove Raccoons from “my property”.

First, I rent, do not own. So my feelings of ownership have completely to do with responsibility, not true ownership. Secondly, the safety of “my babies” is numbero uno. I would not have eradicated the raccoons IF they had not come into the house, disturbing the peace inside the home.

I guess my point is, I feel as if I almost ran over my very own child – even though my child is a cat AND the actual animal was a raccoon that I paid a pretty penny to remove from a space that a) i dont own, and b) I can’t even begin to “own”…

In the famous words of Paula… “la la la la …. la la la … la la la”..