A Cat Lady And A Rule Of Life

Common hallways in multi-unit apartment buildings are like movie previews: they give you a little taste of what you are about to encounter, only they’re far less entertaining. And in this case, it wasn’t the taste of what was to come, it was the smell.

Heat and Humidity

It was a July afternoon, and it was hot and humid — a  Biloxi Blues kind of hot. And if it had been any more humid you’d need gills to breathe the air. The thing about heat and humidity is that they work together like an evil duo of mad scientists working at an atomic level to exponentially magnify the worst odors known to man.

Speaking of which, cat urine in July is easily in the top five worst odors of all time, and that’s what I walked into when I opened the door to the common hallway, giving me a pretty good idea of what was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Because I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I resorted to mouth-breathing as I knocked on the apartment door. The winding, narrow staircase and plaster walls seemed to close in on me under the heated weight of the stagnant July air. It was suffocating.

Doorway to Dystopia

The door was opened by the woman who had called. She was the adult daughter of a woman I could hear wailing somewhere inside the dimly lit apartment. In that same moment I was hit in the face by the punishing odor foretold in the hallway. My eyes burned and my mouth and throat felt like they were shriveling up. I seriously doubted how long I was going to last.

I stood and listened with my mouth hanging open as the woman told me that her mom had just learned of the death of a family member and had become so distraught, she was inconsolable. She wanted her mom evaluated at the hospital, fearing she might do something drastic.

From the threshold I surveyed the apartment with watering eyes. As they adjusted to the dark surroundings I could see that it was a place made for cats, where the presence of humans had only been an afterthought. It was sparsely furnished except for the carpeted cat towers of various heights and levels, twine-wrapped scratching posts, hair balls rolling around, feathery toys, and a litter box that hadn’t seen a cleaning since the Clinton administration that dominated the living space. The only light in the apartment fought its way through the slender gaps in the curtains, cobwebs, and dust.

Finding Mom

With one ear on the radio anticipating the word that the ambulance had arrived, I stepped in and set to locating mom. From the doorway I entered what was supposed to be a living room and turned to my right to where the room opened up. Face down, lying on the stained carpet was the caller’s mother and the source of the wailing. Her forehead rested on her crossed arms and her head wagged back and forth in an outward expression of internal denial. All she had on was a yellowed night shirt — certainly not long enough to be a night gown — and a white, puffy adult diaper.

From where I stood I was looking at the bottoms of her dirty feet, her bare legs, and diapered bottom. The night shirt was rumpled and drawn up from the waist toward her shoulders and her dark, matted hair covered her face. Her wagging head became more exaggerated before she started rolling back and forth like a small boat that had broken from its mooring and became caught between the rolling waves and the shore. She groaned and sobbed, marrying the odor with a terrible sound.

I Wonder

I felt bad for the woman, I honestly did, but my empathy was having a real hard time breaking through the stench of the cats and the stifling heat. All I could think about was my own suffering, of opening a window to let some air in, or so that I could jump out. Clearly, this was not a police matter, but I was there to facilitate getting her the help that she needed.

After the woman had been evaluated and packaged for an ambulance ride to the hospital, I got to wondering. How, in America today, does someone live like that? How does someone end up there? And more importantly, how do I not? My guess is, she didn’t end up there on purpose. No one arrives at the point of living like an animal in horrible conditions overnight. It happens gradually, over time, likely brought on by one thing — or a cocktail of things — such as neglect, laziness, hopelessness, ignorance — or of course, cats. Lots of them.

A Rule Of Life

Legendary football coach Lou Holtz said, “There’s a rule in life, and that is you’re either growing or you’re dying.” If you are a skeptic all you have to do to test that rule is to look out the window at your lawn or across the room at your wife’s houseplants. Plants are either growing or dying. Unless they’re plastic, they never stay the same. Look at your workout routine, or your lack thereof. You’re either getting stronger or you’re getting weaker. It’s impossible to hit a certain threshold of physical fitness and be like, “That’s enough, I’m good. I’ve arrived,” and then never have to work out again but still maintain the same physique for the rest of your life. Sad, but true. If you don’t use them, your muscles will atrophy.

We get all that, we understand it, at least when it comes to the things we can see and touch. But it’s also true of the things we can’t — the mental and spiritual parts of ourselves. Though internal and intangible, they too exist and function, bound by the same rules as the external. And yet, we live like they don’t.

If you haven’t made your spiritual and intellectual growth a priority, you probably aren’t growing in those areas. And if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Your mental muscles are atrophying and you don’t even know it.

The Investigation and the Garden

Explore your faith, and if you don’t have one, I’d encourage you to explore faith in general and seek out truth. Treat your faith like an investigation. Don’t just believe what someone said or take opinions or rumors as fact. Proactively do the work and search for the evidence that will lead you to the truth. And once you find it, spend time learning, understanding, growing, and living out your faith. I don’t know where I would be if it weren’t for mine.

Intellectual growth, mental health, and critical thinking skills come like everything else — with time and effort. What you put into your mind is much like planting a garden or programming a computer. What you plant grows. If you plant corn, you get corn. If you plant nothing, you get nothing. Garbage in, garbage out. Just like the farmer or the software engineer, you must be intentional about what goes into that row in the field or that line of code. You won’t reap a harvest or have working software by accident. And just like the dirt, your mind doesn’t care what goes into it. It will feed and nurture a vegetable the same as a thorn or a thistle.

Be about the business of intentionally growing your brain and strengthening your mind the same way you would your physical body, your bank account, your career, or your garden. What you plant matters. Garbage in, garbage out.

__________________________

• Are you growing or dying?
• Where were you a year ago? Are you better or worse?
• Where will you be a year from now?
• What changes do you need to make?

__________________________

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