Our cat, Milo.

There are things that continually irritate me. They do not seem to be things that I can change, so it would be great to figure out a way to accept them. I am having a difficult time with this, though.

(And I am not even talking about our current political situation, believe it or not.)

I am tired of waking up every morning to a bathroom floor that looks a little like a sandy beach (and feels a lot like a beach if I forget and wander into the bathroom in my bare feet). My old cat Milo is still faithfully using his giant litter box, which lives in the bathroom by the washer and dryer, but he is not so neat about it. Every time he exits his box, particles of kitty litter go with him. He  also has an active digestive system, which means that he deposits solid waste and clumped up liquid waste numerous times a day.

The other day, I cleaned the box in the morning and also before I went to bed, hoping that would keep the sandy beach phenomenon from being the first thing I had to deal with as my day began. It helped, a little. But then last night I was annoyed that I have a cat who apparently requires twice a day box cleaning. So I didn’t. This morning? The floor was sandy again.

I have a carpet-like plastic runner that spans the area between his litter box, the toilet, and the dirty clothes basket. Every morning I carefully pick up the runner, fold it in half so that the litter doesn’t spill onto the floor, take it outside and shake it. Then I find the broom and dustpan and sweep up the trail of  litter that goes from there through the bathroom and into the kitchen. The heavy plastic bags that cost $.10 at the grocery store work wonderfully for storing a week’s worth of kitty litter. By week’s end though?  The bag weighs more than 20 pounds. The trash company makes its rounds on Fridays: by the end of the week, my trashcan feels heavy, even though there is not much in there except for the blasted kitty litter bag. It does a good job, though, of keeping the can upright if a heavy wind blows through.

We got Milo from the county animal shelter when my daughter was in fifth grade, my son in first grade, after we moved back here from Ohio. He was going to be my daughter’s cat; she desperately wanted a pet and was going to care for him. She did, for a time. But the years pass and children grow and move away and the cat does not. The shelter workers thought Milo was about four years old when we adopted him. That would make him about seventeen now. The vet thought that he probably wasn’t quite that old, probably closer to fifteen. We don’t know for sure what breed he is; we just know that he is big, weighing in at more than 20 pounds.

I have a friend who talks about “radical acceptance,” the idea that there is no point stressing over things that we cannot change. There does not seem to be anything I can do about my morning ritual of dealing with the kitty litter that makes its way from the bathroom to the kitchen and into the rest of the house, except shift the way I think about it. To find a way to make shaking the mat and cleaning the box and sweeping the floor a meditative process instead of a grumpy one. To be more like Brother Lawrence who wrote, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

If Brother Lawrence had a cat like Milo, I am sure he would perform his morning cat care duties with patience and love. He might even sing as he ventured outside to shake the kitty litter particles from the mat. I confess that I’m not there yet, not even close. But tomorrow is another day, a chance to try again, to shift my attitude, to start to think of this morning work as a practical way to love my old cat and somehow find God, too.

I’ll let you know how it goes.