{"id":56,"date":"2013-07-24T03:45:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T03:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/?p=56"},"modified":"2013-07-24T03:45:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T03:45:20","slug":"one-step-forward-two-back-the-importance-of-learning-patience-which-i-sorely-lack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/24\/one-step-forward-two-back-the-importance-of-learning-patience-which-i-sorely-lack\/","title":{"rendered":"One step forward, two back… the importance of learning patience (which I sorely lack)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of course I spoke too soon on Saturday, so overjoyed I was after the kittens made themselves so visible, almost squeezable they were so close. Since then (three mornings now) I have not seen a single hair on their darling heads, and with each passing morning I get more anxious. I thought I was right there<\/em>: this close to trapping time. And I could not be further away. I don’t even know where they are.\u00a0The one hint I got today was evidence that a little bit of food had been eaten in the site where mama had hidden them days ago.<\/p>\n

GAH. At times like this I wonder if I have the personal makeup to do this work.\u00a0I take it almost personally when they go to great lengths to avoid me, even though I know in my head that they’re just in survival mode.<\/p>\n

The additional frustration is that right now the ravine is having a yellowjacket problem. I no sooner put food down than a dozen bees begin buzzing around threateningly. It was unnerving to see the babies trying to eat food while recoiling from the bees in their faces. (Of course I had to look up whether jellowjackets could kill kittens, because I don’t have enough to worry about. They can’t. \u00a0\ud83d\ude09 It’s possible the bees are why Mama Grace moved them. I have no idea. They are feral cats, and I am a human, and even though I often feel like I understand completely what they’re thinking and needing, other times the space between us is completely opaque. Like a curtain Grace raises and lowers depending on her defenses on any given day. (Some days greeting me with an friendly rub against the fence and tail-in-the-air greeting, other days disappearing in a white flash the second she senses my presence.)<\/p>\n

Clearly my challenge if I want to keep doing this work is to learn p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e… something that has never come easy to me. I found comfort just now in discovering in my “cat log” that it took me almost two months to trap Ariel, Oberon and Puck – last summer’s kittens – after seeing them for the first time. And it’s been only two weeks since I first saw Frankie and Blue Baby. Time to take a deep breath, burn a candle and let the universe help me out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of course I spoke too soon on Saturday, so overjoyed I was after the kittens made themselves so visible, almost squeezable they were so close. Since then (three mornings now) I have not seen a single hair on their darling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}