E is for Ewok

E is for Ewok.

No, not that kind of Ewok…..this kind!

This is my Persian cat, Ewok. She’ll be 5 years old tomorrow. Plenty of studies have shown that pets are good for your mental health. They reduce tension and can improve your mood (except when they pee on something). Research has shown that spending just 20 minutes with your pet can lower cortisol, the stress hormone, levels and elevate serotonin. Interaction with animals is even a form of therapy in some cases. I am thankful every day that I have Ewok. She does so much for me. When I am at my worst and am sure everyone in my life would better off if I were gone, I think of Ewok. She is the only one I know wouldn’t be better off. I am her person. She needs me.

Ewok keeps me company. Spending time with her makes me feel better. Petting her, playing with her or listening to her purr gives me something besides my inner monologue to focus on. Also, she needs me. As much as she’d like to think she was a ferocious little beast that could take care of herself, she can’t. She needs me, her little world revolves around me. It’s nice to be needed. Ewok is going to want me around and love me regardless of my mood, whether or not I got that grant for my research and despite my eating the whole chocolate cake. Pet love is unconditional, that’s a reason to keep going.

Rooaarrrr from the ferocious beast! …or maybe just a sleepy kitty yawn.

Ewok helps me sleep. I love listening to her purring. Cats purr at a frequency of 25Hz, the same frequency that is used to help heal wounds faster in humans (reference). The rhythmic sound Ewok makes often helps me sleep. When I’m tossing and turning or my mind is racing, I put her beside my pillow and focus on the sound she is making. This usually helps me drift off. I’m assuming her purring means she is content which means I am doing something right. This gives me a peaceful feeling, allowing me to sleep. How do I get her to stay? I’m lucky she just likes to sleep with me every night. Unfortunately her favourite spot to sleep is on my face. So if I want her to stay, I have to wait until she is sleepy and then I can position her like putty.

Ewok keeps me active. No, I don’t take her for walks. Ewok is a bit of a princess. She doesn’t like it when the wind ruffles her fur. Ewok and I do yoga together. Yes, you read that last sentence right. Yoga. Every time I do a workout video, I get out my yoga mat and I have to get Ewok’s mat out for her too. If I don’t workout often enough, she starts to remind me to get to it. Let me explain….. I do workout videos at home for which I use a yoga mat. I would start my workout and Ewok would be there……batting my ponytail as I did sit-ups, climbing under me as I did push-ups and weaving in and out of my legs as I did squats. Not to mention scratching my mat to pieces! She was driving me nuts and making it impossible to workout at home. One day I got fed up with her antics and her scratching, so I got out another mat, only half hoping she’d stay on the old one and leave me alone. To my surprise, she did! She loves that ridiculous hot pink mat! Without me in the way she was free to scratch and roll and contort herself all over it. So now we workout together. Me on my mat, Ewok on hers. If I haven’t worked out in a while she’ll head over to where I keep the mats and start scratching her pink one. Hey Mum, workout time!

Ewok gives me purpose. She injects some humor in among the darkness. I’m not in a smiling mood at the moment, but here I am writing a post about Ewok and her ridiculous yoga mat and its already making me feel a little lighter. She sometimes inspires creativity too. I’ve made treats or toys for her in the past. I even make cartoon versions of her sometimes. I know it seems insignificant, but anything to distract me from the over-thinking and getting into that negative snowballing effect helps.

Ewok as a unikitty!

Ewok and I as steampunk superheroes. She makes a great sidekick.

For one reason or another, not everyone can have a pet. That doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from the interaction. I’m sure you have friends or relatives with pets that you can visit. If you are open to a little more commitment, you can also volunteer to walk neighbourhood dogs or work at the local animal shelter. For a less committed interaction try a bird feeder in the backyard or even going to the zoo could provide a nice distraction.

Do you have a pet, or wish you had one? What kind of animal do you wish you could interact with more often?

For more Ewok, visit “Meet Ewok” in my top menu.

If We Were Having Coffee…..

If we were having coffee, I’d ask you how you felt about cats. There are two different Cat Cafes in Montreal. I haven’t been to either and I’d really like to go. Of course, none of the cafe cats could ever be a cute as my Ewok, but I think it would be a fun experience and it’s something I could check off my life list. We would go to Cafe Chat L’Heureux. It looks like this cafe lets you hold the cats, the other one doesn’t. I’d get a coffee with one of their lemon raspberry marshmallow kitty paws. What are you in the mood for this week? A cat-pucchio perhaps? Haha! I’m not kidding, that’s on the menu!

Here is my order! Coffee and marshmallow cat paw. This is a picture from their menu.

If we were having coffee, I’d ask you how you were and how your week went….after I finished gawking at the cute furry beasts. Sorry! I swear, you’ve got my full attention now!

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that my week went by pretty fast. I did get some bad news from my friend Lynne though. She was diagnosed with colorectal cancer last spring. By the time they found it, it was a stage IV liver metastasis. She has been on chemo all this time and handled it really well. She kept her strength and only felt sick when she was actually plugged in to the drug. The tumor in her colon is pretty much gone and the one in her liver has shrunk significantly. The next step is surgery. This is the bad news. They have to take out 70% of her liver. Removing this much means it will not regenerate and if the cancer returns, they can’t remove anymore. The surgery is also risky (8% mortality) because the excision site is right by the portal vein. If she makes it through the surgery there is a high chance of liver failure afterwards. When she asked about the colorectal surgery she also needs, they told her to forget about it. They wanted to get though the liver first. It’s really not sounding good. Lynne is a quiet and kind person. She looks after animals for a living. She doesn’t deserve this.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I spent the first half of the week tied in knots and completely dreading going to work on Wednesday. I had a list of patients from a previous study (a few years ago) that I could use for my study. I had to go to their retina clinic and find out who was dead and who was still alive. A rather morbid task, but this is something you have to do when you work with a geriatric population. I was dreading this because I knew a rather nasty ophthalmologist was going to be on duty and he always sneers at my genetics research. Also, the last time I tried to do this, the clinic staff was just annoyed with my presence and refused to show me how to use the computer system. I anticipated the same thing this time. To my surprise, it wasn’t like that at all (probably because my supervisor came with me). Dr. Nasty didn’t say anything about my research and the clinic staff were very helpful. I got into the computer system and determined about half of my list had future appointments booked. There may be hope for my research yet.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I am still loving the art journaling. I had brunch with a friend last weekend and we went to a scrapbook store afterwards. I bought some new stencils to try, some metallic watercolour pencil crayons, a waterproof pen and a cute little cupcake stamp. I love cupcakes. I’m hoping to have a chance to play with my new goodies later today. I’m also going to participate in “Happy Mail” with one of my art journal groups. Happy Mail is basically a trade of scraps of unique paper, stamps, stickers, charms or anything else you can journal with between artists via snail mail. Different things are available in different parts of the world. It’ll be fun to see what I can get and make some other people happy.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that Thursday was really zen. After getting over the shock of Lynne’s news and my work anxieties, I was able to relax a little. I spent the day at home with Ewok and got caught up on research articles and blog stuff. Ewok was really sweet. She sat with me all day drifting in and out of nap land. She got up only a few times to play, snack or drink. We have a water fountain for her to drink out of. When she was just a little thing, she was always desperate to get to the tap whenever we turned it on. So we thought getting her a tap-like water fountain would be a good idea. She’s a little weirdo with it though! Before she drinks from it, she swipes her slipper paw through the stream of water. It’s like she is testing the temperature or something. Even weirder, she sticks her head right under the falling stream of water! I thought cats weren’t supposed to like getting wet. Ewok hated the two times she got a bath, but she gets her head soaking wet! I often pick her up and kiss her on the head between her ears. Sometimes when I do this, it’s like kissing a puddle. Silly kitty.

If we were having coffee, I’d thank you for joining me and tell you I think it’s time we go. There is so much to do on a weekend. I’d probably grab a souvenir to take home to little Ewok and we would bid adieu to our new feline friends as we head out.

(This conversational coffee post is part of a weekend link-up hosted by Part-Time Monster. Join in the fun!)

The First week of A-Z

Phew! I’m glad it’s the weekend. Last week was a busy one! I spent a lot of time running around trying to fix mistakes. At first, I thought they were my mistakes, but it turns out they weren’t. I did everything I was supposed to, I just doubted myself too much to call other people out on their mistakes. I should have more confidence in myself, it would save me a lot of extra work. I worked from home some this week too. I’ve had a lot of writing to do. I’m working on a grant proposal and an article on sleep. Grant writing is agony, but the article is kind of fun. Not as much fun as the A to Z Blogging Challenge has been so far though!

It was kind of a last minute decision to join, but I’m glad I did. I have met some fantastic new people! I’ve got a bunch of new follows. *Waves Hello* Some of them have commented everyday! I really appreciate getting to know you through your comments. I share interests with some followers too. I’ve met artists, writers, cat owners, fellow grad students, mental health sufferers and advocates and people who appreciate the same things I do. I’ve got some silent followers as well…..I appreciate you guys too!

Through comments on my blog and the A to Z participant list I have found all sorts of new blogs to follow too. The list is huge! There are over 2000 blogs on there! It’s kind of overwhelming when you start scrolling through it. I started by searching with the command F function on my Mac. I searched using words of things I like. For example “cup”, that led me to find all the blogs that had cupcakes, cup of coffee or teacups in their titles. I also searched using mental health terms, drawing terms and cats.

I have been having a lot of fun coming up with something for each letter and researching the topic a bit. I’ve learned a lot. So far, A to E has been easy, I’ve had multiple ideas for each letter, it has even been hard to decide on just one! I’m a little worried about the end of the alphabet though, it just gets harder the further you go. J and K are next week, eek! I know a lot of the medications start with weird letters, so I could always use those. I haven’t had any experience with a lot of them though. I could research them for you, but you could also just look on Wikipedia. I don’t know, what do you think? Is it more interesting when there is an opinion or some personal experience in with a post?

 

 

I know, what does this have to do with anything? Nothing, but I mentioned cats once in this post, so here’s a doodle! 🙂