Tomorrow we will move out of the house we have lived in for 20 years. Its the place we raised our children, and, for the most part, the only home they have ever known. Times like this make one reflect, and an experience moving out a chair yesterday made me contemplate the impact of government benefits on motivation. Here’s how.
We have a two year old cat who, when she was little, obsessed with her catnip-filled stuffed mouse. She would chase the mouse to the point of exhaustion, and I could watch at least two or three innings of a baseball game while tossing the mouse to cat. Each time I tossed it, she returned it to me, ready for another round.
About a year ago, the mouse disappeared. We looked and looked, but it was nowhere to be found. Then, yesterday morning, one of my work colleagues showed up at our house to take a big, overstuffed chair off our hands. When we picked up the chair, out from one of its hidden recesses popped the stuffed mouse.
Thinking I could rekindle the old fire, I delivered the mouse to our cat, who was sound asleep on a window ledge. She opened one eye, tilted her head at an angle, closed the eye, and went back to sleep. I suspect her cat thought process went something like this: “I used to chase that mouse for hours thinking I need to do that to survive – but now I know I get fed twice a day even if I just sleep all day. So why waste my energy chasing that stupid stuffed mouse?” Alas, I thought, I have created yet another creature dependent on the welfare state.
Fortunately, there is happy ending to this story. Yesterday afternoon, a stray cat showed up in our yard. My cat sprang to life, hissing and puffing our her tail in an effort to scare off the stray. Eventually the intruder moved on, but the story does not end there. Last night, and again this morning, our cat has been batting the mouse around and bringing it to my feet. Seems like the fear of competition is a good thing, even in the feline world.