November 6, 2019 This cat, one of three in our household, joined our family nearly a year ago with a name his previous longtime owner obviously based on his personality. His name is Twit. While the Fargo family loves this cat dearly, we acknowledge that his propensity for picking fights with his biological brother and our other cat, his relentless begging when anyone in the house is eating and a few other behaviors clearly demonstrate he’s not the brightest color in the crayon box. Twit has one odd behavior that annoys me far more than all the others combined: He likes to eat plastic, mostly that crinkly style of thin plastic often found in product packaging. Why is that annoying? First, the sound. Just recently, I was awakened very early in the morning to the sound of this less-than-intelligent cat licking and trying to eat a piece of product packaging he had removed from the trash can. I had to get out of bed and try to take the plastic away from him. I like neither getting out of bed early nor chasing a cat to remove plastic from his mouth. Annoying. Second, if he manages to get a piece of plastic and eat it, he’ll inevitably vomit shortly thereafter. Ever step in cat puke or have to clean it out of a carpeted floor? Super annoying. What blows my mind is that he doesn’t learn from this behavior. His previous experiences should tell him, “if I eat plastic, I’m going to vomit. Vomiting is not fun.” It doesn’t. He still eats plastic. As I was thinking rather uncharitable thoughts about Twit after our early-morning plastic encounter, it occurred to me that there are things I do – mistakes I make, habits I succumb to, sins I repeat – with the full knowledge that they’re not good for me. I’m fairly confident that’s true of all of us. We sin or we make a mistake. We are sorry we sinned or made a mistake. We confess our sin and receive forgiveness, or we work to correct the mistake. We’re vigilant to avoid that sin or mistake. Then, time passes. We become less vigilant. We sin or make the mistake again. We forget what we’ve learned through experience. We’re blessed to have a loving God who continues to forgive us despite the fact that we continue to fail in our fights with sinfulness. Through His sacraments and His mercy, we have access to tremendous graces and love, even when we’re having our own Twit moments. |
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