Stray cats and the art of figuring shit out as you go.

Your toolkit is probably better stocked than you think.

This is Martini.

On a road trip back from my daughter’s college orientation in Martin, TN to our home in the Chicago burbs, we stopped at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere Illinois to let our dog, Charlie, have a walk and a drink of water and to stretch our legs a bit.

As my daughter was walking Charlie, she points behind me and says “Is that a cat?”

It was indeed a cat, a very young female, underweight and getting a drink from a small creek that ran through the rest stop. I fully expected her to dart away when I approached her, but instead she came right up to me. I scooped her up and asked around the few people at the rest stop, but she didn’t belong to any of them and was way too close to a very busy interstate highway…so in the car she went. This photo is of our rapid setup of the dog crate crammed in the back of my SUV with kid, dog and luggage stuffed in the back seat to make everything fit.

Was I planning on having a third cat? No. Did I think my senior 16yo sister cats would appreciate this invasion? Also no. But was I going to leave this tiny girl to take her chances by the road and in the wild? 100% no.

Now that we’ve had her home for a few weeks (she’s healthy and vetted) a somewhat expected wrinkle has arisen: we think Tini might be pregnant.

I’m an experienced rescuer and while I don’t have tons of experience with kittens, I have ample resources to help me if we are indeed expecting babies. But my brain swirled because I just took on a big new job at work, and I’m trying to sell my house and buy a new one, and I’m about to move my daughter to college…so the timing of this is far from ideal.

We need a nesting box. I need to figure out where to put it. I need to figure out what I’m going to do if she has kittens and I have to move Abi to school. I need to figure out how to keep the rest of the animal brigade away from Tini and the Tinies (my emerging band name for the litter if it exists) while they are newborns. I need to figure out how I will handle house showings if I actually try to list my house while all this is going on. I need to figure out a lot of things.

Is that overwhelming? Fuck yes. Does it feel like more than handle? Fuck yes. Am I equipped to solve it though? Probably.

Because one thing I’ve learned about the ridiculous curveballs life tends to throw at me: the toolkit I’ve built over many years coping with challenging situations is still there for me to access. We don’t lose those skills once we develop them.

I forget that sometimes. Faced with new challenges, I often feel like I’m starting from scratch, daunted by the unknowns and uncertain about the path forward. But when I slow down long enough to ask myself where I need to begin, what I know to be true, what the very first step is before anything else (in this case, getting Tini to the vet to confirm my suspicions), things start to seem more manageable.

I have friends. I have contacts at rescue organizations. I have a vet I love, pet sitters I can rely on, and all of those people can help connect me to other people to help if I need them.

When I break down the problem and really look at it…I have everything I need.

And I guess if life wants to throw me kittens, well, there are certainly worse problems to have in the world than that.

Is this relatable to anyone else? Do you get overfaced with problems in your life or work and have to take a step back to find the path forward? I’d love to know how you face the daunting challenges with a level head.