For the kitten

I get it now.

The enduring and unconditional love that people have for their pets is something I’ve finally come to experience for myself. Readers of this blog may know that our family adopted a two-year old kitten a few months back, and he’s simply been a tiny bundle of joy ever since. No matter how much of a bad day I’ve had, it instantly melts away as soon as I see our cat, him meowing back in greeting. How can I possibly stay in a bad mood when all he ever wants to do is lie on his back, begging me to scratch his tummy.

I totally get it now, why people get pets. I use to think I wouldn’t be a pet owner: why spend that money and time on raising an animal when raising an actual human baby (of my own, obviously) seems far more useful and rewarding. Your child would and should outlast you; meanwhile, a cat has an average of 15 years to live. I didn’t want to go through that anguish of falling in love with a being, only to lose him in such a relatively short amount of time.

As life would have it, I didn’t have to make the choice: it was my brother who adopted our kitten, and I’ve been thrust into the life of a pet owner through circumstances. After only two months, I’m really glad it happened that way. I deeply adore and love our little cat; some of the best times during this COVID-19 lockdown is feeding him and playing with him on the carpet. I’ve found that I don’t think or worry about the cat’s short lifespan at all; it’s so easy to stay in the moment when interactions are so pure and simple. It’s as if the anxiety burden of being human gets momentarily erased when I am playing with our cat.

A joy of the most natural kind.

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Capitalism everywhere.

A driving enthusiast

In the end it’s about driving. 

The singular distillation of why I like cars is driving. The other bits like mechanicals and aesthetics matter too, but a car isn’t a car unless I can drive it. I’ll never be the type to purchase an automobile simply to store for the promise of future appreciation in value, not that I can afford such a type of car anyways. 

Cars are meant to be driven. 

It’s the spirit of driving that makes the ancillaries worth the while. The sheer costs to purchase and insurance a car, the physical labor to detail and maintain, and the psychological stress of city driving - all of that disappear from view when you’re sat in driver's seat on an open mountain road in the early morning, not another soul for miles. 

I sold the ND MX-5 recently because the ancillaries have overshadowed the thrill of driving, chiefly the stress of commuting in San Francisco. The sliver of driving exhilaration I get from the neighboring mountain roads on weekends lost the battle hard against the traffic gridlock and parking nightmare I dealt with daily. The commuting grind can so suck the soul out of you that once the weekend arrived I often had no desire to get in the car. 

As long as I live in San Francisco I don’t think I’ll ever commute by car again because it kills the joy of driving, and that’s the greatest shame for a person who has loved cars since childhood. The next vehicle I purchase will only see weekend duty: every drive will feel like a special occasion, and ownership will be a labor of love once again. 

Flying into sunset.