Our cat is a bit of a jerk.
I’ve mentioned this cat before. His name is Monty, short for Monterrey Jack, and he’s orange and white and should be very lovable. We expected him to be. (Someday I’ll tell you about his predecessor, the very lovable Colby Jack, and you’ll understand why we expected it.) But, he’s not. Instead, he’s a jerk.
(For the record, yes, both cats were given cheesy names. Yes, we love cheese. And we’re cheesy. And we have a weakness for orange cats. But I digress.)
Monty has so much personality, and we really do love that cat. But he’s a mess. And his love is on his own terms.
So, back to him being a jerk.
When our oldest daughter graduated from college and moved back home for a time, she brought with her a large black cat named Anubis. Newcomer Nubs (can you tell we like nicknames around here?) got along fine with our other daughter’s cat, a tabby named Rose (who never gets called Rose but instead is referred to by her litany of nicknames, especially Flüffy), but he and Monty did not get along at all. The feud was so great (mostly Nubs terrorizing Monty) that we ended up putting a baby gate up in our bedroom doorway that Monty could go under, but that, at least for a time, blocked Nubs. Our room was Monty’s safe space. We moved his food in there, and he only needed to go out to use the litter box, which was in the laundry room very near our bedroom.
After about 10 months, our daughter and Nubs moved out. And Monty quickly rediscovered the rest of the house. Delighted, we moved his food bowl back to its original location in the bathroom connected to the laundry room — separate from the litter box area, but in the area we had designated the “cat zone” when we first moved in.
But there was a problem. He wouldn’t eat from it. Not unless he was desperate. He would only eat from Flüffy’s bowl. At the other end of the house.
That was kind of funny in and of itself because we’d originally moved both bowls back into that bathroom, since it’s where they were before Anubis moved in. While Flüffy’s bowl was in there, Monty wouldn’t touch it and would only eat out of his own bowl. Flüffy, however, who is a rather anxious cat, wouldn’t go in there to eat at all. So we decided to move her bowl back into our daughter’s room, at which point Monty decided her bowl was the only one he would eat out of. (Remember my reference to him being a jerk? Yeah. And yes, there is a point to all of this, so bear with me.)
Now, having Monty’s bowl in the laundry room was ideal for us. It kept the bowl from being under our feet (its location in our bedroom was rather awkward), and it was in a convenient location for him. But he just wouldn’t eat out of it. Meanwhile, poor Flüffy was starving to death because chunky Monty was eating all her food!
In an effort to solve the problem, we moved Monty’s food bowl back to our bedroom. But even that didn’t work because at this point it was really more about reasserting his alpha status than anything else. So, we finally put both bowls together in our daughter’s bedroom so that both cats could eat.
Not necessarily ideal, at least from our perspective, but it worked. Of course, that brings us to an important realization (Yes, I’m finally getting to the point!): an ideal solution is only ideal if it actually works. In this case, what we thought was ideal actually held no practical benefit whatsoever because it simply didn’t work.
We get caught in that trap a lot, don’t we? We read books, listen to podcasts, or attend conferences about success and make decisions based on what the experts say about ideal solutions, whether regarding our personal lives or professional success. There is often great information there, and it’s frequently solid enough to indicate that it can help meet the need. So, we work to shape our practical to fit the ideal solution. But that’s backwards. The true solution is to refine and shape the ideal until it fits with our practical reality.
Solutions only work when we take the ideal ideas and process them until they become practical ideas. In our case, the ideal was to get Monty’s food (and Flüffy’s as well), into the cat area in the laundry room. The practical need was to provide nourishment for our cats. The ideal had to be reworked and shaped until it met the practical.
Is there something in life you are trying to shape to fit the ideal? Maybe it’s time to turn it around. Perhaps the better solution is to reshape the ideal to fit your life. Only then will the ideal solution truly become the practical solution.
Not Quite Ordinary 