Moving on from your past/ letting go of the pain

Hi again I S. How humorously you write, love it. I’m too exhausted and poorly (chest infection) and de-spooned to reply properly now but will in due course, just didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you. 

E

Thanks Sue, I too have been shocked by some of the views expressed by a minority, views which feel prejudiced and discriminatory, ironic coming from a community who are so discriminated against!

Hello I'd like to talk to y a bit more, you are a fellow cat wrangler (although and offical one not an amateur like me) 

Socialisation and desensitisation are exactly the issues that the fluffy one and the other one seemed to arrive with, and retain for most of a year.

I'm not complaining, I enjoyed the challenge that cat who sets up camp hiding behind your loudspeakers in the spare room, and does not emerge when you are around for a full three months provided, me. Having got to this point where she now comes and asks for stuff, and really enjoys "stroking time" is great, but even now we are clearly "friends" every so often if I move my arm to her head without remembering to clearly tell her I'm going to do that, she no longer dashes off in fear, but I see a flicker of it or even a full tensing, before she remembers that that I am a totally benign prescence in her life. I've had to stop my O/H expressing her annoyance with me loudly because the ginger one gets really upset! 

These guys looked "traumatised" to me, and possibly like they have been left for very long stretches unattended, and are used to food and little else. And the CP had had to keep him back after his dental but were opaque about the details, so at first when he started puking and his miaow changing regularly, we were unable to get any supplementary information.  

NOW under the story I got a couple had split up and "neither could have the cats". There's a mystery right there!! I Don't mind that they arrived with problems, we are clearly getting on top of all of those, and they are steadily improving, but informationally it's been liking looking for a black cat in an unilluminated coal cellar.

If this experience is unique to me, fine. But if it;s a widespread part of the C.P. client experience and a simple (must be simple, I hate complicated and slow form filling) paperwork excercise could make a big difference, I'd like to help or pester someone into getting it done. 

In the case of "hissy missy" camping out behind the electrostatic speakers (I'll need to clean them out before switching them on next, or they'll be ruined...) I think I softened her up with the regular lines of catnip left just outside her entrance and, sweet talk and food etc. But what really seems to have been going on, is that she was letting the ginger one get the lie of the land (for three months!?) and one evening during a pleasant session with me and him in the living room together, he got up, went up stairs and returned with her in tow. She quickly found a new series of safe spaces in the living room, one being my spare camera bag where the camera with the long lens lives, and it's a much flatter more dishevelled looking thing, now, but she's good enough to let me still use the camera occasionally, if I need to, so it'll probably never move again..  

She seems to have required us to wage a gentle campaign of "emancipation" as regards a right to eat her food without her big brother deciding when she'd had enough, and with our style of feeding, there is no need for them to compete over limited resources that arrive twice a day, they get fed on demand, anyway, and if he wants more he gets more, but he gets it from US. He has adjusted to that regime and backed off quite well, TBF, (he is so happy to please) and she's gradually stopped racing to eat her food before he has ate his, (mostly) and seems happier for it. He was clearly used to being routinely very dominant or protective of her, but these behaviours are subsiding, gradually.   

Hello........what can you tell us about your career and the traits that were strengths for you? Would love to hear more, Sue :)

I too realised I was autistic after I retired from a long and successful career. Looking back it is obvious that I was successful because of my Autistic mind not in spite of it. 

Absolutely understand your caution. Since the joining this community, I have been surprised by some of the views/ comments. Fingers crossed it appears in the magazine, Sue :)

I’m not ready to share that information here yet, I’ve had a troubled history with online communities such as this one and for my own safety am remaining anonymous for now. Hopefully the masking poem will appear in the next edition of the magazine but they haven’t said yes or no yet. 

Hi I Sperg, I can help on this one. I am a socialisation/desensitisation volunteer at CP so although I can’t speak officially for the organisation I do know the whys and wherefores. So there’s three main things about passing forward information from a cat’s past to their new human. The less significant one in your case concerns data protection, so information say about previous abuse or I’ll treatment of a cat wouldn’t be fed forward. Then in many cases cats come in with no prior history at all, this is actually very common. Then crucially the charity is really understaffed and doesn’t have the admin capacity to collect and compile the complex information you would find helpful. Of course essential medical information is collected and shared but the more involved psychological things around cats aren’t. 

Hope this helps

E 

Thanks Sue. Good Idea. I'm absolutely obsessed with the puzzle of why of a couple splitting up or moving or whatever happened, ONE of 'em would not have moved heaven and earth to keep either one of these lovely, top quality cats. (I tried for a better word than "quality", but could not find one)

Hi.....when I was looking into getting a rescue dog, they had a number of questions I had to complete to check my circumstances. They also gave profiles on the dogs which described their needs. It might be worth going onto some of these sites - Dogs Trust, Battersea rehoming and picking questions from there. Sue

Thanks so much for this Maggie. I lovely insight into the "ups and downs" and also the value of creating the right environment for you to flourish. Also sounds like you have some very open conversations with your family about your needs and "eccentricities". Sue :)

What beautiful words! thank you for putting it so well. 

I am in the process of being assessed but it looks 100% likely. I have always known I was different/ odd... I am 46yrs old and moving on from the past /letting go of the pain is a very apt title for what I am going through. I am burnt out, exhaust. I have so often said I feel like my soul is tired and now I understand why. I have struggled with what I call the human experience since I was very young but I never understood the struggle or what that meant. I just new that I never fitted in. That I didn't have any friends. I struggled to socialise and understand people and social q. I hated parties or social gatherings so how I managed them as a teen was to get drunk or stoned. Or I would just spend my life in my bedroom as this was the safest space. I still do at times but life, work, family doesn't allow those tools any more hence the exhaustion.

I live my life with images... and a constant voice in my  head. My senses are on fire most of the time which I now understand what it is and how it happens where as before I would get overwhelmed and shut down. I have learnt to utilise my images well and they have become my job;  I am a clinical massage therapist and Cranio sacral therapist so I work with my eyes closed and just see/feel my way through the body like an xray. I love my job, I never thought I would be good at anything and when I found this over 15yrs ago it changed how I feel about life.  It took a long time of different jobs to find my passion and now I hone in my focus to learning the human body, deseases, conditions, human ways.. This feeds my need and I work from home so the extra sensory interaction with people can be managed when I am ready. 

Having the diagnosis has help as I have started developing compassion towards myself. I no longer push myself soo hard. If i need to take a moment or a bath or some quiet time then I do that. If I feel overwhelmed in crowds or by things I am able to sit back and ask what is going on? What is triggering me... and that empowers me to deal with how I feel or what sensations are arising.

My husband who is also neurodivergent (he is severely ADHD with Autism) is learning to not take my direct and perfunctory way of talking not so personally. My teen kids (I have two) now understand why I get over exited and raise my voice in exitment at times or understand why I can't cope with certain sounds or happenings when they talk to me. My daughter now understand why I have to have the air con full blast  all yr round when driving long distance as its the only way for me to focus on the road and not get overwhelmed.  so I guess compassion and understanding is what is coming through. By understanding ones self more means we can react or not react. We can be kind and we can also try to  manage that internal voice that can at times be so unkind. 

The pain... for me... will always be there but like death I guess the intensity becomes manageable. 

Thanks for thinking of this title. 

Maggie

Sue. can I dump my C.P. problems on you? Not that you might be able to do anything, but I seem unable to get my point across myself, and it's important.(possibly for the cats as well as me!)

A little over a year ago and six months after our lovely witty and brave cat Maqui (we didn't give him that name) we went looking for an older cat, Preferably from CP or somewhere similar).

Long story short we end up with a pair of cats from C.P. Now, CP had am impressive apparatus to physically rescue, care for, and rehome these two cats, BUT we got virtually zero information about them, and when we desperately needed some follow up information it was like I was asking for something really unusual.

Cat's are not furry robots, these two are chock full of quirks and personality, and clearly genetically very similar but very different in temperament. Blackie clearly had an interaction ritual with one of his previous owners which I could see him trying to get the correct response out of me and I had no idea what he wanted. HE throws up more than any cat I've ever known! He was particularly nauseated by the food that we were instructed to feed him. When we played with them with a thing on a string they took a while to catch on! It was like they'd never seen such a thing, which is possibly true, some cats are very ornamental for their "owners".

And that's just the friendly one, it's taken me a full year to stop the little one from being "skittish" tense and generally unsocial to be the happy and vocal little soul she is now, and she's clearly had to learn that hands coming towards her are not a threat.

I came to feel strongly that when rehoming established and older cats, C.P. need to compile a bit of data so that the new owners, or if the cats are lucky "human companions", can know what sort of life the cats lead before.

We were told these were perfectly healthy, and overall they are, but it's taken a YEAR of dietary experimentation (once we'd finally given up on trying to make the CP instructions work) to get Blackie down to puking less than once a week.

A series of questions like: 

what does your cat like, what does he hate?

has he any health quirks we should expect.

what is his temperament like.

what games does he like and how often.

what does he /she do when they are upset / want attention / want food?

Wow.......pretty prolific, then. Can you share some titles? What name do you publish under? Would love to see the one on "masking".....Sue

I do Sue, there’s five published books, two of which are still on Amazon, I’ve been in the Independent on Sunday, hundreds in magazines and won a few competitions along the way. I’m presently the writer in residence at the Fiddlers Ferry power station decommissioning creative project which will mature with a show/exhibition/performances at World of Glass in St Helens, mid 2024. It’s predominantly page poetry with a complex use of punctuation, parentheses, line/stanza breaks, capitalisation (and not), so not generally performable as in open mic and slam events. I’ve submitted one to the NAS magazine but don’t know yet whether they are going to use it, it’s about masking. 

Guess paying the bills is a powerful motivator. What do you really enjoy doing the most? or gives your the most pride? Sue :)

This is so uplifting. Do you share your poetry with others? Thank you Sue

Hi Sue. I was late diagnosed at 64 just after last Xmas. Yes there’s been huge abuse and problems in my past which could have been avoided had I been dx earlier but there’s been brilliance too, I’m the going-out-of-fashion high functioning autist, a widely published poet, two impressive careers where Ive worked magic with words and numbers and a massive connection with cats which I use not only with my own but at Cats Protection as a volunteer. Life is like a nutty cake, all sweetness and joy but with punctuations of hideous allergy, however I’ve done well really and will continue to do so. Not sure that helps really but maybe a small beacon of hope for some xxx

E (she/her)

^Same, essentially. Though I'm not so sure I'm battling through as stumbling along, perplexed by where the vague motovation comes from. Necessity I suppose - paying the bills. And habit.