Pause & Rewind: Learning to say "Yes"

Two separate stories that taught me to say yes.

#1: In the winter of 2007 a very good friend and I went on a trip to Uzbekistan. We visited the historic silk road towns of Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkhand, went horse-riding in the snowy mountains and found the most incredibly Georgian restaurant during a particularly intense blizzard in Tashkent whilst trying to tour the National Railway Museum. Basically there was a lot to do during the day, but in the night we were faced with freezing temperatures, the same dinner (meat and soup), and endless power cuts. So like any young males in that part of the world looking to pass away the evening exploring their existential angst whilst wearing two layers of insulated full-body underwear we turned to vodka. At the start of the trip we shared a 300 gram (300ml) bottle and by the end we deteriorated to the point of a full litre. I remember nothing of what we shared on those evenings (though my friend meticulously documented them on his digital camera) except for that I was accused of being too “negative”, and finding it too easy to say “no”. I’ve never managed to shake that off.

#2: Growing up in my dad’s house we had two cats who I loved very much. They died, and I was very sad (I cried when the first died). Those cats were replaced by some street rehabilitated, middle-aged cats that promptly grew obese and daily vomited on my bed. Obviously I did not warm to them. Somehow, that earned me a reputation as an anti-Dr Doolittle: the man who hated animals. Accepting a turtle in to my home for two years in Bangladesh apparently wasn’t enough to overcome this, and my wife’s pleas to take in the stray ginger cat that kept on sleeping in our garage here in Yangon fell on my deaf ears.

A fortnight ago I received an e mail offering two kittens, the perfect excuse to demonstrate both that I am not too “negative”, and also that I do love animals (or at least that I tolerate them). Inevitably my wife agreed immediately to getting a kitten triggering a panic from me as to whether we could look after it considering how much we are travelling at the moment with work. My panic was answered with the response that I summarized as being: "cats are selfish look after themselves and so don’t demand much attention." So why are we getting one again?

So far I've taught the cat how to pose provocatively

A month later I am an emotional mess. My daily routine now starts with a game of hide-and-seek with Matilda from the kitchen where I am preparing our packed lunches into the living room. At night I go to the road works at the end of our street and steal industrial quantities of sand for the cat litter. The cat litter itself stinks after several days and the cleaner is clearly refusing to deal with it. When getting some stocks for our Christmas lunch in Bangkok recently, the first item I bought was a tuna and scallops gourmet cat food for Matilda. And we now have several hours footage of the cat sleeping, playing air guitar to George Brassens (apparently she has more of a French music taste than British) and chasing the squeaky-mouse-toy-on-elastic-toy which if we’re honest brings us more pleasure than the cat.

Squeaky-mouse-toy-on-elastic-toy - still alive

I spoke to my traveler friend recently to present him with the new, more positive me. He asked as to who I was saying yes for, and whether it was for the right reasons. I accused him of being negative and went to play with Matilda and Punk Rat.

Punk Rat after a mauling