If we have a decent sort of cat to begin with, and have always treated it courteously, and … - Barbara Holland

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How important is excitement to happiness? The key is to get excited about the mundane-- not just extraordinary things

Barbara Holland

If we have a decent sort of cat to begin with, and have always treated it courteously, and aren't cursed with meddling, bullying natures, it's a pleasure to let it do as it pleases. With children, this would be wicked and irresponsible, so raising children involves a lot of effort and friction. They need to be taught how to tie their shoes and multiply fractions, they need to be punished for pocketing candy in the grocery store, they need to be washed and combed and forced to clean up their rooms and say please and thank you. A cat is our relief and our reward.

Bullying, Cat, Children, Pocketing, Say

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Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.

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Subtly, in the little ways, joy has been leaking out of our lives. The small pleasures of the ordinary day seem almost contemptible, and glance off us lightly. . . Perhaps it's a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet shoes and socks, for instance. Bathrobes. Yawning and stretching. Real tomatoes.

Real, Roots, Shoes, Small, Stretching, Tomatoes

One's own flowers and some of one's own vegetables make acceptable, free, self-congratulatory gifts when visiting friends, though giving zucchini - or leaving it on the doorstep, ringing the bell, and running - is a social faux pas.

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Cats vary so widely that all data is meaningless and the professional classifiers gnash their teeth trying to come up with even a single fact common to all.

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Are you seeing a psychiatrist?' as a conversation opener would nowadays earn you a punch in the nose, but for fifty years it was a compliment. It meant, 'One can plainly see you are sensitive, intense, and interesting, and therefore neurotic. ' Only the dullest of clods trudged around without a neurosis.

Compliment, Conversation, Fifty, Interesting, Noses, Years