Meet Your Teacher in Unraveling Stress: Spritz the Cat

Stress tangles us all at times. How cats can help us pull the thread to understand why we feel like we feel and what we can do about it.

2 min read

My three-month-old cat hides behind my shoes, bright blue eyes fixed on his prey. His striped marmalade tail flicks back and forth. The tangled ball of yarn beckons. It’s twice his size, but that doesn’t deter my hunter. He slinks forward, experimentally bats it with his paw.

The yarn rolls away, bump after bump. Spritz watches. With an excited chirrup, he leaps in the air, paws and claws extended. Spritz lands on the ball in triumph. His claw snatches the one loose piece of thread extended from the snarls. Spritz yanks it free with a victorious mew.

He returns to the ball the next day. And the next, and the next. The ball shrinks as Spritz unwinds it thread by thread.

One day, there’s nothing left but a pile of disentangled pieces of string.

Spritz has since grown into a marvelously handsome two-year-old tabby. His culinary preferences have changed; his determination and joy remain. Spritz is laser-focused (pun intended) and wholly present in whatever task is at hand. When he’s eating, he’s eating. When he’s playing, he’s playing. Spritz doesn’t plan out his day (“When I’m finished eating, I need to play with the toy, because I haven’t run enough today, then I should nap because I’ve only slept twenty hours, don’t want to be tired later…”).

Spritz also doesn’t know defeat. He chases the “red dot” and jingling balls around the room until his pet parent (me) takes a break from the game. If he doesn’t catch the feather toy on the first try, he doesn’t judge himself (“I’m not fast enough. If I were, I would have caught it. Another cat would have gotten it.”) Spritz doesn’t jump to the future (“What if it escapes the next time?”). He doesn’t count the number of times he didn’t capture the elusive prey (“I’ll never get it right” or “I always miss the first time.”)

Cats epitomize a stress-free life. Granted, our fuzzy felines need shelter, food, water, and play. Beyond those things, they’re carefree, living completely in the moment. When something doesn’t work, there’s no disappointment, no frustration. They start over unthinkingly.

We can learn as much from our other animal friends (more on these in future posts!) Since volunteering at my local shelter, I’ve watched our canine companions hunt balls with equal persistence. They take a slightly different approach: grab the thing, shake it as hard as possible, and see what comes out. If we’re trying to tackle our personal balls of stress, we’d all prefer the dog’s quick methods. Normally, our situations aren’t so straightforward. We’ll use Spritz’s patient approach instead, unweaving the yarn one piece at a time.

In Unraveling Stress, you’ll read stories about stressful situations and their causes. By understanding what you feel and why, you’ll begin to untangle your emotions. You’ll follow weekly actions to pull the threads on what you can. You’ll figure out how to better manage stress, focus on the moment, and lead a happier and more fulfilling life.

Meet Spritz.