Apologies to a kitty cat

Things to do: 99

Things completed: 0

Things worked on: 4, 5, 38, 40, 65

I was getting ready to work on 24: finishing Pikmin 2. If you don't know what Pikmin are, then you can look here. I also have some very small (perhaps life-sized) figures of pikmin that I take pictures of in various locations. It started out as a way to learn how to use my camera and has turned into a full-blown hobby. As I write this, I have just learned that I have won more figures on ebay (Please cue Weird Al Yankovic to sing "I'm highest bidder!").

So, as I sat down at the couch to play and move further to my goal of completing Pikmin 2, I stepped on the cat. She is all black and was sittting under the coffee table and I just didn't see her. I have had her for almost a year, and this is the first time I stepped on her. I heard the pathetic "mrow" and felt her run out from under my foot. I felt terrible. I spent the next couple of hours intermittently asking Tim if she was going to hate me now. In the end, she was fine and we are friends. I am pretty sure I didn't fully step on her (since I was sitting at the time) and she is running around without a care or a limp.

It is possible to communicate some things to cats: most of which involve food, lack of permission to scratch things, and my desire for her to come over so I can pet her. One thing I cannot communicate is my apology for accidentally stepping on her. After she ran off, I wanted to find her and make her feel better. Of course, she wasn't really in the mood for that and hid under the bed. I was crushed. Although Tim assured me that she was fine and would be my friend again, I was frustrated by my inability to communicate.

As happens when riding the bus and trying to ignore everyone else there, I became reflective. On the morning after I had my accidental run-in with the cat, I was thinking on the bus about apologies that don't get heard or communicated. The hardest ones to deal with for me are the ones where I realize much later that I should apologize and now don't have the opportunity. So, Mr. Burkhardt, I'm sorry I was a jerk while sitting in the back of calculus. I wasn't embarassed by how obviously I was ignoring math class at that point, but now I feel bad. You were doing your job and you were nice and I didn't pay attention to those facts. Math has played more of a role in my working history than I ever anticipated. And I'm sorry, Christina, that in 5th or 6th grade I went along with my friend who claimed you were wearing a stuffed bra although I had no evidence. I am sure at this point that my behavior was not the greatest tragedy in either of these lives or the others that I think about periodically. I'm also sure if I had behaved the opposite way that it wouldn't have been the high-point of their lives either. At this point, I am not in contact with these two people, so my apologies now are like apologies to the kitty cat – unheard by those who probably should hear it.

Of course, I will not share with the world all my regrets and all the times I was a real pain in the butt. I will say that for many years I have made only one real New Year's resolution and that is to be a better person than I was the year before. I have tried to be more truthful and more considerate and I am hoping that with these incremental changes over time, I won't be needing to make a lot of apologies in the future for stupid behavior. And I have learned to look under the table before I stretch my feet out, which is already an improvement for this year.