Is Your Cat Smarter Than You?

Have you ever seen a cat get stressed out?

I don't mean for a fleeting moment when she's startled or irritated, I mean like a really bad day at work followed by a really bad day at home kind of stressed out.

I have 3 cats and I've never seen any of them stress out for more than 2 seconds. We had to bathe one of my cats today (whew - bathing cats, that's a whole other topic) because we found several fleas on her. So we bathed her in the tub (intense howling) with a flea soap, then we towel dried her and held her down while we extracted about 100 fleas, then we towel dried her some more while my 18 month-old tried to pet her.

Here's the interesting part--this cat (BTW, her name is Malibu) was only stressed for the first 15 minutes, during the bath. After that she got completely docile and she simply surrendered. It was almost like she knew we were doing it for her own good and she stopped struggling.

So that kind of got me wondering--are cats smarter than people?

I mean when the @#$ hits the fan, people don't normally freak for 10 mins and then figure ah, what's the point, I'll just let go and see what happens. That's just not normal behavior, right? Are you with me here?

No, on the contrary. I mean, I've gotten much better than I used to be. It's gotten easier for me to ignore little stuff (even what I used to consider big stuff--perspective baby, it's all about perspective) and when it's something major, I am usually over it compeltely in less than 30 mins (often a lot lesS). It's all a matter of how fast you can switch out of freak-out gear and into solution-finding gear. That's what I've been practicing.

But it took me awhile to get to this stage, where I can let it go quickly. That's part of what's going into this product I'm developing--a method for downshifting from stress to success. (hey, maybe I'll call it that--From Stress to Success).

Here's your thought for the day:

When a stressful situation arises, approximately how long do you spend freaking out before you shift into productive problem-solving mode?