28 Days

I don’t usually watch much television.  A few nights ago, though, something caught my eye while I worked on my laptop and I set it aside for a while.  It was a Sandra Bullock film called 28 Days.  Though I’d seen it before I stayed up beyond my bedtime to watch it again.

In the film a recovering alcoholic asks a counsellor how he’ll know when he’s ready to enter a relationship once he’s out of rehab.  The counsellor answers, as I remember: “Get yourself a plant.  If you can keep it alive for a year, then get yourself a pet.  If after two years the pet and the plant are both still alive, you can start thinking about a relationship again.”

Not only does this lead to what I thought was a very touching and funny final scene in the film, it also got me thinking about what I would do if I was faced with that challenge.  I am notoriously bad at keeping plants alive, so much so that they already wilt if I walk into a nursery.  So how would I get past that one?

Simple.  I’d get a cactus.  I had one when I was a child, and it is the only plant I ever had which didn’t die on me within a week.  They don’t need pruning or any other form of loving care.  Probably here in Ireland they need to be kept warm, but I’m sure they’ll survive indoors.  You water it once a week and if you forget it probably could survive another week before it will give up the ghost.

Where a pet is concerned there is simply nothing to beat a cat for resilience and ease of care.  A cat will – mostly – let you know in no uncertain terms what it needs, and take care of the rest itself.  It’s not like a mouse or a fish which will quietly pine away while you’re happily unaware of its needs.

But the point of the whole exercise will be to learn to be aware of and fulfill the needs of another living being.  Wouldn’t my cactus and my cat defeat the object?  The more I thought of that, the more I became convinced that keeping a cactus and a cat is in fact the perfect way to learn not only how to live with someone else, it is also a good example of what we should aim to be like in a relationship.

Think about it.  The cactus is low maintenance and hardy.  It’s not the prettiest plant you’ve ever seen, but it is beautiful to you.  It’s also a fascinating living thing which has adapted to difficult circumstances and thrives in spite of them.  It’s not independent of you, either.  It needs you just enough to not get in the way, but still let you know you’re important in its existence.

The cat is warm and cuddly and nice to go to bed with.  It has a life of its own, but it does like to sometimes demand you set aside your worries and pay attention to it.  It loves to play, but doesn’t demand you do so every day.  It doesn’t beat about the bush but lets you know when it needs something from you.  And oh, you adore it.  Your life would be empty without your cat.

I can take the above two paragraphs and apply them to my husband – and no, that’s not an insult, it’s a big, big compliment.  I hope he can say the same about me.  Perhaps all of us should own a cactus and a cat before we get married, to learn not only how to take care of someone else but also how we ourselves should act in a relationship.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the divorce rate among cactus/cat owners is lower than in the general population.