The Killer Instinct!

Misty-the mouse slayer!

On this past weekend, my year+ old cat had an epiphany...  She caught her first mouse!
I live in a 100+ old house (renovated of course!), and the basement is separate, so mice in the fall can get in if they are determined. And believe, cold mice can get pretty determined!
So, every fall, they come in, and after about a dozen get caught in the mouse traps and it's done.
Mice are pretty gullible, they can't resist the lure of cheese, so the traps work, year after year... Stupid mice! Learn guys, learn!  Sorry, I digress...
Misty, (the cat!), heard a noise in the kitchen and figured out that it was terribly interesting. I watched her and saw her develop her stalking style, pretty cool.
Finally, the mouse came out and she got it!
You could definitely feel her excitement, and when my son whooped, she dropped it. A first-timer mistake, she'll never do that again!
The result of this is a cat that is totally obsessed...




Undersea Fantasy by me.

She looks at birds out the window, wants to KILL them so she can find out what they taste like! 
She's wandering around wired like she had ten cups of coffee, and only naps intermittently.
And believe me, naps were the point of her day up until now...
Unfortunately, lovely cat though she is, I believe she could go too far on this one...
She doesn't want to sleep at night, she wants back downstairs (NOW!). The mice might come back!




Cat Dreams by Teresa Young

Really, I'd leave her out all night, but she has a bad tendency to destroy plants when not supervised...
I keep telling her, they're not salads, but she isn't listening!

Back to Misty, she can eat, but sleeps intermittently, and as soon as the sun comes up, she figures, at last! And everyone in the world probably knows it's time to rise because of the racket she makes...

I'm really hoping the honeymoon phase ends soon, I'm so definitely NOT a morning person, and cute as she is, this could get old fast;-) 

What's the cure for a mousing obsession?

Trying to reprogram negative thought trains

Enjoy Yourself by Teresa Young.

I've noticed myself getting more negative over the last couple of years. Which is a serious issue, because I start to feel like I'm pushing against a wall whenever I try to get something done!
I think this is pretty common for most of us as we get older, but I've got an opinion (when do I not!) that artists are more susceptible to loss of faith in themselves due to our sensitive natures. 
That sounds pretty bad, but I think it's a side effect of what artist's do how they are wired.
Maybe we're like racehorses? So skittish and high strung because we are overly aware of everything!



Path of Intuition by Teresa Young.

In view of that gibber jabber I just went through above, I decided to take a workshop course on how to change my attitude to life! It's called Blast Off! and it's run by Alyson Stanfield, who runs a site called Art Biz Coach. I've never done anything like this before, so it's an experiment that should be interesting to say the least!
Literally, she has us trying to derail our negative thought trains by working against them with our own 'affirmations' or 'intentions'. We have to create these and repeat them to ourselves daily in order to create the habit of thinking in new ways.
It really does make sense, think about how much time we spend thinking negatively, out of fear of things like disappointment, humiliation, pain and so on... A short time over the course of a day to try to counter that just makes so much sense!
Maybe we all need to just stop and take a breath once in a while and pat ourselves on the back, and affirm that we like and appreciate ourselves. It's not a bad idea!