Hiding in Plain Sight

Weekly reflections from Pure Pawsitivity • Week 9

The old litter didn't have to be working particularly well for me to resist changing it. It just had to be familiar.

What I Learned This Week

I spend a lot of time at Pure Pawsitivity encouraging people to question things they've always done.

Food.

Treats.

Feeding routines.

Cleaners.

Fragrances.

Litter.

The ordinary stuff.

Then recently, our cat, Lokah, had been sneezing and having some respiratory issues, and Edan kept bringing up changing the litter.

I employed a highly sophisticated scientific method:

I ignored her.

Not the cat. I knew the sneezing was happening.

I just didn't particularly want to mess with the litter.

Our litter was fine. I understood it. It clumped the way I expected litter to clump. I knew how to clean it.

Then we had CatKins on the podcast and decided:

Let's try it.

At first, the new litter felt strange because it didn't behave like what I was used to.

And I realized my brain was interpreting different as worse.

Then I stopped comparing it to what I already knew and started watching what was actually happening.

Lokah likes it better. I like it better. There's less tracking. It's easier for us. It fits our environmental values better.

And his respiratory symptoms improved.

Can I say changing the litter caused that improvement?

No.

We changed a variable. Something improved afterward.

That's information. It isn't proof.

But the bigger realization was about me.

The old litter didn't have to be working particularly well for me to resist changing it.

It just had to be familiar.

Watch This Week's Presentation

Hiding in Plain Sight | Pawsitivity Presentation #9

This week I'm exploring the ordinary parts of our animals' lives that can become so familiar we stop realizing they're variables at all.

[WATCH PAWSITIVITY PRESENTATION #9]

The Four Pillars

Perspective

Familiar can hide in plain sight.

Something can become so normal that I stop realizing I'm choosing it.

Awareness

Notice what I've stopped noticing because it's on autopilot.

Not because it's necessarily bad.

Because it's part of the picture.

Action

Change one thing. Watch.

If something changes, that's information.

If nothing changes, that's information too.

Will

Stay curious when I don't know.

I don't need certainty to start paying attention.

The Animal in Front of Me

Here's the practice I'm taking into this week:

Pick one ordinary part of your animal's life. (or yours.)

Their food bowl.

Water.

Litter.

A treat.

Walking routine.

Cleaner.

Sleeping area.

Feeding schedule.

Don't immediately change it.

Notice it first.

Why is it there?

Why do I do it this way?

Is it helping?

Do I actually know?

Is my animal showing me anything I've stopped noticing because I'm used to it?

And if there's a safe, reasonable variable worth changing, maybe change one thing.

Then watch.

Not to prove yourself right.

Not to diagnose your animal.

To learn from them.

Weekly Question

What have I stopped noticing because I'm used to it?

That's the question I'm carrying this week.

Because the things most worth questioning aren't always the things that look wrong.

Sometimes they're the things that look so normal we've stopped looking at them at all.

I don't need to overhaul everything.

I don't need ten new rules.

I don't even need to know the answer.

Maybe I just need to notice something I haven't noticed in a while.

The animal can take it from there.

Keep Exploring

This week's rabbit hole started with our conversation with CatKins and then followed us all the way home to our own litter box.

If you want to hear the conversation that helped get me questioning something I hadn't been questioning:

[LISTEN TO OUR CATKINS CONVERSATION]

Keep Practicing With Us

If this made you look at your animal a little differently, that's enough.

Pawsitivity in Practice is where we keep sharing what we're learning each week through our animals, the shop, the podcast, the research, and the questions that follow us home.

Pure Pawsitivity™

Learning in public by paying attention to the animal in front of us.