Here, the last few days have been truly stressful. In addition to working as a volunteer for Croydon Cats' Protection, I am an unpaid Director of a charity that provides door-to-door transport for frail elderly and disabled people who cannot travel on buses and who do not have access to private cars. For years, our local authority has contracted us to provide transport on behalf of its Day Centre and provided a base for our office and parking spaces for our six minibuses at the Centre. This year, it has not fully funded the contract and is refusing to make good our losses. Furthermore, it plans to relocate the Centre, and the premises it wishes to build to house it has no room for our office or parking spaces for our minibuses. Understandably, we are quite upset.

The fight that we are engaged in to get the money we are owed and a guarantee of a home so that we can continue operating, is, as you can imagine, draining our emotions.

On top of this, late yesterday evening, I lost all the work I had done on behalf of this charity earlier when the floppy disc upon which it had been saved became corrupted. GRRRRRRRRRRRH.

It was very late by the time I had recalled from memory most of what I had written, retyped it and saved it, this time to the hard disc. Going to bed seemed like a good idea and going to sleep an even better one. However, despite being so tired, given how tense I felt, I wondered how I could get to sleep.

Jason had the answer. As soon as I got into bed, he jumped off the windowsill, and with a little prrrroooopppp, softly and stealthily crept onto my chest, put his paws around my neck, rested his head on my shoulder and began quietly purring in my ear. Observing his peaceful, smiling face with its closed eyes, hearing the contentment in his voice, and feeling his lovely, warm, soft, furry, body, caused all my worries to float instantly and effortlessly away.

Thanks to Jason, I fell asleep quite quickly and slept really well.

Copyright © Sheenah Large
July 14, 2002