LANDING ON YOUR FEET

I’m watching a National Geographic’ special on cats: lions and house cats.  Normally I wouldn’t bother.  I’m a dog and I find the aloof behavior of most cats rather annoying. Recently I helped Jet rescue a cat that turned out to be a real whack job that didn’t do anything to endear me to feline types.  I named the rescued cat Frat because his crazy head hair made him look like a grumpy college fraternity guy that just rolled out of bed after an all night study session with a keg. He’s camera shy so I made a rough sketch of the nut-case cat (below).

Now, back to the TV show.  This particular Nat Geo segment was showing the development of a cat fetus during every stage of the womb.  The tiny fetuses looked like gummy worms.  Although playing with cats is not something I have any interest in doing, I did found their development in the womb simply fascinating and their unique capabilities interesting.  For example, a cat's acute auditory capabilities enable them to hear a tiny mouse up to 30’ away.  Cats know if a container does not touch their facial whiskers that they are likely to be able to fit inside it; they can withstand an ugly fall and always land on their feet.

Jet, my foster mom, says more humans could use these ‘land on your feet’ skills.  I agree.  I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all but it seems most humans lack the fundamentals to recover from life’s hard falls.  This seems to apply to humans trying to survive the wilderness and the streets.

Test your survival capabilities in the wilderness:

1.    Can you build a fire?

2.    Can you build a shelter

3.    Can you effectively signal for help?

4.    Can you find/secure food and water?

5.    Do you know fundamental first aid skills?

I’ll bet most of my human readers would not survive five days in the wilderness. Would you?

Test your survival capabilities on the streets (of business and life):

• Could you reduce your business overhead 30% if you had to?

• Do you have at least 6 months of capital/savings to support yourself and

   your company during times of economic loss?

• If you’re job looking (or trying to avoid losing your job) are you

  demonstrating the skills employers want but seldom see these days? Specifically,  

  Innovation, Adaptability and Resourcefulness (doing more with less; creative problem 

  solving)

So, here’s my lesson of the day… Dogs, because of humans, survive on the streets every day.  It’s hard and awful but we do it.  Perhaps humans need to do the same for one week out of every year.  This would remind humans of two things: one, their survival skills are not up to par which is why they often don’t land on their feet in tough times and two, abandoning an animal to live on the streets is wrong.

Okay, the question of the day is from Jake who asked:  Dear Parker, “What is God?”

Dear Jake:

God is part Isaac Newton – an inventor – and part Coco Chanel – a designer.  Only everything God makes is perfect.