My mom Cathy likes to read books about decision making. She has always been fascinated by career decisions and suspicious of guided decisions, such as juries.
Most recently she was reading a book called How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Lehrer cites all kinds of research showing that emotions make sense in some kinds of decisions while rational thinking works best at other times. When decisions are complex (such as buying a house), emotional decisions often have better outcomes, my mom says. (Can you tell she’s helping me with this paragraph)
My mom figures that’s how she’s made good decisions about adopting her animals. She cuts past the clutter. All three of us – me, Creampuff and Ophelia – were adopted by default.
Creampuff had been in a cage for three months in New Mexico. The shelter volunteers really pushed for her adoption. “We can’t keep her forever,” they said. Creampuff really wanted to be an indoor-outdoor cat and she’s been a little frustrated by Cathy’s firm belief that cats belong indoors. But she purrs a lot and she’s healthy.
Ophelia was the only spayed, declawed cat in the Seattle Animal Shelter when Cathy went to look. Personally, I think we should have checked out a few more shelters but Ophelia and my mom have bonded. Ophelia’s here to stay.
And then there’s me. My mom saw me on Petfinder, she says. She chose me mainly because I am a female dog who’s not too big. She asked a lot of questions but she took me sight unseen. Thank goodness she didn’t know about my chewing or pulling tendencies.
Luck? Maybe. My mom likes to think she’s just a great owner. Who cares? I just made a big decision to take another nap. That was easy.