Obligatory cat picture

This is Sophie.  She has just stolen this ribbon from the dining room table (left there after my daughter opened her birthday presents) and is having her way with it, ecstatically shredding it on our dining room rug.

Sophie LOVES to steal things off the dining room table -- her favorites are pens and pencils, which she bats delightedly to the edge and then pushes over so she can watch them drop.

But here's the catch: Sophie only does these things when there's no-one in the house but me.  She's a little bit accepting of my husband (she lives mostly in his office after all) but I'm the only one she really trusts.

We once had a house-sitter who fed our cats for two weeks and never saw Sophie once; she wasn't at all convinced that Sophie exists.  And now that our daughter is home, Sophie's been invisible for days: the only reason she's out this morning is because our daughter spent the night in Seattle.

I think that Sophie's a bit like that inner voice we have -- you know, the one that chatters all the time?  It's pretty jumpy, a little neurotic, and easily threatened, so unless you pay attention to it and are very gentle with it, you might never even notice that it's there.  But it can also undermine your best intentions if you're not careful, either by shredding them like this ribbon ("You can't really do that, you're really not strong/original/smart/creative/charismatic enough to pull that off") or by just knocking all your tools right off the table.

I know.  I may be taking this metaphor way farther than it was meant to go.  But what's a blog without a  cat picture or two?