The Annoyances We Tolerate

Posted by Cynical Sarah on July 16, 2006

Today we trekked out to the pet supply store in search of kitty litter and collars for our feline family. Have you ever noticed that all collars for kitties come with bells? I’m not sure why, or what purpose they serve, but we decided to leave them on for the time being while the cats get used to wearing the collars.

Eventually we need to get ID tags for them, and then we’ll swap out the little annoying jingle bells for a tag instead. Then the kitties will be eternally grateful for not having to jingle on their merry way all through the condo and love us even more.

Ok, so that wasn’t really the point of leaving on the bell. It had more to do with our own amusement and laziness. But it’s turned into a sort of grand experiment. What will a person, or a cat in this instance, tolerate and for how long?

Cat A, Pretty Kitty who just came back to us after nine months missing, had no problem with the bell. She put up a little struggle against having a collar again, but the bell doesn’t seem to bother her. On the other hand, Cat B, Aurora who just had her first birthday, wasn’t happy at all to have a jingle added to her step.

She’s used to being able to stalk things and skulk around the condo trying to sneak up on Pretty Kitty and catch her by surprise. When she first got the bell on, she took a step and scared herself with the jingle, then went and sat in our bedroom and wouldn’t move because she didn’t want to jingle.

When she did finally start to move around again, she spent most of the day turning around real quick trying to figure out what jingly thing was that was following her everywhere that she went. Which was a definite source of amusement for the human part of this family.

But the experiment part comes in when you wonder what makes Cat A ok with the bell but Cat B is going nuts because of it? It’s all a question of what we’re willing to tolerate.

We’ve all got our levels of tolerance which waiver depending on our moods and different situations. For instance, normally kids don’t bother me much. I can tolerate seeing noisy kids out in public, the whining, the screaming, the tantrums, or even the good kind of kid noises like laughing and playing. I have an incredible tolerance normally for children who are being annoying in public.

Today, though, there was a kid in his pajamas and no shoes at the bus stop on our way to the pet store. It bothered me that he was out in his pajamas in the first place with no shoes. He was with his parents and they actually let him go that way. Plus he was extremely whiny and making a big fuss about waiting for the bus.

It was hot out, and I was standing in the hot sun waiting for the bus and then also waiting for the bus driver to take a quick break before coming back and loading up the bus. My tolerance level was incredibly low and I wanted to give those parents a little “talk” about their kid.

That was an extreme for me though. It takes extra circumstances and grumpiness for me to even notice an annoying kid somewhere.

My Dad is the exact opposite. He can walk into a restaurant and pinpoint a screaming kid immediately. It’s like he has superhuman child radar ears. (It also doesn’t help that there’s some sort of secret cosmic plot to always seat him near a noisy child when he gets to a restaurant.)

So in a way Aurora and my Dad are in the same boat. Dad has a low tolerance for annoying kids, and Aurora has a low tolerance for a jingly bell around her neck. Even though she’s a cat, she’s going to have to learn to live with it, just like the rest of us have had to learn to live with our little annoyances too.

- Sarah L. Polson

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