This is Sid.
Sid is not my cat.
Sid likes to sleep on my landing.
And my sofa.
And my bed.
And the Big Small’s Bed.
And the Small Small’s Bed.
And Catonthenetheredge’s bed.
Mostly, Sid likes to eat Catonthenetheredge’s cat food.
It is apparently delicious and to be coveted above all things, and sought after at every opportunity.
It is from Aldi.
Sid’s name is in all probability NOT Sid.
We named him after the children’s classic ‘Six Dinner Sid’, a book about a cat which goes round the neighbourhood hanging out with different families to get his requisite six dinners.
I have tried to discourage Sid from illegally breaking and entering my house, largely out of respect for Catonthenetheredge.
I have thrown water on Sid.
I have banged pans at Sid.
I have hissed at Sid.
I have shouted at Sid.
I have set the Smallest Small on Sid to smother him in pent-up four-year-old affection, which cannot be unleashed on Catonthenetheredge for fear of losing an eye, or possibly a finger. (Let’s be generous and say she’s not much of a cuddler. If we were being less generous we’d say she’s a vicious little cow).
Sid just comes back.
In fact, most of the time he doesn’t even leave.
He sits just outside the catflap for about 30 seconds until he’s convinced himself we’ve either forgotten or forgiven him, and pops back in with good-natured cheer, like nothing’s happened.
He patiently endures the Small Small’s maulings, with an air of palpable and long-suffering indulgence, and goes straight back to the cat food when she’s finished with him. If Catonthenetheredge attacks he just hunkers down with his ears back and tries to look unassuming, whilst not moving one inch away from the aforementioned cat food.
Catonthenetheredge is so used to people screaming and fleeing her in abject terror she has absolutely no idea what to do with him. In the end I think she’s come to the same conclusion that we all have: Nothing.
You see, there’s just no real help for it but to LIKE Sid.
He now has his own bowl, and we got him his own catnip mouse for Christmas.
The only fault I’ve found in him is that he is definitely a Free Range Pussy Cat. On the two occasions he has been accidentally locked in the house he’s turned into some sort of freak Hulk Cat and battered his way out through a locked catflap. (And then come right back in again for a snack).
Hell, it’s got to the point where I don’t just like Sid, I ADMIRE him.
And as I head into 2020 with a spare cat, I can’t help but feel like he’s got a lot to teach us all (although possibly not the bit about going uninvited into strange houses).
Because JUST IMAGINE living your life like Sid.
Just imagine.
The audacity.
The tenacity.
The single minded focus on a goal.
The willingness to fail, again and again, and to try, again and again, undaunted.
The unfailing good humour in the face of adversity.
The sheer CONFIDENCE.
I wish I was more Sid, in lots of ways.
And the thing I admire in him most is his absolute, rock-solid, unshakeable conviction that people are going to like him. You know, eventually.
God, I wish I had that.
I have always worried, you see, if people like me.
I worry about what they think of me. How to make them accept me. What they want from me – what they need me to be in order to like me, and how I can change myself to give it to them.
And I do this with everyone. EVERYONE. From the damn postman to random shop assistants, work colleagues to school mums, even my long standing friends – even my own bloody kids. Even to the point where I lose my sense of myself when not defined by other people and what they think of me. And I question it constantly.
Do they like me?
Am I good enough?
Am I enough as I am?
What do I need to change?
What did I say wrong?
How do I fix it?
What if they find out the truth?
How do I keep them from finding it?
How do I make them like me MORE?
How do I make them like me over and over again every time I see them?
A month or so ago, something of this was caught by the Big Small.
We’d had a humdinger argument where she’d basically been a BRAT, and told me she hated me, that I was embarrassing, and the worst mother EVER (a recurring theme). And I was out of all energy to empathise, distract, appease, ignore or rise above anything. So I told her that you know what? Sometimes I don’t like myself very much either. Sometimes I don’t always say the right thing. Sometimes I don’t always DO the right things. Sometimes I don’t have any of the answers. But I always love her, and I’m trying my very best to be my very best for her and her sister.
The argument blew over, but I hadn’t realised that what I said had hit home quite so hard until I got The Christmas Card.
It is the best and the worst present I have ever received.
In it, she told me that I was the BEST mother ever, that she loved me, and that she knew it was hard doing everything on my own and that she thought I was very brave. And then she said, ‘I know you say you don’t like you. But I like you. I like you because you are lovely and kind and play with me and [Small Small]. I asked my friends to write down why they like you too.’
And four little girls aged between 7 and 8, with clearly far more emotional intelligence than I’ve gathered in 40 bloody years, wrote a sentence about what they liked about me.
They like that I’m funny.
They like that I’m kind.
They like that I love to play with slime.
They like that I make them laugh.
And I cried like a baby.
Because people don’t really say nice things about me. And when they do I find it so easy to dismiss them or not to believe them. Have you ever noticed that? That the good stuff, the compliments just slide off you like water? But the bad stuff sticks? And if someone says the bad stuff to you often enough it becomes truer than true just by being consistent. And it’s so easy to believe… That I’m too intense. That I’m lazy. That I’m too much and doing too little and over emotional and being over sensitive and slightly stupid and not wired up right and never follow through, and I’m all talk and all of it, all of it, all of it. It’s all still there, not even buried deep.
But then four little girls in Year 3 sat down in their Christmas jumpers on Christmas party day at school and made me the most beautiful card I’ve ever had, and I feel like they pierced through all the bad stuff for the first time. Because for some reason they’re easy to believe. And I have never been more horrified or more grateful for anything.
I can’t work out whether it is a massive parenting fail that I’ve allowed my daughter to think I don’t like myself and set that example for her, or a massive parenting win that she’s just turned 8 and she’s done something so thoughtful and mature and kind.
What I do know is that she deserves for me to find my inner Sid this year.
She deserves to see someone who doesn’t need to be validated by anyone else, including her.
She deserves to see someone happy in their own skin.
She deserves to see someone who doesn’t constantly worry if people like her, if she’s said the wrong thing, made the wrong choice, who doesn’t second guess herself and who isn’t afraid to be who she is, always, in all ways, no matter what. No matter who’s looking.
And do you know what? I deserve that too, this year. In 2020 I deserve to see myself in 2020 vision – or at least how 7 and 8 year-olds see me. Because sometimes they see a lot of things a lot more clearly than we do.
I deserve to like myself.
And so do you.
So my New Year’s Resolution isn’t a complicated one. I’m just going to look at everything and think, What Would Sid Do?
Because Sid wouldn’t give up.
Sid wouldn’t care if people liked him – he’d know they would when they got to know him.
Sid wouldn’t be diminished by cold water, or derailed by loud pans, or depressed by failure.
Sid wouldn’t be hemmed in by other people’s rules or boundaries – he’d just break his way out.
Sid would just be Sid.
And then have a nap.
And that – that sounds like a resolution I can really get behind.
I highly recommend you do the same.
By the way, if anyone lives in the Woodseats area of Sheffield and actually KNOWS Sid, I’d love to find out where he lives. And his real name. He’s literally an inspiration.
Mumonthenetheredge 