THAT’S part of an adage: Not seeing the forest for the trees. This means being too engrossed in
the details of a problem, one fails to see the whole picture.
I had an eye-rolling experience like that recently.
My house is a two-story structure with separate entrances for both stories.
I keep my bedroom floor closed all the time, including its windows as ventanillas and air vents on the door and window transoms take care of natural ventilation.
In the living and dining floor, I keep one window open for my cats to freely go in and out.
There’s one problem I have encountered several times especially when I go out of town for a few days. The cats tend to dislodge the refrigerator plug, cutting power supply. That’s a terrible situation as I risk having my food stock get spoiled. Luckily, all my travels have been short trips since the lockdown was lifted — max of two days. (This ref was bought soon after the lifting of lockdown because the pandemic made me realize that the ref I’ve had for 20 years is too small
for a work-from-home arrangement). So, I still get to arrive while the ref and freezer have not defrosted. But regular travels have resumed and I have two one-week schedules coming up.
I was pondering on what I can do with the plug to ensure that it’s not dislodged. I was thinking of
glues, epoxy, duct tapes, running these materials through my head, trying to figure out what’s
best.
One morning, I opened the kitchen to find a very dirty and obviously sick stray cat sleeping on my oven toaster (my home is a haven for strays). On the kitchen counter were traces of the
cat’s urine. When I gently nudged him off the oven toaster, he jumped down, legs steeped in
urine, sprinkling more urine on the floor.
I had to bring out the disinfectant to wipe all surfaces, including the oven toaster. I planned on putting the cat in a cage to attend to him, but I had to get my big cage at mom’s. By the time I
returned, the cat was nowhere to be found.
I locked the open window and called out all other cats to leave. I closed the living/dining floor, fearing that the stray would once again take residence and sprinkle my kitchen.
A week before my first trip, I returned to pondering on what to do with the ref power plug. That
was when it dawned on me: I don’t need to glue the plug, all I need to do is lock the window and
the door. With no cat inside, nothing will dislodge the plug. I laughed at myself.
All this time, I was focused on the electrical plug, when the real problem was caused by the cats’ access to it. Deny the access (close the window), and the problem disappears.
How many times have we been focused on the symptoms or effects of a situation gone wrong
such that we fail to see the root cause? Sad to say, very often. Sadder still is that we already spent some amount to address the symptoms. I now have a tube of Bostik (concrete nail glue),
a roll of duct tape, another roll of fiberglass tape, and a pad of Tac N’ Stik.
***
Email: saestremera@gmail.com, fb: /saestremera, IG: @saestremera, Tiktok: @stellaestremera