A Useful Routine

I’ve mentioned before that we have a pull-up bar. I don’t train with it to be able to do dozens of reps, but I do a few here and there throughout the week. It’s nice to know I could probably pull myself up out of the water if I fall off of a pier, or that I could pull myself over a tall fence if I’m being chased by a dog. Y’know, useful abilities to have if you find yourself in an 80’s or 90’s comedy film.

But another benefit I’ve found of being able to do a handful of pull-ups is that they can act as a diagnostic. There have been days when all of a sudden it seems like I can’t comfortably do as many as usual; sometimes the energy just isn’t there. I’ve come to take this as an early warning sign that, even if I feel fine in every other way, I might not be sleeping enough or that I’m on the verge of getting a cold.

I think because pull-ups demand a bit more intensity of effort than, for example, going for a walk or even a run it’s a little easier to notice when things aren’t quite right. The body can’t help but provide strong feedback when presented with a strong input.

Startling

Our oldest cat has become quite deaf. She sleeps very, very soundly. She no longer looks at us when we call to her and she seems completely oblivious when we make noises behind her. She has developed a maddening habit of standing directly behind us when we’re working in the kitchen. Interestingly, the only cat I have ever been truly afraid of was deaf: a pure white longhair named Claire.

Occasionally, when Claire’s owners were out of town, we would look after her, along with their other pets: 3 other cats and 4 dogs. Claire had this habit of hiding in the basement ceiling rafters. I would walk downstairs to take care of the litter boxes and she would, inexplicably, hiss at me from her semi-concealed position in the darkness directly above me, scaring the living hell out of me. My hands and shoulders would shoot up instinctively to protect my head as I jumped sideways away from the lethal threat, landing in a fighting stance. I may have shouted something rather shocking. Every. Single. Time.

We use sounds a lot for just relaxing now, but every sound in the natural world is potentially important survival information. Noises alert us to potential danger—they prepare us for movement. Quiet can perform a similar function, like when crickets and frogs suddenly become silent whenever a predator or other large animal approaches: it’s definitely a good idea to look around and see what’s going on.

Claire’s owners said that she also had a tendency to knock over anything and everything on the counters and ledges she walked on. We get feedback in the form of sound and noises almost every time we move: we can hear the sound of a glass as we slide it across the table, the floor creak as we walk across it, a fork when we accidentally knock it off the table. We can hear the change in the sound of our footfalls when we walk over different surfaces or as we get tired and our running technique degrades. If you’ve ever worn hearing protection like ear plugs or ear muffs that attenuate sound significantly, you might have even noticed that you feel just a tiny bit clumsy. We get a tremendous amount of feedback from how our movements feel as we perform them, but any baseball player or golfer will tell you that the sound of their performance speaks volumes as well.

Poor Claire was deaf from an early age. She was rather high-strung and probably took to the rafters because she didn’t like being constantly surprised by the other household pets “sneaking up on her”. And she might not notice knocking something breakable off the counters and ledges because she wouldn’t ever be startled by the noise.

I’m glad that our old cat is still very affectionate and comfortable enough in our home that she doesn’t feel like she needs to hide. And I’m really glad that she’s too old to get up to the rafters.