Tag: Asperger’s Syndrome

The Moving Diaries: April 20th

April 21, 2016

I started on the bedroom this week, sorting out the two drawers full of toiletries, travel miscellany, jewellery, make-up, and OTC remedies. This generated a lot of garbage – more than I would have liked, but there is nothing else to do with dried-up eye makeup or solidified hand cream. The expired OTC drugs are going back to the pharmacy, and the thrift store will be getting a few things.

Tomorrow I’ll start packing clothes into boxes. We’re in the in-between season here – it was 25 C the other day (77 F), but it’s supposed to snow on Monday, so it’s not as simple as packing away all my winter clothes, but instead trying to second-guess what I’ll need, and gamble on the long-range weather forecast approaching reality. If I’m sensible, I’ll label the boxes precisely, for the day it’s ten degrees hotter than it was supposed to be and I need my shorts.

Once a week or so I go over to the new house to take pictures of the gardens, so I know what early spring bulbs are planted where. The house is empty, so no-one minds this. I almost missed the early species iris – it was so hot the week they bloomed they only flowered for a couple of days. The daffodils are just starting, and the lawn is full of violets. I think about the new plantings – scilla, snowdrops, species Narcissus – I’ll put in come the autumn.

In-between, I make the necessary arrangements with the utility companies, the lawyer, arrange for a real estate agent to come to value this house….reassuringly, his estimate and the financial institution’s assessment are nearly identical. I’ve also booked appointments with the renovator and the HVAC company that will install our new gas fireplace.

You will note that it’s “I” that does all this. BD’s Aperger’s-related anxiety is showing itself in subtle ways, mostly by retreat to things he can control – his detailed TV recording/watching schedule, his even-more-detailed bird records, his daily walks and cycling. He’ll be fine in the new house: he’s spent hours and hours looking at the 360-degree visuals of each room on the internet; he’s done schematics for furniture layout, he’s planned his new cycling routes and walks with the help of Google Maps. But the actual work of arranging the move has too many details, too many people to talk to, too many periods of uncertainty for him. If he could do things one at a time, he’d probably be ok….but that isn’t how it works. So it falls to me.

We’re off this afternoon to Home Depot to look at window treatments, having decided that the north-facing bay window in the living room and the sliders in the family room will need something in the winter months – originally we were going to leave them without blinds, but have reconsidered. After lunch: my number one rule for this sort of shopping is never on an empty stomach!

My Aspie Cat

December 24, 2015

Kathy Hooperman wrote a book a few years ago entitled All Cats have Asperger’s Syndrome. Now, I’ve lived with a lot of cats over my life, and for the last thirty-seven years I’ve lived with a man with Asperger’s. I’ve never agreed with Hooperman’s (playful) take on cats…until our newest one.

Pyxel came to us as an eight-week old kitten getting on for five years ago. I picked her up at our local humane society; she was the last of a litter that had come in for adoption. I was looking for an independent, well-adjusted, playful female kitten, a companion for our year-old Pye. (Pye was unplanned, a gift from someone who left her, twelve weeks old, on our doorstep in the middle of the night.) Pye came into a household with two elderly cats, and she wasn’t getting the exercise she needed, so we figured she needed a kitten.

Pyxel – she’s a tuxedo cat – settled in quite well. (Pye was terrified of her for the first month, but got over it eventually.) I don’t remember when I first began to notice the ‘Aspie’ qualities. But I have never been owned by a cat with such a need for routine. Not (mostly) around food: they have food on demand and eat when they want, and don’t even bother to tell us if the bowl is empty. And during the day – when we used not to be home – there are no routines. But between 7 p.m and 7 a.m., every single day, this is what Pyxel requires:

7:30 p.m. Humans have finished dinner. Time for treat, yes? (Dental treat, but she doesn’t know that.) Paws on table. Paws on couch. Up on footstool, stare at female human. Nothing happens until male human picks up tv remote. Now it’s really time! Treat given, eaten. Go away to sleep on the stairs.

10 p.m. Human bedtime. Run up the stairs. Jump into the electric-blanket box female human left on the bedroom floor last year (which is sooooo neat because it has a side opening and top opening). Look up expectantly. Female human scratches head. More looking up expectantly. Male human comes in and scratches head, leaves again. Jump out of the electric-blanket box and drink some water.

11 p.m. Humans are asleep. Bring a toy up the stairs and announce the gift loudly, until female human talks to you.

6-7 a.m. Humans are still asleep. Meow. No effect? Jump on windowsill and play with the blind cord so it rattles. Still no effect? Jump on dresser and knock something off.

7 a.m. Female human gets up. Run part-way down the stairs and look up expectantly. Female human throws the toy brought in the night down the stairs. Pounce on it. Wait for the female human to get downstairs. Run to the step between the living room and the sunroom. Jump to catch the toy as its thrown into the sunroom.

OK, that’s done with, now I can do what I want (play with toys, move rugs around, watch birds, chase Pye, and sleep a bit) until 7 p.m.

Every day. If we go away – and we’ve left them for over a month (with a cat-sitter daily, of course) – the routines begin immediately we’re home. I have never known a cat like this. As well, she hates being picked up, doesn’t purr, sleeps less than any cat we’ve ever had, and has just recently begun to initiate sitting on laps – but generally only if we have either an iPad or a book.

As I said, I’ve been partnered with an Aspie for thirty-seven years. I swear the diagnosis fits this cat: she’s got almost as many daily routines as he does. (Pye, on the other hand, is just a typical cat, except for her pathological need to be picked up, but she was abandoned…so maybe that makes sense. Our other abandoned cat had the same need.)

Does anyone else have a cat with this need for routine?