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Follow your instincts, not a list of requirements

By Huang Yuli (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-05 09:42

Our male cat started to get fidgety after he turned one year old.

In order for him to enjoy a family life as well, my boyfriend and I decided to get our cat a girlfriend.

A couple of days ago, we contacted the dealer we bought our cat from last year and visited his home again, where he kept more than 50 purebred cats.

We wanted a female and felt she should be the same breed as ours - Scottish shorthair and blue in color, about one year old and with straight ears, since our first cat has folded ears.

It turned out that only a few cats met our needs, and they were way too expensive: all above 4,000 yuan, which was more than twice the price we paid for our first cat.

But there was one, the right age, right gender and at a suitable price - but she had the wrong face. She didn't look good and was very aggressive to us both.

We didn't take a cat home with us that day, after long consideration.

She wanted a man who was older than her, but not too old. Someone with career ambitions, his own apartment and car. Someone who was sweet, caring, smart, humorous, romantic and loyal.

As she kept on listing her requirements, I started to wonder whether she was asking for too much?

And then it hit me that the same thing happened when I was looking for a cat - way too many criteria.

I remember when we bought our cat last year, there was no expectation at all. We went to the dealer's just for fun and it just happened that we fell in love with the adorable Scottish "boy" and spent all the money we had on getting him. This time, it turned out to be so hard to find satisfaction because of all the criteria we had in mind.

Once you start to have criterions, the price goes straight up.

Worse still, I realized that we were even more demanding than we expected to be. In addition to price, look and temperament also turned out to be issues - otherwise we would have taken the not good looking one.

And people are not just like that about cats and relationships. We're the same with jobs, apartments, food, friends and so on.

We have formed certain likes and dislikes of our own and began to make demands with everything we come across. And the older we are, the longer we wait, the pickier we become.

I couldn't help but wonder: are our criteria making things more complicated and our life harder? Are we trapped by our own requirements?

Maybe life would be much more fun if we live it with less expectation and more curiosity.

Your requirements toward anything could be easily destroyed as things change. Just keep the most important ones in mind and for the rest, let nature decide.

Perhaps you should forget about your plans and judgments and just choose the man you cannot help but want to kiss.

Our male cat ended up getting a young girlfriend. After we found out how expensive female cats of the same breed were, we bought a beautiful "girl" that was less than two months old. She was reasonably priced and fulfilled all the important factors that we valued; only apparently, our male cat needs much more patience now.

You just never get it all.