Out-of-Body Spending

Let me tell you about Festus.

Part Siamese and part Banshee, he may, in fact, be the world's loudest cat. Although he now weighs a mere 17 pounds, when I first met him he tipped the scales at 22 pounds.

There are times you would swear he thinks he is a dog. There are times you would swear he was just an innocent toddler. There are many, many times you would think a portal to another dimension had opened and he was battling demons no one else can see.

He is NOT my cat. He's his cat. They are, unfortunately, a bit of a package deal.

Festus' favorite evening activity is "jungle cat." This is when he hides behind a house plant, and, just when you've forgotten he's there, leaps out, shrieking, and runs into the other room. Moments later, he will slink back in, and chew on said house plant until his energy has been restored for another round of jungle cat.

For exercise, he does a lot of standing jumps. As I am only 4'10" tall, I can assure you that Festus has no trouble completing a 4' standing leap, generally in a door way that I am about to walk through.

I repeat, he is NOT my cat.

Being a farm girl, I was sort of raised to believe animals were supposed to have a purpose. Being broke most of my adult life, I only ever saw the expense of pets. Food, vet bills, toys, litter, apartment pet deposits, rug shampoo, furniture de-hair-ers. You name it.

So, Festus had one endearing quality, from the first time I met him.

He doesn't play with cat toys. Ever. He likes crumbled receipts - he will play with the same one for days. Straw wrappers? They'll keep him up all night. His ability to focus in on a bit of lint and attack it, relentless, for hours, is one of his best features.

There is absolutely no need, ever, to buy this cat anything but food and litter. Ever.

So explain to me why, three years ago, when we'd been together only a few months, and I was working hard to pay off my auto loan and my parent's loan and had all that "gazelle intensity" that Dave Ramsey speaks about, I found myself in the pet aisle of the grocery store?

I didn't like the cat. Even if I did like the cat, I already knew he didn't need anything. In fact, he HAD toys that sat ignored.

I had $20 in my pocket and wanted 1 week's of groceries.

So why was I picking up little stuffed mice and eyeing scratching posts?

Why was I having to talk myself out of spending half my grocery money on a Christmas present for a cat I wasn't even completely sure was from this dimension?!?

It's a phenomenon I call "out-of-body spending." You let your guard down for just a moment and suddenly you're buying something you not only didn't need, but didn't even want.

When I first got out of debt, there was a month of two of this out of body spending. Then a month of "I'm in debt again and need to get back on track." Then a month of spending....and, well, you get the idea.

One reason I now write to you daily is because if I know I have to write something, and I don't want that something to be "I'm back in debt and starting over again," then I need to keep the collection of fuzzy mice to a minimum.