My daughter spotted a little black kitten at a PetSmart, where the local Animal Defense League had brought some kittens for adoption. It’s always fun to look at kittens, but my daughter was not looking for a kitten. She already had a perfectly good cat. And a very small apartment. She was just there to pick up some food
for her perfectly good cat.
But this little black kitten kept tapping on the glass to get her attention, and boy, did he! Still, she did the sensible thing, and went home without him.
But she couldn’t get him out of her head. She kitten-proofed her apartment and went back the next day. He was still there!
Faden, as she named him, was a cat with EQ, and it saved his life.
When you picked him up, he would hug you. When you sat at the kitchen table, he would hop up on the chair next to yours and lay his paw on your lap. Not only did he come when called, he came if you even beckoned. He constantly looked for ways to interact. We all loved him!
EQ continued to save Faden over the next several years.
Faden was a cat with many health problems. But he was so affectionate, so able to relate, that we all went the extra mile for him. There were special foods, lots 
of clean up, and vet bills! But even when it would have made sense to give up on him, no one wanted to. He was too darn likable.
What might we learn from Faden?
Have you ever been in trouble? Maybe you had a serious illness and needed a doctor to go that extra mile for you. Maybe you said just exactly the wrong thing at work and needed forgiveness. Maybe you allowed work to consume too much of your life and needed your family to remind you that they matter too. These are the kinds of human situations that each of us will find ourselves in. We will need help. Will someone give it to us? It may depend on our EQ.
Faden demonstrated two EQ skills in spades. (Well, he was a black cat!)
Skill #1: Interpersonal Relationship.
Faden knew how to start and maintain a relationship. His approach was to be affectionate. Perhaps he’d figured out this law of behavior: “You get what you
give.” Warmth on our part tends to elicit warmth from others.
But there is more. Relationships are built on the exchange of emotional information. Faden showed that he cared about us and wanted to communicate, and we reciprocated. That emotional exchange, practiced daily, was the basis for our relationship, which encouraged us to be there for him when he needed us.
Go back to those times you’ve been in some kind of trouble, when you’ve really needed someone to come through for you. Let’s go back to that example where you said the wrong thing at work. To your boss!! You could have been in big trouble. But because you had built a relationship, your boss gave you a pass. How do you build such a relationship with a boss? Well, I suggest that you not try tapping on the glass. That just works for cats.
Instead, consider what everyone wants most at work: To succeed. A good relationship with a boss develops when you help each other succeed. You care about their success and they care about yours. Such relationships have forgiveness built in. A boss-subordinate relationship that does not involve interest in each other’s success is fragile. It can be easily broken if the wrong thing gets said.
Marriages and friendships are similar. While those relationships depend more on affection than achievement, when they have been built on the mutual exchange of affection, they grow strong. Relationships that lack messages of affection, spoken or behavioral, die easily.
Skill #2: Optimism, or Resilience.
As mentioned, Faden was a lot of work, because he had major health problems most of his life. And he dealt with them. He didn’t let his health problems get him 
down. He continued to enjoy his life. And he tolerated all of the uncomfortable treatments with stoicism. He just did what he needed to do without complaint. As we often said, “Faden, thy name is resilience.”
Another word for resilience is optimism, an often mis-understood term. Optimism doesn’t mean we believe everything is rosy, especially when all evidence is to the contrary. Bad things happen to each of us. We will get put down. People we love will die. People we love won’t always love us back. We may not get that job we want. Worse, that undeserving no-good so and so might get it instead. We’ll set our sights on a lofty goal, and then fall flat. Welcome to life.
Resilience is what gets us through. When a loved one dies, we need to grieve. When we get rejected by someone important to us, we need to hurt. These are ways we let ourselves know that these relationships were important. But if we stay stuck in those emotions, we won’t know love in the future. Taking a chance on getting hurt again, and we will, is the only way to find love again. Taking those chances is resilience.
Failure, unfortunately, is a part of life. I personally hate failure. But many of my best opportunities showed up when I was flat on my face. My mother liked to
repeat the old saying, “When one door closes, another one opens.” Resilience is going in search of that open door.
Speaking of a loved one dying, Faden died a couple of months ago at age 14. He probably should not have lived past 6. In fact, he was lucky to get out of PetSmart when he was a kitten. But that affectionate, resilient cat built a life for himself that we got to share.
You can learn more about relationships and resilience by reading A Little Book to Save Humanity https://theeqpress.com Exercises to build each of those skills are available on the same site.
