Rainbows, Celebrating 20 Years of Care

Imagine the person you love most in the world. See them in your mind, remember what their voice sounds like, remember how it feels when you see them, if your tummy did somersaults the first time they came into your world. Think about the love you feel for them, what you would do to protect them.   Now imagine your life without them. Imagine waking up every morning to realise they're no longer in your life. That person you love more than anything, who you would do anything to protect, anything to keep safe is gone from your life and not coming back. It's not that they've walked away; they're no longer in the world. They're gone and they're not coming back.

Imagine if that was your child; the child you gave birth to, or the child you watched being born, or the child you met at the age of 4 and adopted- the miracle that someone else gave you. Imagine this: all that love you're imagining is real; all that loss you're imagining is going to be real one day; your child you're seeing in your minds eye, or are dreaming of, or will be seeing all too soon is real. And they have a life-limiting, life threatening illness and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can't wrap them in a bubble of love; you can't hold them and tell them everything is going to be alright; and you know that the possibility of you burying your own child is a very real and quite probable reality.

It's the kind of thing you hear about- but know it could never happen to you. Or you see an article in the paper and think 'oh how horrible, I'm so glad that's not happening to me'. But it happens; premature death is real, parents do outlive their children and people are left behind, missing their big brothers or little sisters. It's not a romantic story about one couple's fight to save their baby, it's the reality of doing anything you can to make your child's life a bit better in place of it being longer. Some diseases can't be fought. Some illnesses don't get healed through miracles. Some children die.

And it's horrible. It's not nice for the child, it's not nice for those left behind and it sure as hell isn't nice to watch. You wake up every day and thank some higher power that your family is still alive but then you get up and wake your 5 year old who has to get themselves ready for school whilst you wash and dress your 15 year old who hasn't walked in nearly ten years. A door isn't wide enough- your holiday get cancelled. A cold means a week in a High Dependency Unit. Treatment isn't developed, your child slips away with you watching.

Let's rewind. Imagine those feelings again, that child, those pangs of grief as you sit in a room and doctor explains in clinical terms that your child has a condition which could very well destroy them. A week later you get a phone call- "we can help". A place where your child can go, be looked after and live happily- not for good, just to give you a break. Not only does this place offer respite for your poorly child, they'll also help out with your healthy children- emotional support, fun days, opportunities they wouldn't normally get because of their disabled or ill sibling. You get these opportunities too, mind. You get breaks, emotional support and the chance to give your child a safe, happy place where they can go every now and then, make friends like them and feel normal and special simultaneously.

Well these places exist. One, very close to my heart, is Rainbow's Hospice for Children and Young People. They have helped me and my family out incredibly, giving respite care to my brother which in turn gives my parents a rest, emotional support for my other siblings, myself and parents, fabulous trips to meet various big wigs, ponies in bedrooms, emergency care, incredible facilities, fundraising nights and most importantly, giving us all a bit of hope. We're not the only family to have been helped by Rainbows; thousands of families have received support just like mine over the past 2 decades, making this year Rainbow's big TWO-ZERO. My family would not have gotten through the past 8 years without them and I want to give them a massive thank you for everything they've done for us and the other families who have visited Rainbows throughout the years. They've been there in crisis', when Josh has been in hospital, advances in his conditions, always with a smile and sometimes with latex-free glove puppets. People might think a children's hospice is a morbid idea, but honestly I think it's the happiest place on earth. Yes, many of the children who go to Rainbows will sadly pass away, but their time there being looked after and loved means more to their families than anything a hospital or school could have given them. Children's hospices aren't about dying; they're about living. They're about making the differences they can make in a child's life while they still can; they're about celebrating people's differences and helping everyone cope a little (lot) better with those; and most importantly they're about hope.

That's why they're called Rainbow's; because rainbows bring hope.

Thank you for reading. The biggest and best thing you could do now, for me, is to go to the Rainbow's website, have a little look around and if you could, please please please donate. The best cause there is in my eyes. They've done more for my family than any other charities put together and every single penny counts a massive deal towards costs of keeping Rainbows running and its residents cared for. You could even do a fundraiser- handcuff yourself to your best friend for 24 hours, do a skydive, have a cake sale, lottery, coffee morning, anything counts.

Thank you.

The Perfect Hide-er

This week's Dr Who episode was about something I've thought about my whole life. Maybe they're just hallucinations, maybe I've been been dreaming, or maybe - just maybe - there is something else there. The main focus of the episode was that evolution has perfected survival skills; hunting, defense... hiding? Because - as the script quite rightly pointed out - if there was such creature to have perfected hiding, how would we know? A main theme within this theory was people talking to themselves, which I happen to do quite a bit.

I'm not one of the world's mumblers. I have hearing problems and constantly think everyone else is mumbling, so I sure as anything don't mumble. In fact, I was once reprimanded for having a good time by a total stranger in a coffee shop because 'there are other people in the room, you know, having their own conversations, not wanting to hear yours'. Firstly, I'll explain about this story that the woman was sat right next to me and there were plenty of empty tables. The only other people in the downstairs seating area we were in, were two men at different tables with their headphones so loud I could hear the words to their music and a woman looking totally disinterested in her surroundings, buried in a book. This woman, however, had chosen to take the time out of her conversation to specifically ask me to shut up. So I most certainly am not one of the world's mumblers. I do however mumble when I'm talking to myself. Apparently.
One time when I was in year 8, my neighbour's dad gave us a lift home from school. There were 5 children in the car plus a driver, so my neighbour sat in the very back seat in the middle of his car. About 30 seconds from our homes, I glanced into the rear-view mirror, completely out of chance to see my neighbour's eyelids raised higher than I thought possible, a probably imitation of the earliest recorded duck-faces and cheeks sucked in as if impersonating a fish. He basically looked like the kid on the tangfastic advert. The face then changed; lips remained in a forward pout but angled downwards, eyebrows furrowed into his nose and cheeks tightened, as if in a smile. I then asked what he was doing and, changing his face again, he told me matter-of-factly that he always does it: just like some people talk to themselves in the mirror, he makes faces at himself.
I'm not really suggesting that there's something there with you constantly watching you pull your faces in the reflection, or listening when you tell the empty house that you're going to make a cup of tea, but there must be a reason we do it.
I personally find it embarrassing that I can't stay in a room without keeping myself company; this weekend when I was at my friend's house, I got changed into my pajamas at night in the bathroom, sang a bit of Disney, then caught my eye in the mirror. That's when my 'thing' happened. See I don't talk to myself in the mirror. Call me crazy, call me lonely, regardless of what I am, I have conversations in my head, but I say my part out loud... except I don't: I mumble. I have hypothetical conversations with real people. I hear their response inside my head, and then mumble back to them in a very thorough response. Sometimes it's a continuation of an earlier argument from the day, sometimes it's them commenting on how I look and me bouncing a conversation off that, sometimes I'm just telling them what I think. But whatever we're talking about, I'm mumbling. Now I could tell you the logical explanation of mumbling in these conversations as being: they're in my head, the sound doesn't have to travel far so I don't need to say it loudly. The real reason though is that I'm scared someone else might hear and think I'm strange. But this week's video will pretty much confirm any speculation that I'm a bit different. I was surprisingly calm though when my friend - who at the time had been waiting outside the bathroom door, drink for me in hand - asked me in the morning if I talk to myself.
"What?"
"I heard you. Last night... the toilet, mumbling."
"Oh yeah I do that a lot."
"Hmm, me too. I thought it was just me!"
"So did I until now."
So me and Meghan were happy little bunnies, having discovered the other one talks to themselves in mirrors. Well look, there is another person in that mirror and I'm hearing half a conversation in my head. If I didn't respond I don't know what would happen, but it would probably involve more medication.
The thing about mirrors and me is that I really don't like them. That's not an insecurity of me not liking how I look - heck I'm a teenager, I know we all do that. No, my personal vendetta with mirrors is that they cannot be trusted. I'd let you break a thousand mirrors before you told me honestly that you trust them. Because, really, who trusts something without a colour?
Oh yes, that's right. What colour is a mirror? Silver? That's what I thought. Look again. That mirror you've been watching yourself in day after day? There is no colour to it. It imitates you, imitates anything put in front of it - it just copies. It takes on the colour of whatever is mumbling to it. Right now I can see a lamp, the top of a door frame and some whiskey tins. No mirror though, just a frame with a reflection. I just don't understand how anything without a colour can be trusted.
Maybe that's why I whisper. Maybe the creature that's perfected hiding is right in front of you, day-in-day-out. Maybe the creature who's perfected hiding in evolution is humans. Maybe we created something that can't be seen.

OoooooooOOOOOOOooooooooO creepy. Anyway, let me know in the comments below on the ever-so-fabulous google+ whether you mumble or shout at your reflection, let me know if you come up with the colour of a mirror and definitely let me know when you trust hidden-creature-creations again.

Chapter One

It probably won't seem it, but this is actually quite a personal post. I was told a while ago that I should write a book, so I started. This is part of my first chapter. I was totally stuck on what to do for this week's blog post, and you'll well you won't actually notice that this post is out about 8 hours later than my usual release. That's because I only decided I'd release this material at about 12:30pm, as me and my brothers were on our way to Belvoir Castle. So here it is. Be gentle, it's a first draft and like I said, quite personal to me. Let me know if you think I should do a blog post to explain the importance of this post next week.

My earliest memory of Josh and I is when I was about 3 years old. My sister and I shared the largest bedroom in the new house. It was upstairs and I had just gone from my cot to a converted cot-bed. The room was largely empty- despite a rocking chair, large bookshelf, toy-storage unit and a sofa in the corner. My 'bed' had giant cushions in it with Aztec patterns on, which made up for the lack of padding in the mattress. My point is, the room was massive and Josh didn't see it often, so one day when he wasn't at school my mum had carried him upstairs and we were playing under my bed. I have no idea what game we were playing, or why we were under the bed, but I remember laughing until I couldn't breathe. The sight must have been funny when my mum walked in- half of your 8-year-old son sticking out from underneath your youngest daughter's bed; you daughter no where in sight; the sound of both of these children laughing hysterically at something you couldn't see. For some reason though, my mum took Josh downstairs and so play time was over. To this day I have no idea why she took him downstairs, but I think I remember that was the first time I'd experienced the emotion 'resentment'. Obviously as a child I didn't know what that emotion was called, but I knew it wasn't nice to feel and that I probably wasn't meant to be feeling it. But I did. And that feeling stayed with me for a long time, which I'll talk about over the next few hours, days or weeks- however long it takes you to read this.

My next memory is maybe a year or two later- I was singing to the Winnie The Pooh theme tune, but making the words up. It went something like "I love Joshie, I love Joshie, silly willy nilly old Josh my brother- I love Joshie, Josh loves me-e, silly willy nilly old Bruv". Now as a kid I was pretty impressed with myself for managing to not only put different words to a tune, but also fit the syllables in and still allow the words to make sense- which a lot of artists these days can't even do! Ever heard of the four-chord song? Look it up. Since the 1940's, popular songs have generally been comprised of the same chord progression. Now various versions of this song float around, some with G, C, D and Em, but the original, by Axis of Awesome, used E, B, C# and A. The point of these songs is that no matter how different songs may sound initially, played acoustically they would sound pretty similar. Since the melody lines for these chord progressions have now pretty much been exhausted, artists have now started blatant plagiarism without noticing. Listen to Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri, then Halo by Beyoncé. 'Remember those walls I built' and 'who do you think you are' are exactly the same tune. It's like the revelation about the alphabet and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. So hearing a child below the age of 5 to being able to write at the standard of Christina Perri in 2011, anyone would be impressed. Josh certainly was, and each time I began the chorus again he burst into laughter. I didn't see what was so funny, but he did, so I kept going for a good half hour whilst our child-minder did some arts and crafts with our brother and sister- who in this time are coming across significantly more sensible than myself and Josh.

Lizzie wasn't always this calm and composed though. Each morning before school, me and Lizzie (at this time Josh was calling her Libby because it sounded 'more cheeky' according to Josh and so matched her personality better) would stand in the driveway behind the gate, and Josh would whizz around on the pavement on the other side, pretending to be a jailer- Lizzie and I were prisoners. How did we come up with this game? No clue. Why did we come up with this game? Je ne sais pas. Why were we playing it? Josh was waiting for his transport to pick him up and me and Lizzie liked to wait with him. This started when I was in year 1, Lizzie was in year 3 and Josh was in year 7. I don't know how long it went on for but I remember it happening a lot! Josh went to Chilwell Comprehensive, as it was back then, and he was taken every day by Arrow Cars- specialized transport for young people with disabilities.

In the summer holidays when we were about the same age, all four of us were quite close and we used to pretend to run holiday clubs- this must have been great for our parents; we entertained ourselves and for the most part did so without any arguments. We created Big Muvver. M.U.double-V.E.R. We even had a theme tune- again copied the melody line, from the Vimto advert at the time- V.I.M.T.O: The fruitiest word I know! If you're a similar age to me or older you'll remember the 2004 disco style the advert was sung in. If you're the same age as my parents or older, you'll remember the song D.I.S.C.O. This was the same as our Big Muvver show. Yes, we recorded it. Voice recordings. The best of spy-kit technology from the early 2000's was a voice recorder Ben had gotten for his birthday, and this was used to record various episodes. Literally. If I walked through to Josh in the next room right now and exclaimed 'What's this?!' in an animated voice, I'm sure he would respond 'Hidden contraband!!'. I can't remember too much why that episode happened, but my sister had taken one of my soft toys from my bed to start the BIG MUVVER show going that day and I sent Ben upstairs to investigate. He immediately found my toy- Blue Dolly- and thus came "What's this?! Hidden contraband!!". For the rest of the day, we sat around Ben's Dictaphone and listened to those four words repeated over and over again, each time falling into fits of giggles. I don't remember many other episodes, other than one which was almost a foreshadowing of our relationships now.

We were birds. We were flying. I think we were betting sweets on how high each of us could jump from the stairs. Our house is a dormer-bungalow, which means that it's architecturally designed as a bungalow, but the dormers are actually another floor. The stairs are built into the foundations of the house and climb the wall around one edge of the house. Our flight of stairs has a landing half way up. It's only about 4 feet from ground level and the distance from where the stairs finish to the landing is about 5 feet. I've never been good at maths, but I know there is a physics equation that can be done to work out how far that jump was. To me, at the age of 8, it was 8 stairs- which logic told me I could easily manage: one stair for each year of my life. Ben, me and my sister were always being told off for jumping the last two steps when we were coming downstairs and we never took any notice of this, so jumping a few more steps every now-and-then didn't seem like that much of a danger. I went first and did the normal hop of the last two steps. Then Lizzie as she was next in age, went from the 4th step. She managed it, landed on both feet and put her arms up in a 'v' as she'd been taught in gymnastics at school. Ben crouched on the 5th step and jumped, spread-eagled to the floor, landing like a bush baby on all-fours. Here came my second turn. I thought it over in my head a few times 'I can totally do that jump. 5 steps is nothing, they're so wimpy'. So I ran up the stairs, zipped round on my heels and ran to jump. As I was doing this, Lizzie, Ben and Josh were sat telling me that it was quite a high jump, asking if I wanted one of those big cushions from my room, telling me I didn't have to do it to prove I could jump the furthest. Let's evaluate the situation from my point of view at the age of 8- I'm the youngest. I'm the skinniest. I'm the shortest. These therefore make me the lightest. The expression 'babies bounce' had been around long before I had. I totally should have made that jump and landed without a trace of it on my body!

But of course that didn't happen.

I was carried to Ben's bed where I remained for the rest of the afternoon. A sick episode of foreshadowing by our lovely universe dictated my three siblings looking after me- fetching me drinks and snacks and making sure our parents weren't aware of my fall. At the time we probably thought I'd broken it, though even if I had we wouldn't have found out because to this day* our parents have no idea that this happened. They knew about big MUVVER being no more, but they were clueless as to the reason that this was the last episode of big MUVVER to ever take place in the Hall Family Household.


*actually, as of this day, my parents know; they overheard me reminding my brothers of it in the car on the way to Belvoir castle today. My mum was horrified, saying "how did I not know this?" and "where was I when this happened?" It reminds me of when she read this post , saying "you didn't really do this, did you? I don't remember it, I would have been there, wouldn't I?" Which will actually lead me into my next chapter. That's quite a sad chapter and again, very personal, and for that reason I don't intend to publish it unless in its book.

P.S. My parents had a lot to deal with when we were growing up.

Autism (and cats)

This blog post is going to be (totally) different to my usual post; I’ll try and make it funny because in essence, the girl I’m going to talk about is hilarious. But it’s not such a ‘funny’ topic and I don’t want to stomp around trying to own this ‘thing’ and end up offending people in the process because I’m not an expert, I just have an amazing friend in my life who has educated me further in this field of… I don’t know, field of medicine? Emotional/social health? I don’t know. Why don’t YOU tell me what category Autism falls into? Because all I can put it in is ‘variation of normal’- just like everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, seriously, do not mistake this for me saying autism isn’t complex, it is. Autism is complex as shit, and it can range over such a spectrum (hence the term ‘autistic spectrum’) and it can be so mild it can go undiagnosed for years, or it can be so severe that a child can never live an independent life, stuck in a world of meltdowns and hallucinations and an inability to communicate with anybody. Autism can tear families apart, and it can bring them together. For me, autism is a twinge on my friend’s life that messes with her head, emotions and social interactions.

Meet Meghan, known to my family as ‘Meghan-with-a-h’ (the ‘h’ is pronounce [huh], not [aych]), but to me she’s Meghan or Megmoo or stinky poo, because friends give friends nicknames, that’s just a thing that friends do. Meghan is almost 16, did 2 forward rolls on Saturday night and can’t stand the colour orange. She dances ALL THE TIME, sasses her parents and swears too much. She’s awkward around people she doesn’t know and often misinterprets what people say. Her mood can be fab one day and bad the next, and her autism sometimes makes her feel things that other people don’t feel, or blocks her from feeling what other people feel.

She’s pretty normal, just normal with autism, but she is quite a complex little munchkin. She often has us laughing over the tiniest little misunderstanding. I’ve been told by her family many times that when she was little she went shopping with her sister, who told her when they got home to ‘put your new clothes on and do the cat walk for mum and dad’. So Meghan put all of her new clothes on, got down on all fours, and started meowing and purring. The other night her family and I were watching a well-known talent show and Allie (Meghan’s mum) cried at a song along with some of the judges on said talent shows’ panel. Meghan said she knew people cried at songs, but didn’t know why. She said she knows people cry for happiness and sadness, but why a song? And it’s quite true really; what is it that signals in our brains for us to cry when we find a song ‘beautiful’? Because often the song isn’t sad or happy, the notes that are played or sang are just beautiful. And that logically wouldn’t be enough to make someone cry. Sometimes I think Meghan’s autism just makes her super honest, like if someone’s feet smell, she won’t do a round-about “Hmm, should we put our shoes back on?” Or “Oh I think my feet smell,” trying to hint at other people to check their own. Meghan will just flat out say “Hey, your feet smell”. I sometimes wish I could just carry her around in my pocket so she can say things I want to say but am too self-conscious to say. Like, when people you REALLY like’s breath smells. I don’t want to offend them, but if I carried round a pocket-sized Meghan, I could just whip her out and she’d be all:

“Your breath smells.”

And they’d be all “Frankie? Who is this?”

And I’d be all “Ah she’s autistic she can’t help it… but she’s right.”

And that’s how super-Megz would save the day for us all.

Other times she’s aware of how unaware she is, like when we went to buy some drinks because there weren’t any sugar free drinks in the house; Meghan decided what drink she wanted so I told her to go up to the cashier. She stood holding her drink, so I prompted her to pass it to the check-out lady. Then Meghan put the money on the wrong side of the till so the check-out lady couldn't reach it. After I’d corrected her, Meghan walked off with her drink- without her change. Silly Meghan. After that she joked about me being her carer because she doesn’t know how to ‘do shops’.

I don’t see all of the ways autism affects her, as I’m only around for a fraction of her life, but I do see quite a lot of what we call ‘autism moments’. Like when Meghan’s hamster died -- she poked him with a pen until she realised he was dead, then made me pick him up. “Only if you carry him downstairs,” I bargained. She agreed and held her hands out… until her cold, dead hamster was lying limp and lifeless in my hands and her hands escaped behind her back -- this bit’s all okay I think. The autism comes in when she carried the hamster down to her parents, holding the deceased Yoda up in front of her and singing the funeral march. Most people are gutted when their hamsters die -- as she was. Meghan just expresses herself in slightly different ways to other people.

Another thing I mentioned in brief earlier is about how she hates the colour orange. For instance, if this font suddenly changed to orange (sorry Meghan), she’d get either angry or upset, and would probably stop reading it. She’ll avoid things that she knows are orange, or rooms she knows have orange in, and doesn’t eat carrots or oranges.

A – quite prominent – symptom of autism is love of repetition or habitual behaviour. I haven’t seen this an awful lot with Meghan, but this weekend she was at home and she knew that where she had been that day, everyone was having a sandwich for dinner. When Allie told us the plan to have burgers for dinner, Meghan point blank refused. We did try haggling and I suggested slicing the burger in half so it was thinner, like sandwich meat, then putting that between two slices of bread, but Meghan just wouldn’t okay any of the ideas- other people were having sandwiches, so she would eat a sandwich. Probably because by essence, we were making her eat a burger, but it would have been her ‘norm’ to have a sandwich. I always think of cats when people talk about habitual behaviour in autism; cats love routine, and stick to a similar one each day. My cats both have very predictable patterns of what they do each day -- just like Meghan. Cats are actually so rigid in their routine that if something changes or their routine is knocked off balance, they can be quite poorly, even sick. This is similar to the anxiety people can feel in autism when their routine changes -- and anxiety can and does make people physically sick.

Meghan makes us all laugh most of the time, but often autism is very difficult to deal with. She gets quite anxious over little things like paying for things or talking to people. Sometimes she gets anxious for no reason or gets upset or angry over very small things, and she doesn’t know why she’s overreacting. This is very common in autism, and with more severe autism or autism in younger children, this is where meltdowns come in. A meltdown is different to a tantrum in one very specific way -- a child having a tantrum will care about what happens around them, they will look for reactions and want people to notice they’re not okay and comfort them. A child having a meltdown however, will go into their own world, where the reactions or the staring or the disapproving gasps from strangers don’t matter. The world outside their immediate emotion doesn’t exist and it can be very distressing, both for the autistic person/child and their parent/carer. In these meltdowns, self-harm can often occur, both intentional and unintentional. So if you do see a child kicking and screaming in the streets and a clearly embarrassed parent, don’t immediately judge them for being unable to ‘control’ their child -- for all you know they could have autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and be unable to control themselves.

I personally have never known prejudices against people with ASD, but I know that it exists out there. The world can be a really horrible place sometimes, and I can only imagine how much harder that is with ASD, sometimes being unable to understand what and why you’re feeling the way you are. I would probably say that having such a close friend as Meghan with autism has opened my eyes to autism and how it affects people. I wasn’t a ‘stranger’ to autism; I know what it is, that it can come in lots of shapes and sizes, and that sometimes everyone displays little ‘autistic moments’. But having Meghan just makes me care more about autism, I think.

Now I did find a post once on why cats should be the autism symbols not the puzzle piece, but I can’t find it; however I can pretty much make my own argument for it.

1. Cats like routine. As I previously mentioned, habitual behaviour is both a big symptom of autism and being a cat.
2. Cats are very touch-sensitive. They like being stroked a certain way, hate getting wet and do NOT like having the base of their tail stroked. Cats also avoid some textures because of the way their brains process them, such as walking on snow. This can be likened to an autistic child crying and wailing because they stood on a piece of cucumber (which is a horrible feeling anyway) and they don’t know how to process it. Also, I think it’s quite a common symptom that people with autism (kids especially) don’t like having their hair brushed? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Like I say, I’m not an expert.
3. Cats have poor social awareness. Ever heard someone calling their cat in? Ever thought ‘they’ve been calling for 45 minutes, why is the cat not responding?’ Well cats don’t respond to their names. It’s true that certain pitches are registered better than others by cats, but they generally won’t respond to someone calling their name. This can be likened to more severe autism, where sometimes the person will make noises in response to noises, such as copying an animal’s sound, but not even blinking when their own name is called.
4.  Cats reply to sounds. I often play the call-and-response game with my cat- she meows, I meow back, etc. This can be quite common in autism (as far as I know). Because of difficulties with communication sometimes experienced in autism, it can be comforting to just copy a noise you hear; such as a meow or a bark or a moo.
5.  Cats are cautious around new people. Just like Meghan, my cats will be very quiet and nervy if a stranger comes round and will sometimes hide until they’ve gone.
6. Cats are often sensitive to sound. A major degree of autism is to do with sensory processing, and sensory includes sound. My cats hate the vacuum cleaner, lawn mower, shouting or loud laughing, just like sometimes people with autism feel anxious when there are loud sounds or bright lights- even sometimes background noise like blinds flapping in wind. 
7. Cats react differently to different colours. In the same way the Meghan hates orange, one of my cats, Tigger, loves pink. Almost as strongly as Meghan is driven away from orange, Tigger is drawn to pink. I have a bed cover which is a cartoon character with his pink tongue sticking out- Tigger would only ever sit on the pink tongue on that duvet, and always preferred his pink blanket to the identical blue one my Mum originally bought for him.
8. Cats will choose when and how they show their affections to you. A cat will always be the decider of when you get a cuddle or are allowed to stroke them, and as soon as they're finished, no more fussing or cuddling can continue. Just like with higher end autism or in younger children, often they will decide when and when not hugging/kissing or even eye contact will happen.
9. Cats stim. For those of you who don't know what stimming is, it's a repetitive motion (can be physical or vocal) which is used to express emotions. NT's (neuro-typicals/people without autism) sometimes stim, for example, I make sounds like dinosaurs and rub my hands together really fast either when I'm happy or anxious, some people fiddle with things or chew their hair when they're nervous. Cats purr when they're happy, rub their teeth against books on a bookshelf and flick their tails when they're irritated or anxious.

Anyway, please feel free to leave a comment below if you agree with the cat-autism thing, or if anything stood out to you in this article or particularly made you laugh- I always love feedback and especially if something has been particularly prominent to you.

Also, I feel like I should just pop this fact in somewhere- it’s estimated that 80% of males have diagnosable autism, it is just often so mild that it can go undiagnosed, and also because such a high percentage of males display behaviours like that, it is considered ‘just how men are’.