Originally published: . Volume 10, No. 5. Source pages: 2.
Gig Costello, I-O psychologist, frequently reminds me that Irv lane, an I-O professor of ours, used to notice how people rushed around "Enthusiastically solving the wrong problem."
Archimedes walked into my writing room cradling a howling kitten that was so tiny it fit into his hand. The kitten had magically appeared in our barn, belting out her complaints at decibel levels that we could hear from inside the house. After a few hours we concluded that the mother wasn’t coming back, and that this was another coerced adoption. (We acquired our last family cat in the same way ––I feel sure this is a co-evolutionary strategy between cats and humans).
It wasn’t bad timing. "I'd been thinking of another cat," Archimedes said, “But I wasn’t thinking about one this little." We had no experience trying to foster a kitten this young, but mothering instincts kicked in for both of us and we jumped into action.
Archimedes called the vet, "What do we do?" Bottle feed. Milk substitute. Be patient said the YouTube experts. Use the right kind of nipple. Try warming the milk. Don’t make it too hot, or too cold. Brush with a soft toothbrush. Be careful, kittens are very fragile.
As directed, we firmly held her head with one hand and gently pried her mouth open, slipping the nipple into her mouth then we'd dropper in a sip of milk. Archimedes had a knack for steady, forceful control, with no chance for escape. I would try to coax, cajole, pet and sing her into it. Armed with advice from the vet, the pet store, and the fanatics on YouTube we strived to be patient and careful. We spent $150 in pet supplies buying various milk substitutes, baby bottles, droppers, syringes, and nipples, even something called a "squirrel nipple."
The tiny thing fought us the whole time, squirming and kicking. Why is she not sucking on this bottle? Let’s try a different nipple. Let’s cut a larger hole in it. Let’s warm the milk more. All painfully tedious.
After a few days we became anxious and a little desperate. We couldn’t see how a few milliliters of milk substitute was going to keep this creature alive. I stayed up all night with her trying to find a way to help her adapt to the bottle. Archimedes took the kitten and went looking for the mother in the woods around our house. Kittens this age were supposed to be drinking at least 15 ml at a feeding, we were lucky to make five.
Another day passed and we began to despair, considering our options. We could spend $1000 at the vet to keep her alive. We could euthanize her (Nobody with intact emotional circuitry could kill this kitten.) Or we could keep trying and risk the kitten starving to death, as one expert warned. We decided to let go and let God.
Letting go and accepting whatever happened also had the result of allowing more risk-taking and so when Archimedes brought home a Sam’s rotisserie chicken I decided to take some of the drippings and see if the kitten could independently eat something not in a bottle.
She gobbled down the consommé like she was starving (she was). Eureka. We offered her a tiny piece of pork. She wolfed that down and didn't choke! We sat there and fed her bites of pork for 30 minutes––amazed by our stupidity––while she ferociously attacked her food.
Archimedes and I had framed the problem and anchored our solutions in a false problem definition. The kitten was not small because she was young, she was small because she was malnourished, being the offspring of a wild cat in the neighboring woods. This kitten could eat normal food. Five days after we rescued her, she’s practically eating her weight in cat food. We're lucky we didn't starve her to death trying to help her.
We see this all the time–– dramatic examples of the psychology of judgment. Turn on either red or blue news and we see cognitive frames, anchors, confirmation bias and overconfidence in conclusions and decisions. We like to think that we’re more right than wrong, but the likelihood is we're usually more wrong than right. Starting with that insight is an antidote, and collaborative problem-solving a good treatment, for what we call human judgment.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.