Chicken Nuggets and Forgiveness

Have you tried these chicken nugget things?  They are delicious!! Technically I am not supposed to eat them, but I stole one from my tiny human the other day.  She started laughing but my tall human did not.  She tried to take the chicken nugget away from me, thus the chase began. I am not proud of what happened next. Due to the wonderful taste of the chicken nugget I went into what the tall human refers to as “wild mode”.  She said that the rumbling coming from my chest was not purring, this time I was growling.  When my tall human got close to getting the chicken nugget, I swiped my paw at her and unfortunately, I scratched her.  
 
In the moment it seemed like victory. My tall human backed off and I was left to devour my ill-gotten chicken nugget. It was heaven or so I thought.  After the chicken nugget was gone and I had successfully spent an hour cleaning any remnants from my paws, mouth, fur, and floor I decided to seek out my humans.  That is when I realized the extent of the mistake that I had made.  When I went to sniff and rub up against my tall humans’ hand, I discovered that my swiping scratch had left several cuts. 
 
The guilt immediately set in.  I tried to help clean the scratches, but she wouldn’t let me.  She set me back down on the floor and walked away.  It really started to feel like the chicken nugget hadn’t been worth it.  My humans are my snuggle buddies, my playmate, my chefs, and quite frankly, my life. I sat quietly near them as the tall human cleaned her hand. My tiny human berated me for not “being nice”.  It truly felt like I had not only hurt my tall humans’ hand, I had damaged the trust between us.    Dejected, I decided to sit in a chair outside of the office, away from my humans. 
 
I wasn’t there for long.  After she was done fixing her hand my tall human came looking for me.  There was a big part of me that was expecting some consequence for my actions, but instead she just picked me up and brought me back into the office.  She set me down on her desk and our day just continued.  It was amazing! Even though I had hurt her, she didn’t reject me. She had forgiven me.  I stayed a little closer to my tall human for the rest of the day, and I even sat still and let her trim my claws once we got home. Just for the record, having my claws trimmed is not my favorite activity, but I felt like I owed her this one.
 
I love my humans.  They have truly accepted me just because I am me. While the temptation when it comes to chicken nuggets has not decreased, in fact now that I know what they taste like it has increased, my humans do what they can to help me.  Now when there are chicken nuggets in the office they will eat in a different room with the door closed, thus effectively helping me not give into the temptation to swipe a nugget and go into “wild mode”.  It feels amazing to know that even if I do slip up again there will still be love between me and my humans, and you what? That makes me want to not slip up again.  Forgiveness and love are the  strongest actions on the planet.