Tag Archives: gratitude

If you don’t have pets, then you won’t truly understand where I’m coming from.  Feeling like a furry animal is a part of your family or, further, is one of your children sounds just plain silly if you have never bonded with a pet of your own.

About 4 years ago, I lost my beloved kitty, “Sweetie.”  She was a beautiful long-haired Calico.  I adopted her when she was around a year old and I was single, living by myself in an apartment.  She was more than my companion, she was my first child.  

She was a trooper adjusting to several moves from one apartment to another.  Then to a home, a husband and a big black lab mix named, Misty.  She wasn’t sure about Misty at all, but she put up with her.  A few years later, she got an even bigger adjustment: we had our first child.  Then three years later, our daughter arrived.  A house with babies and toddlers wasn’t her cup of tea, yet she was patient, forgiving and gentle.  When they were too noisy or aggressive, she simply went her own way and let them be.  

She was an indoor/outdoor cat and one night, she never came home.  We roamed the neighborhood and called animal shelters and animal control.  Animal control told us several animals had been killed by coyotes in our area and they were afraid that may have been her fate.  Although that was hard to accept, she was 16 years old, lived a good life and I knew in my heart that she would have never been happy had she lived indoors alone.  I could not regret letting her have freedom to roam outdoors.

We went a few years without a cat, but I always missed having a feline companion.  We adopted a nice little tabby cat (who is still a part of our family), but the bond wasn’t the same.

Then, we found this little cutie at the Humane Society (BTW, all of our animals are shelter animals…you can read their stories here.).

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