Gratitude

July 18, 2014 – Milo has always been so hard to take photos of because we never had any outside space where he could go. Now we do, and for the first time I can take photos that show off his lovely brown coat. This little cat had a really lousy start to life, and when he came to us at a year and a half he only weighed six pounds, only had half his hair, could barely breath, and was sneezing bloody mucus. He had lived the bulk of the first year and a half of his life in a cage, and didn’t even know how to jump. He had to find a way up on the bed that involved a convoluted series of elevation increases to get there. He didn’t even know how to get on the couch.

But he had the biggest personality in any cat you’ve ever met.

And he was smart. Really, really, smart. You could see him thinking and problem solving. He could see something on a shelf that he couldn’t reach, but he would figure out that if he went there, then there, then there, he could get on to the shelf next to whatever it was that caught his eye, and reach around blindly, and get whatever he wanted. He pulls books off shelves, takes pictures off walls, removes items from shelves…. whenever we find some object out of place, on the floor when it was in a cupboard…we say it has been “Milo-cated”.

He didn’t know he was a cat, I don’t think he knew what he was.

Sometimes I still wonder what he is, he’s part monkey, that’s for sure.

We call him our Little Brown Bear.

He will never be able to breathe right, he’s been on every antibiotic, antiviral, anti-fungal, antihistamine…. anti-everything, and had several off-label drugs tried on him. He even had a CT scan last year (at a phenomenal cost) to see if we could fix him surgically. The final verdict was no, his nasal passages were too damaged from early in life, we just have to take care of him and always be on the lookout for any respiratory infections and be ready to act.

We didn’t think he’d live long, but he’s ten now. We really didn’t think he’d be with us that long. But we are grateful for every day he shares with us.

I bought a silly fake grass rug for the upper deck today, Milo took possession of it immediately, and wow does he stand out on it.

A friend tagged me in a post on Facebook – identify three things each day, for five days, that I feel are positive in my life. That’s easy! I am grateful for things every day. I don’t usually engage in challenges of this sort, I tend to think of them as modern day chain letters, and I never send those on.

But why not, sometimes it’s good to identify and recognize those things/people/events in your day that should be noted, because they are fabulous things that make your life the awesome one it is.

1. So there is #1. That we rescued this little brown bear and that he is the most engaging creature that ever drew my blood. (he’s a cat, he plays hard, he has claws, I don’t always remember to clip them before playing…). I am grateful for the companionship of our animals.

2. After work today we went to pick up four stools for our new kitchen counter. So there is #2. That our new kitchen, in our fabulously 1951 new home, has made our fabulous new home even more fabulous and that we have found our forever home. I am mostly grateful that we have a home. So many don’t.

3. After we dropped off the stools, we went down to Lonsdale Quay and walked over to the Shipyard Night Market where we enjoyed some wonderful ethnic foods from the food trucks. We sat and ate on the pier before heading back up home to Edgemont and walking into the Village where we enjoyed the Friday night free concert along with most of the community. So that’s #3. We made the North Shore home 20 years ago, and we found that it provided a much greater sense of community that when we were living downtown. So I am grateful for community.