Another Rescue! Plus............... FEED A CAT FOR CHRISTMAS! KRISTIN and DARRIN!

First and Foremost - FEED A CAT FOR CHRISTMAS!  Thank you KRISTIN and DARRIN!!!    What can I say about these two?  Oh....  mucho.  Kris is my BOO.  And Darrin is hers.  :)  Both great peeps, have been with me through thick and thin after all these years.  Shelter builders, kitten finders, vet payers, hand holders.  Thanks guys, I appreciate it very much.  You will have fed over 100 cats today.

Taken this morning -
Feeding Kitties on Central Park - 5:04 a.m.

RESCUE:

But no pic.  (later).  But he is a HANDSOME boy.  If you will recall, there is a guy by the name of Max who migrated from Boston to attend the University of Rochester, bought a house recently, moved in with his Dalmation dog - OLLIE, and found me, somehow, on Facebook, and offered to foster a cat for me, any cat, right off the street. 

I wanted to share something that Max shared on Facebook, just to give you an idea about this guy - I don't think I am breaking any code here, he shared it, and I am in awe of his philosophy on life, and his tender heart.  This is the same guy that fostered our big old Buddy cat.  Buddy was recently adopted along with Mara and Pebbles.  Max did a great job with Buddy, acclimating him to Ollie as well.

This new cat – who I’ve fed, and the neighbors have fed all summer – is white and black, just like Ollie, the Dalmation dog.  I am naming him Griffin, Griff for short.  As all of you know, I try to name the cats after the first letter of the street they are rescued on.  Most times, the cats names are changed when they are adopted.   Griffin will hopefully get into clinic this morning for neuter, shots and combo test, to the tune of $100+  He will then go to Max this weekend.  Fingers crossed he likes Ollie!

Back to Max, here is the post he made recently – I hope you like it!  

I’m not normally a big sharer, but I wish I could share what I know now with myself about 6 months ago. For me, the past few years have been a time of growth but also a time of disappointment and uncertainty. Much of this centered around my career, my future, and graduate school, but also overlapped with my personal life. Earlier this year, I was disappointed to find out that I did not get into any of the few Ivy League/“prestigious” PhD programs I had applied to. I thought that as someone at the top of my class at Harvard, I was guaranteed to get into these programs, or even that I had a right to, and that not getting into them was a profound personal failure. When this news came to me I was upset with myself and felt a deep lack of direction- not sure if I should wait a year to reapply, choose a different program, or even do something else entirely. While I don’t know why I did not get into these programs, I think that my few years in the corporate world may have had something to do with it. Nonetheless, I went to my remaining interviews- my last, at the University of Rochester, was more because I wanted to meet a professor there whose work I thought was interesting, and I did not seriously envision myself going there for school. However, when I got there and had a chance to meet and speak with the professor I knew, I was surprised to find that they had just started working on exactly what I had always wanted to work on- research on aging in the longest-lived mammal in the world, the Bowhead whale. I left that interview weekend with a renewed sense of interest, but still did not really see myself going there for a PhD. Wasn’t I too good for the University of Rochester? Shouldn’t I be somewhere more prestigious? Would people I knew, or even people I didn’t know, question my decision?

Over time, though, I thought more about what my priorities in life really were. If I asked high school Max what he wanted to do some day, wasn’t this exactly what he would have said? Didn’t I try to work on this exact project in college, only to find that it wasn’t feasible at the time? Didn’t I, underneath it all, still really want to do this, looking for opportunities to pursue this work wherever I could? High school me didn’t even have any desire or intention to get into Harvard, and certainly wasn’t expecting to get in. That Max knew what he wanted, and I know what he would have told me to do now.

Maybe a more “prestigious” program was what I thought I was “supposed” to do, but ultimately I decided that I wanted to live my life, not somebody else’s. I couldn’t let my circumstances of the past few years lead me to live a life I really did not want to lead. Right at the deadline, I made the decision to enroll at the University of Rochester, and finally actually pursue the goal that I had been putting all of my work toward the whole time.

It’s amazing how over time, we can almost lose sight of what we really want even as we claim to be working toward it. When the opportunity we have always been looking for comes along, we may not even recognize it at first because of how distracted we have become. Superficial concerns like reputation, the opinions of others, and chasing prestige and respect can take over. While these things can provide a fleeting sense of pride or admiration from others, I’ve found that they are really empty accomplishments and don’t bring happiness. For the first time in years, I feel a clear sense of direction and purpose in my life, and I strongly feel that I made the right choice. I am very happy with where my life is right now. I don’t know what the future may hold, but right now I feel like I am exactly where I should be, doing what I am meant to, and that is all I can ask for in life.

Sometimes it takes all of your plans falling apart to realize that these things were not really what you wanted, and that you were clinging onto them because they were safe, obvious, and predictable. I think that I, like many people, have a hard time envisioning unexpected possibilities in the future, and tend to cling on to people, places, and opportunities that I know because these seem like the best and safest options. Things can seem very dark when those safe and predictable options let you down, but you never know what opportunities life will drop at your feet. Sometimes it takes something seemingly good falling to pieces for something better to take its place, and for you to make a change or take a leap that you may not have taken otherwise.

If there is anything I have learned from this experience, it is that failure and loss are not always bad, even though that may not be clear at the time. Don’t hold on to people, places, and careers that don’t really fulfill you just because you think you will never find something better. Whether you are unhappy with the state of our country, your personal relationships, or your career, all of which are feelings I have had recently, remember that these situations are not permanent and something even better than you could have imagined might very well take their place. It may take loss, or letting go, for you to open your eyes and have the freedom to see those better options for what they really are, and to take that bold step into something new. Embrace your failures and your successes, your losses and your gains, and understand that they are all important parts of building a great life.

Have a great day!

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

Learn as if you were to live forever."