I first expected not to get him back, and then they got my hopes up about maybe getting him back only to pull the rug back out from under my feet.

I've said it before, but you might not have read it MTP.
When I lived in Leicester, I was not allowed a rescue cat/ cats.
Because I lived on a main road.
Even though there were two doors between my flat and the road. And I told them from the start I wanted an indoor cat because I had no secure outdoor space. NB - neither of my boys ever got onto the main road.

It's more common now, in fact the very charities that turned me down now put out Homes Needed notices for "indoor cat only".

But that's why I ended up with two pedigrees.
And because they were older I got them at a discount, and by the time I'd have paid all the fees and the obligatory donation there was only about £50 difference. And I was working then.

The breeder wouldn't have sold to me if she had a crystal ball.
Losing Dylan and leading Diz a rackety old life in other people's houses.
But she didn't and I didn't.
And there is no doubt my remaining boy loves the very bones of me, as I do him - in our different ways.
Physically it would probably still be kinder to give him up.
With my health problems and financial problems I am ill suited to a cat who may start showing signs of old-age soon.
But emotionally and in terms of having formed a bond, I know we would both be miserable apart.

And no, I don't think I am projecting. Cat used to follow me to work. He still follows me about the house. Warm fire and Mum's welcome arms and lap in the living room (she loves both her troubled charges) and he'd still rather sit on my lap in an unheated bedroom while I read. Although I admit I will often pull the duvet up over him. After our freezy time in the draughty Leicester flat his favourite place has always been snoozing on my legs with the covers drawn up over his head :)
And when I am away (3-5 days max) he hides in my room, comes down to eat, then hides again. He's been living here for ?4? years.

Sorry, none of that helps you.

Just sharing how I feel, in sympathy. A dog on a string sitting next to a busker can be happier and feel more secure than a dog who is scolded every time they walk across the kitchen floor with wet paws or is shut away in a garage with a Mercedes for company all day.

I'm just glad you have Della. And I'm so sorry you were able to form a bond and then have the chance taken away from you. And from Toby.

Thank you Sundae for this. I get what you're saying about the cats, and it helps me not feel like I've been such a bad doggy parent.

Shitty rescue groups around here are driving people back to pet stores and Amish puppy mills. I'm certain of it.

They should do something about those Amish puppies.

It gets tiring calling them: Here Ezekial, Here Jebediah, Here Zachariah!

But they're great Lapp dogs.

And forget shock collars. They're electric! (boogie woogie woogie)

Absolutely. Dogs don't give a shit for luxury, cleanliness and good food. What they want and need is their pack. That pack can live anywhere. A dog that's loved and included in whatever your life is will be happy.



Hah! Out the house in Greenwich and down to the little art collective place?

And you can't even give the critters coffee to wake them up in the morn!
Or is that just Mormons?
That's it. But Dylan, Diz and later Hely (because she had to stay at Steve's when I moved into the pub) all came under the yard gate, so their journey was even quicker than mine.

Diz would wait patiently by the backdoor to the workspace.
Hely had an abandoned cat's instinct. She creeped under the gates to and from the yard and sat by the front door to the office instead. She even knew my gait and would hear me from halfway down the street, meowing and bussing me on the legs.

I don't write about her often because we were in eachother's lives so briefly, and I know the home she went to was very loving. But I still hurt that I imprinted myself on a rescue cat and had to leave her because of Diz.

I was just picking myself up from this morning's round of disappointing life-realizations, or trying to, starting by answering new emails and clearing junk (start as you hope to go on, right?).... when one came in that was a heartbreaking punch in the gut -no bad news, but the type of email that means bad news is coming "call me at x-o'clock to hear it" x o'clock is a long way away. I really don't know how to go on, but I don't know how to make it stop either. I don't have anyone to talk to.

Oh I wonder wonder wonder who...
who knows what my usertitle says

Anon there is nothing you can do.
Breathe.
Whatever the news is, it has already happened.
Because I don't know the circumstances I can't say any more, but it pretty much works for every situation.

If someone has found something out they shouldn't. It's done, breathe.
If it's bad health, or a worse prognosis than expected, it's already been happening. Breathe.
If someone is leaving, or contemplating leaving, it doesn't hinge on this call, it's part of a process. Breathe.

I'm absolutely rubbish about putting things in perspective. I suffer from anxiety even though I'm on medication. Sometimes the only way I can get to sleep is to remember what Mum used to say to me when I was crying myself sick over some minor issue, "What can you do about it? Right now? What can you do?" And the answer was always, of course, "Nothing." So her advice to relax and deal with it in the morning at least got me to sleep.

It doesn't work as well now I'm an adult. And it certainly doesn't work when Mum and I are in conflict! But the base-line is there and I appreciate it. That and breathing. It helps you stay alive.

Much love. Hope it doesn't hurt too much.

I hate that state of limbo: where you know there's some sort of 'outcome' and yet you have to wait for it to be revealed. On what I am sure is a much lesser extent, I'm in limbo here, and it sucks.

Just hang in there, anon. Nothing that happens between now and the call, least of all worrying, will change anything. But I wish I could tell you not to worry, and I wish you didn't have to worry.

Keep on keepin' on.

You know, the bombing of Boston has had me asking myself some searching questions.
About life, death, causes, death tolls, the importance of human life, where death matters and when it matters and politics and funding.

I think it helped me resolve some questions re the difference between American and UK politics and general attitudes of the population.
I'm painting with a broad brush and accept it may be wrong written small.
But I think we (the English - specifically the English) have an attitude toward terrorism, and our immediate neighbours, and our overseas counterparts, and our sense - or lack - of identity that is unique in the world.

I could not believe Clinton shook Gerry McGuiness's hand.
To me that would be like David Cameron shaking Tamerlan Tsarnaev's hand.
And he only killed three people.

I started listing IRA deaths but I've done it before and I'm tired of it, frankly.
But where were the main centres of fundraising for this kind of terrorism in Ireland? New York and Boston.

Mulling it over I think it's because as an island fortress we were always open to attack.
There were times of peace. Long lazy summers of it.
The majority of people were poor and hungry, and when the industrial revolution came and they moved off the land they were poor and hungry and sick. It wasn't all Downton Abbey.

Then came WWI.
Men who survived came home shellshocked, and even those without diagnosis had seen friends blown apart and rotting corpses used as part of the defenses.

"Between the wars" was a real and tangible time. People trying to cope, to fit back in, to forget.

But Chamberlain came back with a worthless piece of paper.
WWII

You saw what happened in Boston.
Imagine that to infinity.
Think about every single building in your city, town, village or hamlet smashed to bits. And any that weren't were shit in by foreign soldiers, because they had nowhere else to relieve themselves. Crops gone, woodland gone, homes gone, places of worship gone.

Didn't happen here, but bombed out streets, destroyed buildings, running for shelter, curfews and blackouts did. It haunted my grandparents' generation and filtered down to my parents (Dad was born in 1940 and bombed out of his house.) I heard Nanny and Grandad's stories and as I got older I heard Grandad relate the stories of their friends.

And then the IRA. All over the country (England - called the Mainland.)
Old men, boys, shoppers, trainee musicians who happened to think their best career choice was within the Army. Not a few people in a marathon. CHILDREN killed out shopping. Not once, but again and again and again.

And in NI the taxi drivers, builders, pizza delivery men. Because it was tit for tat. You kill a Catholic we kill a Protestant. Wrong religion - target. Same as Sunnis and Shi'ites.

So I do feel bad that people died and some lost their limbs in America.
Of course I do, that's what makes me human and stops me taking out my anger by killing.

I just think, I just hope, that people can focus on the cause rather than the result. Little helped in the Troubles, too much history and hatred ingrained.
Clinton did try in the end. Even though he had to talk to a murderer.

I'm glad America can and will move on.
I just hope those in command remember that being the biggest kid in the playground doesn't make you right. Hey, I'm English; of course I believe stiff upper lip is sometimes better than smackdown.

Right from the start, the 'British' national identity was forged first and foremost in opposition to the French. It took form against a backdrop of regular invasion scares. The sense of ourselves as an island at risk of invasion is as fundamental as the American sense of themselves as successful rebels against an overweaning empire.

That would explain the cooking...

Sundae, I remember how saddened and frustrated I was
over the daily/weekly reports on our tv of the killings in Ireland.
I really could not see how the British government was ever going to be able to end it all.
Even when the Irish Catholic and Protestant women joined together
trying to end the violence, it kept going.
It was a terrible time there.

Now, it's tempting to think back about what might have happened after the First Gulf War,
when all the American airbases in the middle east were closed,
and what might have happened when the neighborhoods of Manhattan
filled with Americans helping to build a new mosque.
It has been a terrible time here.