Paula,
 
I know what you mean.  Sometimes, when you read the mailing list, or the
Ferret magazines, or... whatever, it seems like everyone is talking about
how their buddy has cancer, or adrenal disease, or insulinoma, or /some/
darn thing.  Not a day passes when Skeeter doesn't have a new playmate or
two on the other side of the bridge.
 
Sometimes, it scares me, too.  I think about what a basket case I was after
my dog, Buster, died last summer, and I wonder how I'm going to cope when
the Sneeze goes.
 
But for now, today, Ebisneezer Scrooge is happy, and healthy, and my
companion.  I could tell you about finding him under the kitchen sink,
burrowed into the pots... I have a stacking set, and I keep the lids on
'em... he'd not been happy to get inside the outermost, no, he had to get
all the way into the littlest one, and then pull the lid back on top of him.
 
Or I could tell you about how he sleeps with his head hanging over the
edge of his hammock every night, or that he hisses at the voice of Elmo,
the Sesame Street muppet.
 
I could tell you about the day he climbed up into my Aunt Marion's
uncompleted dollhouse, and went to sleep on the sofa in the living room,
and how hard she laughed when she found him there.
 
I /could/ tell you these and many other stories.  But I'm sure that you
have happy stories of your own, if you think about it.  The only question
is, are the bad times which will probably come balanced out, or justified,
by the happy times now?
 
I hope that they are.  For you, and for me.
 
*=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=*
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after we pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses; out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes within a dream.
 
 --Ernest Dowson, "Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam" [1896]
*-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-*
 Regan S. Pylman                                 [log in to unmask]
             http://www.coyotesdaughter.com/~azrael
[Posted in FML issue 2625]