Hi everyone. I registered awhile ago and have been posting sporadically since then, but never had the courage to introduce myself properly. I'd usually rather talk about my cats! But you are such nice, friendly people that I'll go against my shyness and make the effort.
First the basics: I'm 37, female, and single. I am a writer and web designer, having published a romance novel and self-producing an online soap opera for the past five+ years. I love mysteries, comedy, computers, singing, music, theater, history and politics.
And now ... my cats. Well, I've been a huge cat fan since a little black & white tuxedo showed up on my family's doorstep in 1983. Prior to that, I was a bit scared of cats, and preferred dogs. My mom warned me not to feed her, because she'd never leave, but I snuck out a can of BumbleBee tuna and some milk (what did I know?), which the cat loved, and that was basically the end of any decision-making on our part! There was no looking back, and our family fell in love with her. You can read all about Choie in my memorial site (link in my sig). Of course, since one cat is almost never enough, we adopted two more, Chloe and Sammy, and eventually my sister brought another two, Moe and Tess. All of them are gone except for Tess.
Flash-forward many years later when Choie died in May 2001. I've suffered from depression all my life, even as a child, but after I lost my mother in '86 things grew steadily worse. Losing Choie was like losing another part of my mother (they had similar personalities, LOL), and of course 9/11 was a huge devastation for all of us, perhaps especially us here in NYC. I was miserable and paralyzed with sadness. For two years I couldn't imagine having another cat in my life.
Then my father suddenly died this year, and strangely enough I had a kind of small epiphany. You see, Pop was a survivor. He endured the harsh blows that life gave him -- particularly the losses of my older brother (before I was born) and my mom, his wife of 36 years. He always managed to move on, not letting the suffering stop him from living. At 80 he was still working, still physically active. One day last December he went for his regular jog and somehow tripped while heading up a stairwell near the FDR Drive. He hit his head and got a horrific spinal cord injury, and doctors said that if he survived at all, he would never walk or probably move his arms again. He lived for a week in a drug-induced coma ... actually much longer than doctors expected at all. They said he had a heart as strong as a horse. He died on January 2.
Anyway, after he died I wanted to take something of his life lesson for myself -- to try to survive and never to stop fighting. The first step of doing that was to fill my heart again with love. I looked on Petfinders.com for a pair of kittens to adopt, and found a sweet brother and sister pair named Sally and Sonny (kinda icky names), about 1 month old. Turned out that their mom Mina was only six months old herself, and a day after giving birth she and her two kittens were dumped at the Center for Animal Control here in NYC.
The threesome were rescued by a shelter, thank God, which put them on display at Petfinders. When I heard the story, I debated with myself about whether to adopt all three. I hated to break up a family, but I'm on disability and money is very very tight -- and I only have a studio apartment! Could I afford and fit three cats into my life?
In the end I already knew I was in love. I got to meet "Sonny" and "Sally" at the local Petco, and took their mom sight unseen. After a few health issues, and judicious renaming ("Sonny" became Therblig*, and "Sally" became Sophie), we're all now living together in a crowded but love-filled home.
Whew, sorry for rambling on and on like this. I love this site and am so thrilled to have found it. Thank you all for the help and friendliness!
* Therblig is a term used in motion study/efficiency; instead of trying to accomplish a huge task, experts recommend breaking up the task into micro-steps, each one called a "therblig" named after the man who came up with this system, Frank Gilbreth (Therblig is basically Gilbreth, backwards). The book and movie "Cheaper by the Dozen" is the story of Gilbreth and his very large family.
Anyway, since getting the cats represented, for me, a small step on the long road to recovery from depression, I thought Therblig would be a very appropriate name. Plus, it's so cute and fits this little boy perfectly!
First the basics: I'm 37, female, and single. I am a writer and web designer, having published a romance novel and self-producing an online soap opera for the past five+ years. I love mysteries, comedy, computers, singing, music, theater, history and politics.
And now ... my cats. Well, I've been a huge cat fan since a little black & white tuxedo showed up on my family's doorstep in 1983. Prior to that, I was a bit scared of cats, and preferred dogs. My mom warned me not to feed her, because she'd never leave, but I snuck out a can of BumbleBee tuna and some milk (what did I know?), which the cat loved, and that was basically the end of any decision-making on our part! There was no looking back, and our family fell in love with her. You can read all about Choie in my memorial site (link in my sig). Of course, since one cat is almost never enough, we adopted two more, Chloe and Sammy, and eventually my sister brought another two, Moe and Tess. All of them are gone except for Tess.
Flash-forward many years later when Choie died in May 2001. I've suffered from depression all my life, even as a child, but after I lost my mother in '86 things grew steadily worse. Losing Choie was like losing another part of my mother (they had similar personalities, LOL), and of course 9/11 was a huge devastation for all of us, perhaps especially us here in NYC. I was miserable and paralyzed with sadness. For two years I couldn't imagine having another cat in my life.
Then my father suddenly died this year, and strangely enough I had a kind of small epiphany. You see, Pop was a survivor. He endured the harsh blows that life gave him -- particularly the losses of my older brother (before I was born) and my mom, his wife of 36 years. He always managed to move on, not letting the suffering stop him from living. At 80 he was still working, still physically active. One day last December he went for his regular jog and somehow tripped while heading up a stairwell near the FDR Drive. He hit his head and got a horrific spinal cord injury, and doctors said that if he survived at all, he would never walk or probably move his arms again. He lived for a week in a drug-induced coma ... actually much longer than doctors expected at all. They said he had a heart as strong as a horse. He died on January 2.
Anyway, after he died I wanted to take something of his life lesson for myself -- to try to survive and never to stop fighting. The first step of doing that was to fill my heart again with love. I looked on Petfinders.com for a pair of kittens to adopt, and found a sweet brother and sister pair named Sally and Sonny (kinda icky names), about 1 month old. Turned out that their mom Mina was only six months old herself, and a day after giving birth she and her two kittens were dumped at the Center for Animal Control here in NYC.
The threesome were rescued by a shelter, thank God, which put them on display at Petfinders. When I heard the story, I debated with myself about whether to adopt all three. I hated to break up a family, but I'm on disability and money is very very tight -- and I only have a studio apartment! Could I afford and fit three cats into my life?
In the end I already knew I was in love. I got to meet "Sonny" and "Sally" at the local Petco, and took their mom sight unseen. After a few health issues, and judicious renaming ("Sonny" became Therblig*, and "Sally" became Sophie), we're all now living together in a crowded but love-filled home.
Whew, sorry for rambling on and on like this. I love this site and am so thrilled to have found it. Thank you all for the help and friendliness!
* Therblig is a term used in motion study/efficiency; instead of trying to accomplish a huge task, experts recommend breaking up the task into micro-steps, each one called a "therblig" named after the man who came up with this system, Frank Gilbreth (Therblig is basically Gilbreth, backwards). The book and movie "Cheaper by the Dozen" is the story of Gilbreth and his very large family.
Anyway, since getting the cats represented, for me, a small step on the long road to recovery from depression, I thought Therblig would be a very appropriate name. Plus, it's so cute and fits this little boy perfectly!
