The Mongolian Yurt and the Big Orange Cat

Today was noticeably brighter.

For starters, we got a new cat. He is big and orange and has little stripes and spots all over his body and little white paws and a little white face and great big yellow tiger eyes and a dignified way of looking at you that says what have you contributed to the world today? And he purrs in the most contented way because he's lived in a cage at the pound his whole two yeas of living and now he's finally home, home, home.

In a word I love him.

His name is Snickerdoodle Sinclair.

We're divided as to which one to call him. Phillip calls him Snickerdoodle. I call him Sinclair. At the petshop they called him Fizzy.

Right nows he's curled up next to me, purring wheezily and  as if out of breath. It is a perfectly beautiful meow. It's funny how sometimes something so small as an animal can throw bad feelings out of your head and put a little fire in your heart that melts just a teensy bit of the ice. And he's already done that. Even though he's only been here for five hours. And I love him for it.

This morning I had to drive myself to school and I almost had a little panic attack when I passed the Racetack. It was at almost the exact same time that I crashed exactly one week ago. But of course I made it through at a very slow pace and the anxiety almost went away but not really because I was so nervous the rest of the drive and I went so slow and was hyperaware of every single little thing going on around me.

At dinner tonight we started talking about valentines and I suggested to Phillip that we take a picture of him doing the pointing pose and put all sorts of messages above it like "Babe, you're comin home with ME tonight" or "Keep calm and form a line Ladies"and the we were talking about the phrase "go girl!" and gogurt and I said "Or as the mongolians say "Go Yurt" and this set off a slew of yurt related jokes that actually left me laughing.

Right now I'm sitting in bed looking around at all the blankets around me and my Big orange jungle cat licking his paws and for the first time in a long time I think I'm content.  Every darknesss is in a small corner of my mind. Folded up and tucked in tight so they don't show. The  wrinkled corners are peeking out a bit but for right now I'm ignoring then and focusing on Sinclair or Snickerdoodle or Fizzy or whatever this beautiful cat is called and I'm actually quite happy.