Our Pets...THE Greatest Stress-Reducing Addition to Our Lives

So, here I am..in Connecticut...still feeling the loss of Stella, my charge here for the last nine months...Stella the beautiful, Stella the loving...Stella who would turn into a veritable puppy when we approached the nearby Greenwich Firehouse if the large firehouse doors were open and firefighters were visible. Boom! Puppydom! She would bound over to them to get cookies and pets and scratches. She even jumped up or sat up and begged...whatever they asked her to do, she did, happily. There's a bit in this video where you can see her puppy-like smile. ;-D

As we know, we would each do well to learn from our animal companions on this planet....Our connection to animals...our Stress...As humans, we are subjected to the stress we place upon ourselves...interpretations of requirements, needs, beliefs that often result in us stacking one worry upon another leaving us feeling as though we have the weight of the world upon our shoulders.

We humans, over thousands of years, have learned that having animals around helps us to fend off some of that interpreted stress...to somewhat upend the limiting beliefs that retard our progress...We have discovered what we have in our pets, our animals companions...we have a friend...a friend who loves us wholeheartedly, without condition. We would do well to learn from their example, don't you think?

Among other things, I am a professional housesitter, who since August 2019 has been living pretty much exclusively as a housesitter.

I began by traveling from Boston to DC to start and, from there, having always wanted to explore the Pacific Northwest, I crossed the country to Portland Oregon. In Portland, I cared for Zelda, a lone kitty, for a month. Zelda had only a week before, lost her life companion, an elderly kitty...so when I came to her, she was alone for the first time, without her pal.

Zelda seemed a little lonely and sad. Poor kitty...so, I showered her with treats and toys to make her alone time feel less sad as best I could. I was with her for most of the day, if not all of it...but cats typically play at night, when us humans are asleep...and my poor ward had no more buddy to play with...so I did my best to fill in her time with toys that would occupy her. And YouTube!

Yes, I set her up with a play tunnel and at the end of the tunnel, I attached my iPad and plugged it in and left it on "Entertain my Cat" channels. She loved sitting in that tunnel and gazing at those videos of mice and birds.

Before Zelda, in D.C. there was Lola, Louis and Harley...Lola is a very loving and demonstrative LARGE tuxedo cat who woke me up frequently in the morning, with loud purring as she criss-crossed my bed to wake me up. She didn't necessarily want to be fed, like her housemate, Louis always did...No, Lola just loved waking me up so I could pet her...I was, after all, a pair of massaging hands...So, Lola especially loved climbing up and sitting my lap when I meant to be working online, with my laptop on my lap. That was her favorite time to come find me and never leave me. ;-D

The animal that taught me the greatest lessons I was to learn over a fourteen year period, was my own kitty, Shadow, pictured below. I adopted Shadow in 2004 or 2005, before Hurricane Katrina. When the hurricane hit, Shadow and I piled into a car with a friend and his dog and we set out to evacuate to Baton Rouge. The one hour drive took us 13 hours.

Poor Shadow, who had no love for dogs, was trapped in a crate next to a dog in a crate, in 97 degree heat with 80% humidity. To make it more unbearable, we didn't dare run the AC, for fear of running out of gas in the 4 miles per hour crawling traffic... and yet, atypical to my Shadow, as he had NO love for being in a car, he didn't let out a peep the entire day. Amazing. It was sheer hell in the heat, but we all made it to BR, safe and sound, despite all of the news stories about violence in the gas lines. Whew! In the years to follow, Shadow and I would move 14 times due to all of the shifting fortunes of everyone living in the city after the storm.

Shadow became for me the finest example of what it is to be utterly adaptable. Bless him.

Shadow was my closest companion for 14 years. My longest relationship. LOL When it came time and I knew it was time to let go, I sat with him in my lap and told him that I was grateful to him for his companionship and for the life lessons and patience he taught me. I know that I am a better person for having known the love of that kitty for fourteen years.

Continuing on my housesitting adventures, when I crossed from Oregon into Washington State in September of 2019, I was blessed with a farm sit...caring for Butler the duck and his three-duck harem...Charlotte the 800 lb pig, Velvet the Goat and his beautiful auburn girlfriend...five cats, 12 chickens, all named, and four roosters, also named and truly lovely...it was an extraordinary and lovely experience. Waking up at 4:30 every morning was actually a beautiful thing! The mornings were frosty and the sunrise was always gorgeous! A true blessing!

And it's not always our pets...our own family animals who change our lives...sometimes it's a Dog hero or...is it, in the story below, a human hero. Hard to tell....Probably both...The truth is that We humans have strong connections with animals on our planet, especially when we act out of love. We can notice the difference, one human to another, in what becomes of the connections between us when we act with unconditional love. Learning from animals, we can become better humans...animals teach us to be better.

A peek ahead...a story for another day, for as the story progresses and in 2020 I traveled Europe caring for farm animals and cats and dogs...and these three entertaining fluffy monster loves in Dover, England...