Little Boy

"Little Boy"

On the phone with my daughter, she tells me about how overwhelmed she is feeling at the moment. Much to do, to fix, to organize, to create. A temporary yet strong sense of not HAVING enough time/energy/resources.

A week later, she sends me a photo of a tiny kitten. In her arms.

She went to the Humane Society and adopted a kitten to bring home to her other cat, and her dog.

I have some thoughts about this (in addition to "He Is so Freaking Cute")
Mostly I shake my head at the fact that she has just chosen to add a life to her long list of things to care for. My sense-maker is not firing up, this is silly.

A week later, I am starting to feel that things might be settling here at Casa Sama. The pipes' leak is slowly getting addressed, the construction is making progress and I can almost see the day when I will not be waiting for a worker to show up.

Getting into bed last weekend, I want to send a little FB goodnight to a friend. I log on, and right there on my screen, in a place where I pretty much never look, is the photo of a tiny, very skinny puppy with huge brown eyes and jutting hip bones.

The man who posted the photo explains that he and his fiancée found him by the highway, about an hour away. The pup was scared, hungry, and very young. They scooped him up and gave him a safe place for the night, along with some food and water. But they can't keep him so they are asking who would like to adopt him.

The pup has the sweetest eyes ever and right there on the thread, people take turns raising their hands and saying that yes, they will take him.

Good. Great. Enough of the puppy pic, time to say goodnight to my friend and go to sleep.

Except that I don't. Instead, I send a private message to the man who has the pup and let him know that if no one takes him - which seemed unlikely given the enthusiastic responses - I would take him and care for him, then find him his forever home.

"Please, yes!" is his instantaneous response.

What? Isn't there a bunch of people tripping over each other to take him in?
And why oh why did I even send this message given that well... see above ...  "there is bunch of people tripping over each other to take him in."

"No one is following through and one guy even blocked me," is the answer. How weird. Then "I'll drive him over to you tomorrow at 1:30. Thank you so much and goodnight!"

What just happened?

From my bed, I look at Lila and Tiji who have no idea that our world is about to change for a while.

Even though it is very common here - several of my friends do it regularly - "fostering" is not something I have ever been interested in. Yet, unless this guy doesn't show up, I am about to do just that.

1:30 on the nose, the big car pulls up and a tiny puppy is handed out to me. Ribs sticking out, huge eyes little cute paws, the two of us start the trek towards my house, rivers and all.

And there we have been for the past week.

"Little Boy" is beautiful. Sweet, smart, funny, and ,good with Lila and Tiji (who have strong opinions about the whole thing). He follows me on walks in the countryside, sleeps on a small pillow by my bed, eats a ton of food and is fattening up by the day. He is loving to the max and loves to be carried around, with his face tucked in my neck.

This is hard.

I KNOW I have to find him his forever family and I know that they will be very lucky to spend the next 15+ years with him. At times I hesitate and think that hey, I could keep him, but I know for sure that this is not the right thing to do for several reasons. One of them being that Lila is not happy. The other being that you can only have two pets per person on international flights. Finally, I can see that this could be a slippery slope, and am able to envision 6 dogs and 8 cats living here before too long. Can't do that.

So I am looking for Little Boy's forever family and if this may be you or someone you know, please send me an email and let's talk. I do want him to go to someone who will spend a lot of  time with him, work from home maybe.

He will make the LOVEliest companion.

And then I think about my daughter and how when things got overwhelming, she adopted a cat - and how when things started to calm down, I said yes to opening my heart to this guy.

Humbling.