Boy am I glad that we've been moved into a real office with a door.
The poems were wonderful, and I'm bawling like a baby in here.

Thanks for sharing.

Jane

What do you mean possible TW?
Another box of tissues bites the dust!

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs

Amen

I'm glad I'm in my own private padded cell too, because I don't want the new
kid to see me crying.

Blessed be,
Baha

It was hard to hold back the tears after reading these poems.

Winnie

Thank you for sharing these, Theresa. They did make me cry, for my Frank
and Nikki as well as your Annie.

Keepers.  But I can't read them again any time soon...too close to my
girl's passing.  Thank you for sharing them.

PatM

I'm glad you got your little girl's ashes back.  It reminded me that
there was a repost on RPCA from a few years ago that I wanted to
re-repost:

====

The day had started out like any other. I spent the morning cleaning
out my aquarium, amazed at how much water had managed to evaporate in
one week. Bryan and I decided to go to the pet store to get a couple
more fish.

I had found two nice fish that I wanted to buy, but the clerks were
busy attending to a few rude shoppers. Just to pass some time we went
into the back to look at the birds. We saw the most amazing thing!

As we were walking by a cage full of about twenty parakeets, a baby
keet flew over to the side of the cage that we were on. It began to
follow us! We walked around the large cage, and everywhere that we
went that baby keet followed. I had never seen anything like it! I
reached my hand over to the cage, expecting the bird to fly to the
other side, terrified like all of the other birds were. It did not fly
away! It bent its little head down practically begging for us to
scratch its head. I was afraid it was going to hurt itself trying to
get out of its cage! Needless to say I couldn't leave without taking
it home.

We brought it home and it was so attached to us it was almost as if it
had been our bird for years. We named him Indy. I have never seen a
bird play like this little bird played (and my mother is a parakeet
breeder)! We let him outside and he just had a ball playing with all
of the leaves and picking up every little twig that was on the patio.
We let him play for a couple of hours, and that he did!

Shortly after that I went in to take a shower. All of a sudden, there
was a knock on the door. "Rheana" Bryan said, "You need to get out
here quick!" I came out side and Bryan had little Indy in the palm of
his hand.

His body was limp and he couldn't hold up his own head. He was
dying... It seems that sweet little Indy did not have the bottom half
of his beak. Of course we did not notice this at the pet store. He
possibly was born without it, or was mishandled at the pet store and
it broke off. Whichever the case, the little bird had not eaten in
quite some time. We tried to hand feed it, but without his bottom
beak, the food would just run right out. I cried.

I went into the bedroom with little Indy in the palm of my hands.
Bryan and I sat on the bed next to each other in silence, petting him
softly. Neither of us said it, but we understood that Indy was going
to die very soon, and we would stay there with him the entire time.

Just then I saw something that touched my soul. Indy's head lifted
straight up and his wings completely outstretched as if he were going
to fly straight into the sky! At that instant he was gone, and I burst
into tears.

I had actually felt in my hands the moment that he had gone, and his
little body lay limp there once again.

Never before had I thought about a bird having a soul. But I believe
that I felt it. What I saw that evening was probably the most
eye-opening experience I've ever had.

I had always believed that everything in my life happens for a reason.
Be it for better or worse. I spend a good part of that evening trying
to find the meaning of all of it. It seemed pretty rotten that I had
fallen in love with this little bird, and six hours later he was lying
in my hands. Then it dawned on me. How could I be so selfish to think
that everything in my life happens to benefit me, or to make me
stronger? As silly as it might sound to some people, who is to say
that the reason that it all happened was so Indy could be happy for
the last few hours of his life? To die in the hands of people who
cared, instead of being found the next morning in the bottom of the
cage by a pet store clerk; who would see it as just another mess to
clean up.

Of course, that made me think about the way I viewed my life. Everyone
is always wondering what their purpose in life is and why things
happen to them. Think about the fact that things that happen to you
aren't really about you at all; but for the benefit of others. I
believe that people have more than one purpose in life. It could be
ten it could be hundreds. Some may be greater than others, but all of
them are important, to someone or something.

Rheana Pryor
Contributed by: Jasmine Kerr

<snip>

Lots and lots of purrs and hugs,
Polonca and Soncek