Kittens at My Feet

If only we could all be like kittens.

The beauty of their total unbridled energy.

The pure affection that overwhelms me everytime they hop into my lap ready for a round of loving affection...

never apologizing for their needs...

knowing you will love them right back.

The thrill of a fresh saucer of milk.

The awesome ability to fall asleep anywhere and at anytime.

To experience skittering across a kitchen floor, jumping high in the air at a moth, running through the house by hopping from one piece of furniture to the next without their paws ever touching the ground.

These are my lupus babies.


My loneliest moments are spent with them nestled at my feet or curled up beside me when I'm bed-ridden. Their purrs lull me into a relaxed state as my mind sifts through the brain fog and tries to figure out which details of the day were important and which weren't worth the stress.


They love, oh how they love. And they teach me so much about the joys of a wadded up piece of paper and a velour blanket fresh out of the dryer.


It's almost 3pm.

The hardest part of the day for this lupus.

I'm tired, feeling guilty about all the things I planned on doing today and never could do, and lonely missing my guys...

waiting for them to come home from school and work.


It's quiet here.

And I feel a catch in my throat at the realization that the quiet little mews and the sounds of trouncing in the front room are what keep me sane on days like this.

TODAY (July 2011): I am a few months shy of being 8 years removed from when I wrote this first entry. In the three short months between receiving the confirmed diagnosis of lupus and the writing of this blog entry, my life as I had known it was gone. I was too ill to continue working, I had to file for disability, debts were piling up, and the disease was severely impeding my cognitive abilities. I felt like a pill pin cushion as different drugs were tried out. I had emergency room runs, and became increasingly isolated as people around me either jumped ship or failed to realize how serious my situation was.

I was severely depressed when I wrote this... and completely unaware of how bad it was. 

The cats? 

They are nicely grown up and still my constant companions (along with my dog). And, yes, they certainly carried me through and out of the depression. I would hold them and whisper my pain to them as they purred.  I had to learn to enjoy the beauty of every day simplicity, something that I had completely ignored while buried in my career and well... busy-ness of a stress filled life.