Slow Europe

Going through some photos on my camera I found the ones from the snow storm just before Christmas. The snow is old and dirty now, but didn’t it look beautiful when it arrived! Here is Buddy walking the paths that Steve shoveled.

Buddy in the Snow, December 23 2008

It is so cold today that I spent part of the afternoon looking at vacation rentals in Hawaii.

Three years ago today, our cat Buddy arrived at our house. Friends of our brought him in a carrier tied with a lot of rope. They opened up the carrier and he jumped out all golden and furry. My first thought was “He is a long hair - I don’t want a long hair” and then I realized that was almost a racist thought and this was the cat we were given, so what if he has long hair? It turns out that he sheds less than our old cats (who both died earlier in that year) who were short hair tabbies. There was so much rope because he is almost impossible to get into a cat carrier and was battling to get out.

Buddy the Cat

He was six years old when he arrived, making him nine years old now. He had belonged to our friend’s mother, who died the day that he arrived. Our friend arranged that we would take him, but her mother wanted her with him for company until the end, so we waited until the time came for him to be delivered to us.

We got our previous cats, Butch and Spike, as kittens when we moved to Santa Fe and had them for fourteen years. First Butch died (while we were traveling in England) then a few months later Spike wandered off into the night and never came back. They coyotes must have got him; we heard the howling loudly the night he disappeared. We had convinced ourselves that we would not get another cat because of our big “a year in England” plan and because of our travel schedule, so when my friend told us about Buddy we said “no” but then talked of nothing else for two days, then phoned her and said “yes”. The house felt empty without a cat.

» Read the rest of this entry

Finally, the Slow Europe team is getting the extra help that we need to get through the website launch.

Buddy on Steve's Computer

Yes, that is a Mac he is lying on. One of Steve’s computers (I am a PC).