Yes, that’s right; a few days ago, one of my friends actually came out here to visit me in the Hinterlands!!

Unbelievable, right? I’ve only lived out here for almost exactly one year, and someone finally came to visit me.

And guess what happened? That’s right. She loved it out here. She couldn’t believe how peaceful it was here, how happy it made her feel to just sit out on my patio and look at the trees and the sky, and listen to all that QUIET.

She spends a lot of time in New York (she was born and raised there, actually), so she knows: A.) How great New York is; B.) How expensive New York is; and C.) Why it is that I fell in love with the Hinterlands and now never want to leave it.

When I mentioned to my Dad the other day that I had decided to buy a house here, rather than rent something else temporarily and then eventually move back to New York State, he was flabbergasted. He said, “But I thought the plan all along was for you to move back to New York?!!”

I said, “That was the plan, for a really long time, but I am so happy out here. and nothing is more terrifying than growing old in New York if you don’t have enough money.”

He concurred.

Now, on a more forlorn and bittersweet note…

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Fluffy’s death.

I still simultaneously cannot believe that: A.)She’s been gone from my life a whole year already; and B.) That she died at all.

That’s right. I still cannot get over that she is gone from life. Followed so closely by Bunny’s passing, as well. (Bunny died on October 23rd, the morning after we moved here to the Hinterlands.)

Fluffy was a very sick, starving, pregnant kitten when she arrived on the front porch of a house we rented briefly in Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains.  None of the vets I took Fluffy to wanted to treat her because they thought she was a lost cause. I was living with Mikey Rivera back then,  he was a plumber. He went on a call to fix a leak at a guy’s house way out in the country and the guy turned out to be a veterinarian.  He took care of a lot of stray animals and he agreed to take a look at Fluffy for us. (By this point, the ASPCA had aborted Fluffy’s kittens, but they wouldn’t treat her for the pneumonia or anything else that was wrong with her, because they, like everyone else, thought the kitten was a goner.)

However, this vet out in the wilderness, told us to simply give her these over-the-counter anti-histamines (pills meant for people) around the clock, keep her quarantined from my other cats, and just let her sleep. He warned us it would take months for her to get well, but she did. In fact, it took almost an entire year for her lungs to clear up, and even though she had breathing troubles throughout her whole, furry life, she lived another ten years and she was the sweetest, goofiest, most adoring cat ever. I miss her so much.

I know she is  out carousing now in the fields of the Lord.