What's the worst that could happen?

The cats and I are back in CT. Right now they're stretched out in patches of sunshine on the carpet in our living room.

Things were not quite so sunny during our collective Incredible Journeys "home."

Buddy had a seizure on the plane, under the seat in front of me, during taxi-ing and early take-off as we traveled back to Boston from our relaxing break in TX. Amazingly, he still seems to feel immense affection for me, even though I didn't promise never to make him fly again!

The next day we had collected his sissy Georgianna from their wonderful Aunt Shawneee and trekked downstairs to pack them in the car parked around the corner and across the street, for the two hour drive back down to CT. I set Georgie's carrier carefully on the back of the car and opened the back door to put her and a bag on the backseat. The carrier slid off the car, banged onto the street, the cage door flew open, and already-nervous-traveler Georgianna flew across the street and into the shrubbery and ultimately onto the front porch of Shawneee's neighbors' ginormous yellow house. I left Buddy's carrier sitting in the road beside my car and ran, then tiptoed up to coax Georgie back into my unreliable arms. Traumatized, she only cried about a third of the drive down.

The amazing thing, besides the fact that she didn't get lost or run over by a truck, is that she harbors no bitterness at all. This morning she snuggled softly in my lap and whenever I shifted to try to get up to wash dishes, she wrapped her paw around my neck in a little loving hug.

This year I'm going to try to be more like my cats: adaptable, positive, relaxed, and pleasingly plump. If it feels like I'm getting stuffed in an ugly plastic carrier and then being dropped on the street and released into traffic, I'll look for a porch on a big yellow house and only cry a third of the way through my semester; and if I have a seizure in a dark mesh carrier squished under an unreclining airplane seat, I'll stretch and purr and nuzzle whoever lets me out when the ordeal is over.