Contentment is:

A sunny day, warm without being hot. My own home again. The windows open. A wonderful, homemade breakfast on clean, brand-new dishes. Blissful cats, one of which is nosing around the apartment, one of which is trying to figure out how to make the screen on the window melt with the power of her mind, and the last of which is curled up contentedly against my thigh. ABBA playing (shut up, you know you know all the words, too). My girlfriend, who turns to smile at me now and again and tell me she loves me. Best friends now within walking distance. Dinner later tonight with those friends. A week to get things unpacked, organized, shuffled around, made pretty, and then my boy here, to be surprised with his own bedroom all set up and ready for him, with the pictures he picked out hanging up. Story ideas, percolating gently in my hindbrain, soon to be scribbled and worked over and played with and teased and formed and made whole.

Birth pains are dreadful, but what comes of them is joy.

 

Long shot, I know-

-mostly because I have just about nil for readers yet, but just in case:

This is Dogwood.

Dogwood needs a new home.  His family, because of recently-discovered medical issues, can’t care for him any longer, and are trying very hard to find someone else for him to love and be loved by so they don’t have to turn him over to the Humane Society.  Can you take him in?  Do you know someone who can?

Re-post, if you can.  I dunno why but this one got me.

It’s probably because he’s grey.  I have a soft spot for all-grey kitties.