![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/2685801635_b913cac667_c.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can’t believe that Hope has only been in my life for less than a year. It doesn’t seem possible. She is just such a huge part of my daily routine now, and a constant joy (even when, as last night, she keeps me up by deciding that 3 a.m. is the perfect time to attack a Netflix envelope that is tormenting her).<\/p>\n
Here is the first picture I took of Hope. I had just taken her home from the adoption agency, she had howled the whole way home in her cage, and I had just let her out into my apartment. I showed her the litter box, I put out food, and Hope tiptoed around, quivering with awareness and adrenaline. Like: Is it okay now? Is everything okay? Is there a cage here? Are you going to put me back into that cage? Or … is everything all right now?<\/p>\n
Hope had been put into a box and left on the damn sidewalk outside the Petco in Union Square. The thought of that makes me see red, although I suppose it’s better than throwing her into the East River with a weight tied to her collar, or just leaving her on the side of the West Side Highway. The jackass who “dropped her off” knew that the adoption people would HAVE to take her in … and that happens a lot, I guess. It’s nice, I guess – but it’s also selfish – because it just assumes that there is a cage available for her, medical supplies, everything. It puts them in a bind.<\/p>\n
Picturing loving little Hope crouched in a box on the sidewalk through a long night before some person came to unlock the Petco makes me want to cry. She must have been so scared. Thank God she wasn’t mistaken for trash and thrown into the back of a garbage truck!!<\/p>\n
So I took her home, and she tiptoed about, eating one flake of food, before moving on, to sniff at the litter box, to then jump up on the windowsill and check out her new surroundings.<\/p>\n
In the first ten minutes of her investigation, she lay down on the floor (in a spot she still likes to hang out in) … and I took her picture.<\/p>\n
Picture #1 of Hope.<\/p>\n
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I can’t believe that Hope has only been in my life for less than a year. It doesn’t seem possible. She is just such a huge part of my daily routine now, and a constant joy (even when, as last … Continue reading