There is a lot of buzz lately about having a “success mindset” they have self-improvement seminars on it, they have classes for teachers on it and numerous books and articles have been written on the subject. The amusing thing is that it isn’t a new concept; in fact it has been around for hundreds of years. In fact Robert the Bruce is famously credit with the origin of the phrase, as the story goes he was lying in his tent dwelling on his failures to kick the English out of Scotland and saw a tiny spider trying to build a web in the corner of his tent. As the story goes he watched the spider swing back and forth, back and forth trying to bridge the distance between the sides of the tent, after several attempts the spider was successful and able to attach a line and thereby complete his web. The story says that this inspired Robert the Bruce to continue fighting the English, because he realized that it is okay to fail a few times as long as you keep at it and learn from you mistakes.

Sometimes in life you come across a special animal that seem s to have been put on Earth just to brighten your day or too help his fellow animals, such an animal is our cat Flint. After the death of my beloved black and white cat my husband called the local vet that had a no kill shelter and asked if they had any cats up for adoption, luckily for us they had a black and white female cat that was about five months old waiting for a home. We packed the kids in to the car and drove to the shelter for a meet and greet with the cats they had available.

Kit Cat was my mother’s constant companion and best friend, in fact at times my mother referred to her as her third child. Kit Cat was a lovely calico cat of medium build and size, who I’d found as a two day old kitten in a packing box full of kitchen towels on our back patio. Kit Cat had a disposition as lovely as her face, and was so sweet that anyone who met instantly adored her.

True friends can come in any size, and be any shape, color or species, true deep friendship is blind to each other’s differences and faults, I learned this first hand from my grandmother’s favorite cat. When I was a teenager my father took a job in Saudi Arabia and my mom, brother and I moved in with her mother while my mom searched for a new place for us to live. My grandmother was a widow and lived alone, with the exception of her two pet cats, Patches and Smokey. Patches was a pretty, playful and friendly little calico cat, while Smokey was a huge grey shorthair that had the disposition of the Terminator. The only person Smokey liked or even tolerated was my grandmother, to whom she was a constant and loving companion. Smokey would let you know she didn’t like you by either giving you a cold stare or growling at you, or both. Anybody who came to Grandmother’s door, whether it was a delivery man or the mail man was subject to Smokey’s evil stare and growls. Smokey was also naughty, ...