Cattitude - Episode 269 One Kitten, One Soldier, One Extraordinary Journey: Silopi - A True Story of Love and Resilience

<v Speaker 1>Hello, feline friends, Welcome to Cata Tune. I'm your show host,
<v Speaker 1>Michelle Fern. Today we have an author with us who
<v Speaker 1>has written the most amazing book about a very special
<v Speaker 1>cat and his journey to bring the cat home my pen.
<v Speaker 1>It's an incredible book. Stay tuned. I don't want you
<v Speaker 1>to miss this. We'll be right back.
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<v Speaker 1>Welcome back everyone. I would like to welcome Brad Bayer.
<v Speaker 1>He is the author of Slope, a true story of
<v Speaker 1>Love and Resilience. Welcome Brad.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you, Michelle, How are you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm great. How are you doing.
<v Speaker 4>I'm doing wonderful. Thank you, and thank you for the
<v Speaker 4>opportunity to speak with you today.
<v Speaker 1>It's my honor to have you on my show. Thank
<v Speaker 1>you for your service to this country.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you.
<v Speaker 1>I appreciate that so much, and as do I'm shore
<v Speaker 1>all of my listeners. So this is a really unique book.
<v Speaker 1>I've never read anything quite like this because it talks
<v Speaker 1>about your life in this service, but also when you
<v Speaker 1>rescued this kitten in another country and your journey back.
<v Speaker 1>But there's a lot of backstory. What motivated you to
<v Speaker 1>write SLOPI well.
<v Speaker 4>And really I owe it to my wonderful and beautiful life.
<v Speaker 4>It was a couple of years ago we were actually
<v Speaker 4>cleaning out our basement after Christmas. It usually gives you
<v Speaker 4>that time of the year where you want to fin
<v Speaker 4>things out, and I remember going through our storage rooms
<v Speaker 4>and trying to empty some toats and make some spaces
<v Speaker 4>in some space in our home, and I stumbled across
<v Speaker 4>a box of my old memories and I popped the
<v Speaker 4>box open, and inside I found some of my army memorabilia,
<v Speaker 4>had from the Army, some medals and one of those
<v Speaker 4>things I found was a picture, and a picture was
<v Speaker 4>a little black and white kitten laying on a foot
<v Speaker 4>locker among the stars and stripes newspaper. And I held
<v Speaker 4>it up for my wife to see, and she looked,
<v Speaker 4>and just as only wives can do, she went, oh,
<v Speaker 4>you know what, you really need to sit down and
<v Speaker 4>write her story. The country could use a story like
<v Speaker 4>hers right about now. So I sat down and I
<v Speaker 4>just started writing about how I found this kid, and
<v Speaker 4>this kitten stumbled into my life and in many ways
<v Speaker 4>changed my life and I changed her life.
<v Speaker 1>It's a great story. I'm trying to go to the
<v Speaker 1>picture that I have.
<v Speaker 4>That was the picture I pulled up for her to
<v Speaker 4>see at that point.
<v Speaker 1>Beautiful tuxedo. Would you call her tixedo?
<v Speaker 4>I think I would. It was yeah, yeah, she had
<v Speaker 4>the most beautiful coloring. What was beautiful about her as
<v Speaker 4>the white that went up her nose and then was
<v Speaker 4>kind of complimented by her little pink nose at the end.
<v Speaker 4>So really I kind of gave her an inquisitive look.
<v Speaker 1>Molly is a black and white and she has a mustache,
<v Speaker 1>so she looks half French. It's only halfway.
<v Speaker 4>It's amazing amazing what God does with coloring for our animals.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, and her nose, Molly's nose is black. So okay,
<v Speaker 1>it's very amazing the things that happened. So let's talk
<v Speaker 1>about your background. So you had an interesting background. You
<v Speaker 1>went into the service and it seemed like from what
<v Speaker 1>I read, it was kind of well, I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if I'm going to do this or that, let me
<v Speaker 1>go here. So what made you decide to go into
<v Speaker 1>the service.
<v Speaker 4>Well, I grew up in a city just outside of
<v Speaker 4>Philadelphia called Naharastown. It's about it. It's a city about
<v Speaker 4>thirty five thousand people, blue collar town, just good salt
<v Speaker 4>of the earth people. And both my parents grew up poor.
<v Speaker 4>They met each other, not surprisingly, they struggled with money
<v Speaker 4>for a good period of their life, and when I
<v Speaker 4>was a teenager, they went through a devastating bankruptcy and
<v Speaker 4>parents pulled my younger brother and I side and said, hey, listen,
<v Speaker 4>we have no money left. That was kind of devastating
<v Speaker 4>to hear. I always knew my parents would take care
<v Speaker 4>of me, but certainly devastating to hear, hey, we have
<v Speaker 4>no money left, but we'll always love you. And at
<v Speaker 4>that point, as a teenager, I kind of I made
<v Speaker 4>the decision that I was never going to struggle like
<v Speaker 4>my parents did. But at that point I had no
<v Speaker 4>idea how I was going to do that. And coming
<v Speaker 4>from a blue collar town, especially in the late eighties
<v Speaker 4>at least where I was, a lot of kids didn't
<v Speaker 4>go to college there. I was one of five children
<v Speaker 4>at that point. None of my siblings had ever gone
<v Speaker 4>to a four year university. Mostly the parents in our
<v Speaker 4>town didn't go to universities and things like that, so
<v Speaker 4>there was no college tours, and I knew I didn't
<v Speaker 4>want to go to any more schooling at that point. Actually,
<v Speaker 4>I was quite terrified of the thought of going to college.
<v Speaker 4>So I decided, hey, I wanted to serve my country.
<v Speaker 4>I had a great deal of patriotism then I do now,
<v Speaker 4>So I said, hey, I came home from school one
<v Speaker 4>day and I told my parents, Hey, I'm joining the army.
<v Speaker 4>And that started it and I ended up about eight
<v Speaker 4>months after that I joined. I was enlisted and sent
<v Speaker 4>to Fort Benning, Georgia, which is the home of the
<v Speaker 4>US Army Infantry, and that started my career. I went
<v Speaker 4>in thinking, well, I'll just retire from the military. I
<v Speaker 4>come to realize it wasn't necessarily a good fit for me,
<v Speaker 4>but that's how I decided to go. It was really
<v Speaker 4>just that sense of patriotism and knowing I wanted to
<v Speaker 4>serve and definitely didn't want to go to college.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so not what I said earlier, But it's interesting
<v Speaker 1>college terrified you, yet serving your country and all that
<v Speaker 1>entailed did not.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, you have to wonder about the intelligence of somebody. Right,
<v Speaker 4>You find a US army a lot less scary than college.
<v Speaker 4>But yes, that's the that's the way it started for me.
<v Speaker 1>I think you need a lot more hood spot. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know God's to just say I'm going to serve
<v Speaker 1>my country rather college. To me, that's a lot easier.
<v Speaker 4>You would think. But to me, I chose the military first.
<v Speaker 1>So well, thank you again for your service. I might
<v Speaker 1>keep saying that do there, but I really do respect
<v Speaker 1>all the people that serve our country. I don't think
<v Speaker 1>they get enough appreciation at times.
<v Speaker 4>So well, we have that in common. I agree.
<v Speaker 1>In the book, you give a good background of what
<v Speaker 1>it's actually like to be in the army, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>most of us as civilians, only know by you know,
<v Speaker 1>what's in TV, what's in movies. Maybe some of us
<v Speaker 1>have read other military books, but do you really talk
<v Speaker 1>about it in detail? What was your purpose in doing
<v Speaker 1>this to set up what happened later in the book?
<v Speaker 4>Well, I kind of think not only did it talk
<v Speaker 4>about service and what my journey was to finding Slope,
<v Speaker 4>but I think it kind of explained how I got
<v Speaker 4>there and what I realized going in the military. It
<v Speaker 4>was it's a hard life, especially going through infantry school
<v Speaker 4>and things like that, where your whole job is really
<v Speaker 4>learned to how to kill other people and to break
<v Speaker 4>their equipment, and that's really what it comes down to.
<v Speaker 4>And as I was going through this, there was times
<v Speaker 4>I'd questioned myself and my faith, like it would God
<v Speaker 4>be okay if I had to beg and met another
<v Speaker 4>human being. And through all of that you realized a
<v Speaker 4>how much you miss home, b how much you care
<v Speaker 4>about the people that you serve with. But at the
<v Speaker 4>same time you also realize that it can become very
<v Speaker 4>self focused and really focused just on yourself and how
<v Speaker 4>miserable you are and how homesick you are. And it
<v Speaker 4>wasn't really until I found Silopi that she helped to
<v Speaker 4>bring that maturity out in me, that hey, the world
<v Speaker 4>is bigger than just you and your own problems, and
<v Speaker 4>you have to learn to care about others as much
<v Speaker 4>as you do yourself. And in this case, a little
<v Speaker 4>tiny kitten that I found out in the desert.
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to ask you about that. How did you
<v Speaker 1>find her so out in the desert? I mean, a
<v Speaker 1>little kitten surviving in the desert.
<v Speaker 4>It was just after the time when I went in.
<v Speaker 4>It was just at the end of the Cold War.
<v Speaker 4>So I was stationed in Berlin, Germany, which was an
<v Speaker 4>interesting time to be there because a couple months before
<v Speaker 4>I got there, the Berlin Walls just began to fall.
<v Speaker 4>But right at that time we went into Operation Desert
<v Speaker 4>Shield that sam Hussein invaded Iraq, and luckily that war
<v Speaker 4>went relatively quickly. But my unit, being that I was
<v Speaker 4>in Berlin, we didn't take part in that. But immediately
<v Speaker 4>after we had what we called Operation Provide Comfort. And
<v Speaker 4>if you can recall back then, a lot of the
<v Speaker 4>Kurdish refugees were fleeing Iraq, Northern Iraq, and what our
<v Speaker 4>unit was supposed to do is to help rescue those
<v Speaker 4>Kurdish refugees, help to provide them safe transport into Turkey.
<v Speaker 4>So that was what my unit was there for, along
<v Speaker 4>with a number of other countries that formed the Operation
<v Speaker 4>Provide Comfort Coalition. And it was one day we were
<v Speaker 4>out in so SILOPI, to give you an idea, is
<v Speaker 4>about a mile north of Iraq and about two miles
<v Speaker 4>from Syria, so it is right there, really in the
<v Speaker 4>middle of the desert, and it's about one hundred and
<v Speaker 4>twenty five degrees every day, just beating heat, very dry.
<v Speaker 4>But we had a giant tent set up that's where
<v Speaker 4>we had our chowel haul and walked. I went in
<v Speaker 4>one day and I sat down and there's picnic tables
<v Speaker 4>within the tent, and because it was so crowded that
<v Speaker 4>particular day, I threw my hat on the floor next
<v Speaker 4>to my feet. And as we're sitting there eating the meat,
<v Speaker 4>I just hear this little chirping. This just kind of
<v Speaker 4>beat me. I'm looking around. Nobody else seemed to hear it,
<v Speaker 4>and I looked down and inside my hat curled up
<v Speaker 4>is this little black and white kitten. And I looked
<v Speaker 4>at it and I said, guys, there's a cat in
<v Speaker 4>my hat. So upon hearing that, I kind of realized, Hey,
<v Speaker 4>doctor Seuss may have written the book, but I lived
<v Speaker 4>the story, you know. So I had this little black
<v Speaker 4>and white kitten in my hat and I picked her
<v Speaker 4>up and we all just sat there looking at it,
<v Speaker 4>and she's looking back at us, probably thinking, you know
<v Speaker 4>what are these alien creatures staring at me? And somebody
<v Speaker 4>came up with the idea at that point of Hey,
<v Speaker 4>let's take her back to our tent and we'll make
<v Speaker 4>her a pet. And that's kind of where our journey
<v Speaker 4>with Silopie started.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, Okay, we're going to take a short break. We'll
<v Speaker 1>be break back.
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<v Speaker 3>Let's talk past it.
<v Speaker 1>Let's dunk Petal Headline.
<v Speaker 7>Radio, pet Light radio dot com.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back everyone, we're talking to you Brad Byer. He
<v Speaker 1>is the author of Slope, a Story of Love and Resilience.
<v Speaker 1>So we're at the point. So you just found Slope,
<v Speaker 1>you decided to make her pet. Do you think that
<v Speaker 1>Slope provided some support to you while you were there?
<v Speaker 1>And I know you said the Army makes you very
<v Speaker 1>self focused, So besides that, do you think she provided
<v Speaker 1>other support other than, you know, caring for something else?
<v Speaker 1>And I guess the love that comes.
<v Speaker 4>With that, right, Oh? Absolutely? And I would say I
<v Speaker 4>don't think necessarily the army makes you self focused, But
<v Speaker 4>being a nineteen year old, twenty year old young man
<v Speaker 4>who's miserable and just wants to get home, you know,
<v Speaker 4>I think the age and the homesickness tend to make
<v Speaker 4>me a little more self focused. And finding her, we
<v Speaker 4>really kind of are unit and when I say our unit,
<v Speaker 4>there was probably about fifteen twenty people in our tent,
<v Speaker 4>and she kind of became our little mascot. And what
<v Speaker 4>was interesting about her is here I am it was
<v Speaker 4>a unit. At that time. There were next to no
<v Speaker 4>women in this employment, so it was a bunch of us, dusky, dirty,
<v Speaker 4>smelly men, and in all of this dry, arid earth
<v Speaker 4>and dirt and heat, she became this little piece of
<v Speaker 4>sweetness in my life. That was something that was really
<v Speaker 4>at the end of the day, after working in one
<v Speaker 4>hundred and twenty five degree heat and working around ammunitions
<v Speaker 4>and all of these other men, I would come back
<v Speaker 4>and find her curled up on my cot and it
<v Speaker 4>was for me a little sense of sweetness, a little brightness.
<v Speaker 4>It was almost as if God kind of said, hey,
<v Speaker 4>this is a little creature that you need to look for,
<v Speaker 4>you need to care after. And it was just a
<v Speaker 4>little bright spot that she brought every day, I think,
<v Speaker 4>to not only need, but really everybody in the tent.
<v Speaker 1>Did your peers in the tent, did they help hid
<v Speaker 1>her well?
<v Speaker 4>It was interesting because at first everybody was on board,
<v Speaker 4>and we took her back to the tent and got
<v Speaker 4>her kind of all cleaned up, and so that the
<v Speaker 4>very first night, I put her in a box with
<v Speaker 4>a little towel and just thought, hey, you know, I
<v Speaker 4>made her a litter box. I had no experiences with
<v Speaker 4>cats whatsoever, but somebody suggested, hey, let's create a litter box.
<v Speaker 4>So I made her a litter box. She immediately went
<v Speaker 4>to the bathroom in a litter box, which I thought
<v Speaker 4>was this. Hey, she's the smartest creature I've ever met.
<v Speaker 4>You know. I didn't realize that was pure instinct. But
<v Speaker 4>that evening I put her in a box and she
<v Speaker 4>went to sleep. It was just like having a little baby,
<v Speaker 4>and I thought, all, this is great, until about two
<v Speaker 4>o'clock in the morning she decided to wake up and
<v Speaker 4>did a Helen Ready, I am woman. Hear me roar rendition,
<v Speaker 4>screaming at the top of her lungs, and our lieutenant,
<v Speaker 4>who was in the bunk directly across from me, suggested,
<v Speaker 4>very forcefully, buy her get that cat out of this tent.
<v Speaker 4>So I tipped the box over and she ran out
<v Speaker 4>and skid it out of the tent. That was the
<v Speaker 4>end of my great cat experiment, I thought, anyway, But
<v Speaker 4>until the next morning I woke up and I felt
<v Speaker 4>something tickling the top of my head, and I thought
<v Speaker 4>one of the guys was messing with me, so I
<v Speaker 4>reached up to slap their hand away, and I grabbed
<v Speaker 4>a handful of fur. And then what I realized is
<v Speaker 4>she had gone out in the middle of the night
<v Speaker 4>and somewhere during the evening, came back, took residents on
<v Speaker 4>my pillow, and was now licking the top of my head.
<v Speaker 4>So in two days, this little kitten had found me twice.
<v Speaker 4>And it was at that point that I realized, you know,
<v Speaker 4>she's not a ten mascot. She belongs to me at
<v Speaker 4>this point. And that's when I realized, Hey, I've got
<v Speaker 4>this other life that I need to look after, I
<v Speaker 4>need to take care of.
<v Speaker 1>Well, thank you for sharing that. When you brought Slope
<v Speaker 1>back to the US. You had to go through I
<v Speaker 1>mean you were on I think it was two or
<v Speaker 1>three flights, and you had to sneak her in, but
<v Speaker 1>it all seemed to work. That like another sign.
<v Speaker 4>Well, and that's the biggest The first one is to
<v Speaker 4>get her out of Turkey, because after you know, after
<v Speaker 4>three months of really hiding her from everybody else in
<v Speaker 4>the camp, at one point the military police came through
<v Speaker 4>because there were stray dogs in the area that people
<v Speaker 4>were making pets. And the military police came through and said,
<v Speaker 4>we have to exterminate all the pets or all these
<v Speaker 4>animals for fear of rabies. So I had to hide
<v Speaker 4>her from the military police. And then it was time
<v Speaker 4>to leave the deployment, and I'm thinking, I can't leave
<v Speaker 4>her behind. You know, I've been feeding her this long.
<v Speaker 4>She's gonna starve to death. So at nineteen twenty years old,
<v Speaker 4>I figured out I have to get her out of
<v Speaker 4>the country. But how do you sneak a kitten out
<v Speaker 4>of the country of Turkey? And we had to go
<v Speaker 4>through inspections and looking at our persons. So I had
<v Speaker 4>to secret her out of Turkey until I got her
<v Speaker 4>back to our unit in Berlin, and then I had
<v Speaker 4>to hide her from the rest of the unit in Berlin.
<v Speaker 4>And then it finally came time to bring her home
<v Speaker 4>to Pennsylvania, back to the Philadelphia area, at which point
<v Speaker 4>that was the next big thing. My mother, who has
<v Speaker 4>is a voracious cleaner and a neat freak and really
<v Speaker 4>had no pets growing up to speak of. I had
<v Speaker 4>to convince her, hey, can I bring this cat home. Well,
<v Speaker 4>of course, she couldn't picture what a Turkish cat looked like.
<v Speaker 4>I think she thought I was bringing home a Bengal
<v Speaker 4>tiger or something like that. So so yeah, I basically
<v Speaker 4>had to bring this a little tiny kitten across continents
<v Speaker 4>so I could finally bring her back to my family
<v Speaker 4>home in the Philadelphia area.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's a miracle you made it back with her, you.
<v Speaker 4>Know, Michelle, it's twenty My wife and my mother in
<v Speaker 4>law and my son and I just flew down to
<v Speaker 4>Florida a couple weeks ago and we took our dog.
<v Speaker 4>It was a little lap dog. I was stressing out
<v Speaker 4>with her on the flight. My wife said, how did
<v Speaker 4>you ever do this with Silopi? And I really think,
<v Speaker 4>and we had paid for a seat for the dog.
<v Speaker 4>I really think it was just kind of divine intervention that,
<v Speaker 4>you know, God brought Silopi into my life and she
<v Speaker 4>changed my life. I changed her life, and the rest
<v Speaker 4>is history.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think you're right. Okay, so we're not going
<v Speaker 1>to give away all of the story. But at one point,
<v Speaker 1>once you're home and you're you know, you're at your parents.
<v Speaker 1>Out of your commitment for the service, you went to school,
<v Speaker 1>things change, and at one point you decided to make
<v Speaker 1>the decision to leave SILOPI like, let her stay where
<v Speaker 1>she was rather than move with her.
<v Speaker 4>Well, and that actually wasn't my decision. That was my mother's.
<v Speaker 4>And it's interesting because she was very hesitant to have
<v Speaker 4>a pet, and very hesitant to have this Bengal tiger
<v Speaker 4>that she thought I was bringing home. But it came
<v Speaker 4>time to move on to my life and start my
<v Speaker 4>professional career, which required me to move out of state.
<v Speaker 4>And so I went and I mentioned to my mother, Hey,
<v Speaker 4>I've got this new job opportunity in the Detroit area
<v Speaker 4>and she said, well, what are you going to do
<v Speaker 4>with Silope? And I said, well, she's mine. She's going
<v Speaker 4>to come with me. And she said, well is that
<v Speaker 4>really fair to her. You're going to be working odd hours,
<v Speaker 4>she's going to be home alone a lot, and wouldn't
<v Speaker 4>it make more sense to leave her here? And that's
<v Speaker 4>when I realized that this neat freak with obsessive compulsive
<v Speaker 4>tendencies who always wanted her house spotlessly clean kind of
<v Speaker 4>had fallen in love with this cat just as much
<v Speaker 4>as I did. And well, she was happy for me
<v Speaker 4>and willing to let her son go. At that point,
<v Speaker 4>she really wasn't willing to let her grandkitten go. So
<v Speaker 4>I left Slope behind with my parents and at that
<v Speaker 4>point she became their cat.
<v Speaker 1>So do you think that when we make these decisions
<v Speaker 1>it's I mean, it's not always the easiest to do,
<v Speaker 1>but sometimes you have to come to decision of what's
<v Speaker 1>right for my fur kid. You know, what's the right
<v Speaker 1>thing for them, whether it's either relocating or deciding to
<v Speaker 1>adopt and thinking about if you're going to change your
<v Speaker 1>lifestyle or not, or can.
<v Speaker 4>You absolutely I think it comes to the form just
<v Speaker 4>like regular kids, whether they have fur or not. Right,
<v Speaker 4>sometimes you have to make decisions not based on what
<v Speaker 4>you want, but based on what's best for them. And
<v Speaker 4>at that point I realized that she had become so
<v Speaker 4>attached to my mother. She especially became attached to my father,
<v Speaker 4>who was just always just an animal lover and a
<v Speaker 4>sweet human being. And yeah, like I said, they were
<v Speaker 4>happy for my ability to move on with my life.
<v Speaker 4>They just weren't quite ready to give her up yet,
<v Speaker 4>and they didn't. I think it was the right decision
<v Speaker 4>for both Silopia and my parents.
<v Speaker 1>I think you're right, what about for.
<v Speaker 4>You that there was guilt feelings about that. But sometimes
<v Speaker 4>the love you have for other people and for other
<v Speaker 4>creatures sometimes supplant what you might feel about yourself. So difficult,
<v Speaker 4>and I wrote in the book that was a difficult
<v Speaker 4>situation as I backed out of my driveway for the
<v Speaker 4>last time and saw her sitting in the window looking
<v Speaker 4>at me, And that was very emotional time in the book,
<v Speaker 4>very emotional time in my life. Here I am turning
<v Speaker 4>this page and I'm really leaving kind of the sweetest
<v Speaker 4>bookmark of that page behind me.
<v Speaker 1>So I think that was very It was very thoughtful
<v Speaker 1>of you.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you. Not easy, but thank you.
<v Speaker 1>You know about your parents, You thought about your cat Selope,
<v Speaker 1>they were, you know, with her all the time. I
<v Speaker 1>do believe when you adopt, you know your furbabes can
<v Speaker 1>acclimate to your lifestyle. My first adoption was two dogs
<v Speaker 1>at different times, and I was working, but I had,
<v Speaker 1>you know, at times, I had a pet sitter come
<v Speaker 1>during the day, or we adjusted my lifestyle. Some times
<v Speaker 1>you have to do that. But then there's also the
<v Speaker 1>other side of coin, where your lifestyle is not going
<v Speaker 1>to work, and maybe it's there's a better place for
<v Speaker 1>this furbabe. Well, it's sacrifice, right, sacrifice exactly either way.
<v Speaker 4>Well, and as you can see in the book and
<v Speaker 4>as you hear in the book and it comes out
<v Speaker 4>of the pages at you, Yeah, there was not a
<v Speaker 4>doubt in my mind that she knew she was being
<v Speaker 4>rescued and saved and being given it a better life.
<v Speaker 4>And she did everything she could to make sure I
<v Speaker 4>stayed safe and getting her out of the country and
<v Speaker 4>back home. That it was kind of a no brainer
<v Speaker 4>as far as doing what was right for her when
<v Speaker 4>it was my time to sacrifice.
<v Speaker 1>What is your opinion on this, Because when you adopted Slope,
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't optimal time. It was difficult, it was I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you're in this service and then you have to, as
<v Speaker 1>you said, go through, you know, over a continent to
<v Speaker 1>bring this little kitten back. So wasn't optimal time. And
<v Speaker 1>sometimes you know, us as humans, we never really have
<v Speaker 1>an optimal time in our life when we're considering, you know,
<v Speaker 1>should I adopt a cat? Should I not? Is it
<v Speaker 1>a good time? And by the way, two is always
<v Speaker 1>better than one. They keep each other company. So two
<v Speaker 1>cats adopt two at one time, it's much better. So
<v Speaker 1>But what do you say to those that say, well,
<v Speaker 1>it might not be a right time. I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>It could be difficult, because I have my opinion on that,
<v Speaker 1>of course, But what do you think you know?
<v Speaker 4>I would agree with you, and I don't care if
<v Speaker 4>it's a cat, a dog, a child. If you wait
<v Speaker 4>for the perfect time for anything in life, you're going
<v Speaker 4>to constantly be left waiting. And I think the joy
<v Speaker 4>and the love that you miss out on. I always
<v Speaker 4>like to say life is what happens while you're busy
<v Speaker 4>making plans, and sometimes there's never going to be a
<v Speaker 4>right time to do anything. But certainly when it comes
<v Speaker 4>to bringing love into your home in the form of
<v Speaker 4>a pet, sometimes there's always that leap of faith. And
<v Speaker 4>I certainly did it with Sillopi, and it sounds like
<v Speaker 4>you've done it with your cats and then your dogs
<v Speaker 4>in the past. Their ability to worm their way into
<v Speaker 4>your heart is crystal clear in reading my book, but
<v Speaker 4>it's crystal clear for anybody who's had a pet before.
<v Speaker 4>And if you just wait for that perfect time, I
<v Speaker 4>don't think you're ever going to get there. I think
<v Speaker 4>it's love always takes a leap of faith.
<v Speaker 1>I think You're absolutely right. Because when I moved across
<v Speaker 1>the country and I was deciding should I adopt or
<v Speaker 1>should I not adopt? It took me a while and
<v Speaker 1>I actually worked for a year and thought, let me
<v Speaker 1>think about this, because I work a lot, is it fair?
<v Speaker 1>And I finally decided, you know what, I'm doing this
<v Speaker 1>because I'll make my life work. I'll make it work.
<v Speaker 1>And one of my best decisions. So my dogs I adopted.
<v Speaker 1>My cats all adopted me. So that's you could just
<v Speaker 1>I'm in South Florida, so it's warm here most of
<v Speaker 1>the just about all the year except if we get
<v Speaker 1>this lone cold fronts, so cats are always around, especially kittens.
<v Speaker 1>So's I could have been adopted by probably eleven. I'd
<v Speaker 1>had five at one time.
<v Speaker 4>I do find you, that's for sure. Certainly testament.
<v Speaker 1>They find you, especially during kitten season. They find you.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Also, I would like to mention that you did not
<v Speaker 1>let your fear of college stop you.
<v Speaker 4>I did not. That changes something about the military and
<v Speaker 4>laying in the forest and getting rained on and snowed on,
<v Speaker 4>and you know, toxic or cs gas thrown at you,
<v Speaker 4>and you become real quick. Yeah, I think I'm ready
<v Speaker 4>for college now, So that's a great way of finding
<v Speaker 4>what you desire in life.
<v Speaker 1>Can you share your degrees? Because I thought it was
<v Speaker 1>incredible from having a fear of college too, I should
<v Speaker 1>call you doctor.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, that's that's yeah for this young kid from Narstown
<v Speaker 4>who had no interest and was terribly afraid of going
<v Speaker 4>to college and it ended up. You know, I ended
<v Speaker 4>up with a bachelor's degree, to master's degrees and a PhD.
<v Speaker 4>So that's kind of one of those things you never
<v Speaker 4>say never. And I think that gets to that part
<v Speaker 4>of resilience in the book of you know, even when
<v Speaker 4>things are difficult, you just keep pushing through, and you
<v Speaker 4>just keep trying to succeed one step at a time,
<v Speaker 4>and literally you just never say never.
<v Speaker 1>I was asking about resilience and defining it, but you
<v Speaker 1>pretty much said it. Never say never. I mean persevere.
<v Speaker 1>I think we all have challenges thrown at us, whether
<v Speaker 1>you know, we grow up with certain situations, or whether
<v Speaker 1>we have physical limits or financial limits, or there's a
<v Speaker 1>lot of kinds of limits. But the big thing is
<v Speaker 1>to just persevere or just do it.
<v Speaker 4>Michelle, I agree with you wholeheartedly, and you know I
<v Speaker 4>have one of my sons is in college right now,
<v Speaker 4>and I think many things we've done wrong in our
<v Speaker 4>society is trying to take that fear of failure or
<v Speaker 4>trying to take difficulty away from our children. Because really, ultimately,
<v Speaker 4>in life, whether you're successful or not depends on whether
<v Speaker 4>you just keep going. And I keep telling my current
<v Speaker 4>college student is you know, it may not be fun,
<v Speaker 4>but life isn't always fun. But the difference between people
<v Speaker 4>who succeed and don't is the ones who just keep
<v Speaker 4>going and not stopping are the ones that ultimately succeed exactly.
<v Speaker 1>And how many times have you heard that it's okay
<v Speaker 1>to fail, just don't do the same thing more than once.
<v Speaker 4>For sure, that's a great way of putting it. Yes,
<v Speaker 4>I'll be using that from now on.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know where I heard that, but no, you
<v Speaker 1>know what it is. It's okay to make mistakes, just
<v Speaker 1>don't make the same mistake twice. The same thing with failure.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's a mistake, right, and you're going.
<v Speaker 4>To fail, And what you have to realize is you
<v Speaker 4>just keep going, so you have to keep going.
<v Speaker 1>I agree with you. I love your book. It's Slope,
<v Speaker 1>a story of love and resilience and the name. Actually,
<v Speaker 1>if you're doing author search, Bradford J. Bayer, Brad where
<v Speaker 1>can people find your book?
<v Speaker 4>You can find it on anywhere you get books, Amazon,
<v Speaker 4>Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, things like that.
<v Speaker 1>I know I'm doing it again, but I have so
<v Speaker 1>much respect for our service people, So thank you again
<v Speaker 1>for our service. Thank you for coming Oncatitude. I so
<v Speaker 1>appreciate it, and thank you for sharing your story with us.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you so much, Michelle, It's been a great honor.
<v Speaker 4>I appreciate it.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, thank you. I hope you all enjoyed this book again.
<v Speaker 1>It's called Slope. It's a true story of love and
<v Speaker 1>resilience by Bradford Bayer. It's really a wonderful book. I
<v Speaker 1>couldn't put it down. I loved it. I want to
<v Speaker 1>thank Brad Bayer for coming on Catitude and sharing his story.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you so much. I want to thank my cat crew, Dennis,
<v Speaker 1>Charlotte and Molly who taught me what it is to
<v Speaker 1>love a cat, So thank you. And of course a
<v Speaker 1>huge thank you to my producer, Mark Winter for working
<v Speaker 1>his magic on my show and making it sound amazing
<v Speaker 1>for everybody listening. And a huge, huge Thank you to
<v Speaker 1>my listening audience. Thank you so much for listening to Catitude.
<v Speaker 1>I so appreciate it. And hey, remember lose the attitude,
<v Speaker 1>have catitude.
<v Speaker 5>Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlight
<v Speaker 5>radio dot com.
<v Speaker 2>Don't e