My daughter just left. She came to visit me. It was her first time driving on her own from San Diego. She’s been there for about 5 years or so. At any rate, it was good to see her. My heart just was happy. I was talking to her about that too, about the bond, the bond that forms, the oxytocin, you know, the reality of it, and the trigger in the person.

Anyway, I missed her while she was gone. I usually see her about once a year. I drive out there and spend a weekend or something like that. She actually spent five days here. We went to Springerville and visited the grave of her friend Max. Max was the first person I think she really felt free around.

Max was the kind of guy that put people at ease, but he kind of treated her special in a way. They quickly became friends. They met at the campus at the Phoenix College. I don’t know how quickly they became friends, but once they actually became friends they became really good friends pretty quick. She moved in there for a while. I don’t remember how many months it was. It might have been a year or over a year that she moved in there. She moved out of the cottage in my yard, the guesthouse, and moved in over there.

That was a time when Max died, and a lot of things changed for her. She moved back into the cottage, and stayed for another year. She then moved in with a friend of hers from work’s family. They moved to San Diego, and it actually didn’t last long, because her friend found a boyfriend and of course they moved in together, and so you know, left Zuri alone.

She went through a number of changes. She had a two bedroom apartment that she would rent out a room, and that sort of thing. Now she’s living with someone, renting a room from a couple who are only home half the time. They spend a lot of time out of the country, so it’s an interesting life. I guess she’s gotten that way, but to have her here wakes up a lot of stuff. I mean I couldn’t stop being a dad. By that I mean trying to tell her who to do and how to do it. I tried to refrain whenever I became aware of it. When it just grabbed me and took me there, then of course that’s where I went.

I’m really proud of her. She’s made many good decisions. I think living in California is good, except that I miss her so much. While she was here I showed her this kitten that I had raised, Puddles. The kitten’s mom had abandoned her. It was freezing and raining. This little kitten was in this hole all soaking wet, and I rescued her.

I held her next to my body while I went to the pet store to buy the things I needed to feed her just to keep her warm, because she was freezing. She was covered in fleas, at a week old it wasn’t looking good.

She had no strength, but she made it just fine. Basically, I would just hold her next to my skin and feed her warm milk in a syringe. it just went right in and we did that for a couple of weeks. With her it was really challenging, because she had diarrhea all the time, and she couldn’t control it. We had her treated with some meditation and it was still happening, so we just had to switch her to more solid food. It was entirely possible she was actually getting too much nutrition, too much of a volume and couldn’t process it all.

She seems to be doing fine now. I love this kitten so much. This kitten is now owned by the lady who lives in the guesthouse now, the one that lives in the cottage. She has a 6-year-old daughter and they adopted the cat, Puddles.

I just feel this incredible bond with this cat, and so I’m like, “Oh, you know, this is Puddles.” What I would like to give everyone is the depth of my connection. It kinda works, and it kinda doesn’t work that way. They have to experience their own connection. You can’t generally do it in a brief meeting where everyone is distracted and other people are talking and things are going on.

When I hold this kitten in my chest, she’s about six months old I guess, my heart still picks up. She’s okay with it. This is not a cat that minds being held in any way. I would just hold her until she fell asleep, over and over again.

I got her a little toy. It was just a little cat toy. It had face and like little stubby arms and a torso, no legs or anything. I would keep it in with her. She would play with it a little bit, once she got old enough. When they took her I gave them they toy. They were taking her a little bit at a time, to see if it was something that they wanted to do. Then one day she just started staying over there. It was cool actually, the way that it worked out, but that’s the thing about what you can give and what you can’t give them.

It’s not that I can’t facilitate their feeling that, but from a cold start to a single meeting in a room full of distractions, for less than five minutes, I think it’s unlikely that much of a bond is going to be formed, especially if you’re not holding them. Dogs too.

It’s such a beautiful and profound thing. I’m in awe of my love for cats. I love dogs too. Nintendo and Howl are Zuri’s dog’s. They came with her. Nintendo was a little dirty, and when she got in this yard. This yard has some plant that has little sticky something and they stick to the fur and she looked like she was spotted with these little tiny dots. I gave both the dogs a bath, and that’s really pretty intimate between a human and an animal, to bath them, to groom. Mutual grooming is usually just reserved for close family.

It’s a bonding experience in most species, and they do it.. With fish it’s a little different; fish have special breeds of fish that will clean the other fish. It’s amazing. There are fish that will eat the parasites off of the other fish, and there are monkeys that will pick it off with their hands.

Dogs and cats will sometimes lick one another’s faces and things like this, so giving a dog a bath is a pretty intimate experience, and they both were totally okay with it. I’ve known Nintendo since she was just a puppy. She was probably too young of a puppy to be adopted out too, but she’s Zuri’s dog. She’s a little terrier, you know, but she’s not much of a guard dog. Howl is much more hyper. Howl started out being almost off the hook with his barking and his aggressive behavior, and he’s mellowed and mellowed and mellowed. It’s nice to see that.

I’m so grateful for my daughter. I need that connection in so many ways. We both talked about how we had isolated ourselves, and right now I haven’t really yet begun to recover I think from, the isolation that I experienced after Jasmine left at any rate. After I broke up with Jasmine and closed the office, I’ve closed down a lot of avenues of expression and a lot of avenues of touching others. So I’m going to re-establish that connection. it was good to have her here and hear the motivation, because I appreciate her in a whole bunch of really good new ways.

My Bond with Zuri

We took a drive to Springerville, so that she could visit Max’s grave. That was probably really good for her to do that and there may have been some closure. It’s hard to say, but I could tell that it was good. That relationship had meant so much for her at the time, and it still does. She still cherishes what they had together. So she gets to say goodbye, see that it’s done. He had a monument with his picture in it and his name, and we walked around a little bit before we found it.

Anyway, it was there, and she was there, and I got to be there with her.