MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from Surviving Cancer, Healing People: One Cat's Story (Sula)   Greetings, World! My name is Sula. I am told that I am a very attractive cat. A bit rotund, I am a domestic shorthair with a very luxuriant and fanciful white coat, accented by greyish-black bangs and a greyish black tail. I am almost ten years old, a big girl now. I live by choice at Old Mission San Juan Bautista, the latest in a long line of mission cats, and I am a cancer survivor. Supposedly, I am a Turkish Van cat by breed, but I doubt that I came here from Turkey. On the other hand, I don’t know where I came from. I don’t think it really matters. I am here, and I like being here. Moreover, I have a mission and a Mission. What more could any cat want? As a cancer-surviving Mission cat, my chore is to heal people who, like me, must overcome burdens in their lives. (I am so very glad that I do not have the same mission that previous Mission cats had: ridding the Mission of mice and rats. I think they must

  Carl and Murjan sharing a Thanksgiving dinner Gaudete Sunday is coming up--an oasis in Lent, and, like other Sundays, a time we can eat a full meal! If our beloved Murjan were still with us, he would be perching on his chair next to Carl (wish he, too, were still with us, 2021 stole two beloved members of our family), savoring the smells of the fat of the land (well, maybe, of pancakes -- he at those, too), and patiently (yes, he was a patient cat, almost humanly patient) for his share of the feast to be chopped up and presented for his enjoyment. Each of our cats had quite different personalities, but the two that stand in stark contrast to each other are Murjan and Intrepid . They were both born in Jordan, lived with us there, and came to California with us 15 years ago. Both are now on the other side of the rainbow bridge, ravaged by the same kind of cancer, feline lymphoma. Intrepid is interred with his devoted human to whom he was equally devoted, Carl, and Murjan's ashes