Life in Gainesville is really pretty great. The kids are in a great charter school – eighteen students per grade, and these teachers are amazing. Life here is generally slower than in the Atlanta suburbs – people actually go the speed limit for the most part, especially in those flashing-yellow-light school zones.  The weather is awesome, though I’m sure I’ll be complaining come summertime.

All of that is like extra icing on the cake, though. What has made this time really amazing is what we’ve been doing with the church here. It’s hard to look back and see a night and day difference from where the community is now versus where it started, but there’s something that has grown among us that none of us would deny.

One of the benefits to how this group has been planted is that with most of us having moved here for this, we have far fewer ties to distract us from community life. While it’s important to be able to guide people out of those distractions and into a focus on the church body, I’m also learning that it is far more important to begin with a group that is absolutely and entirely singularly focused on Christ, and the sense that the church is his physical expression on the earth, and worthy of our full attention. Once you have that established, guiding newcomers into an appropriate focus on community life is far easier to do.

The other thing that has been very sweet is meeting, and being in community with, many different people with similar stories. How they came to Christ, but also how they struggled with the institutional church and how they came to a realization that they would have to leave institutions behind, but also making the decision to leave family and friends behind to pursue it. Nearly everything we’ve felt or had to deal with along the way is mirrored in other people here.

What we’ve found most encouraging, though, is the fierceness and intentionality of sharing a revelation of Christ that is going on here. As I’ve stated before, we’re being planted by leaders for whom this is not a new experience – they understand the necessity of a mind-blowing revelation of Christ, and they know how to share it. We are incredibly blessed to have these leaders among us. While the sacrifices of moving here were – and still are – very great, the blessings that we have experienced have made it worth doing ten times over.

I moved everything for a few reasons.  First of all, the name showmethemooneys.com was originally imagined as a multi-family site, focusing primarily on my siblings and I, sharing family news, etc.  I probably had that idea a couple of years too soon, because nobody was interested in blogging at the time, and by the time they got interested, I had already taken this blog on as purely mine.  Which is fine.  I’ll resurrect showmethemooneys.com if/when Amy decides to blog (the name was her idea, after all).  The name makes sense as a family update site, which I’ve never really put a lot of effort into that.  In the meantime, all the old links should still work.

The reason I moved the blog now was because Blogger was removing FTP publishing, which I had been using for nearly five years to publish my blog to my own domain.  I didn’t want to move to a blogspot domain, and then move again.  I had already been considering re-purposing this blog a bit, as well as making the jump to WordPress.  I figured that now is as good time as any, and it was actually far easier than I had feared, thanks to the amazing tools and plugins available for WordPress.

As far as shifting the purpose of the blog, I intend to post less frequently about politics.  I haven’t posted much here about politics in the past year mainly because Facebook and Twitter both provide a better way for me to make smaller comments.  I might make longer comments on here from time to time, but it’ll be far less often.  My viewpoint on politics haven’t shifted, but perhaps my priorities have.  If you want to hear my thoughts on politics, Facebook is probably your best bet (www.facebook.com/derekmooney/).

The reason to re-purpose this blog is because I intend to post far more frequently about what’s been happening with us here in Gainesville, Florida, and our experiences with Frank Viola, Milt Rodriguez, and the rest of the amazing people God has led here to be a part of this.  The past six months have been nothing like we expected, and everything we imagined.  I’ll post more about that later on, but for now, suffice it to say that a new purpose for the blog deserved a new name, and a new look.

I even seriously considered cleaning some old posts out, moving them to another archive blog, etc.  I decided against it.  I’m still proud of most of what I’ve written, even if I look back now and see some misguided priorities here and there.  No matter, that’s the story of my life.  In some ways, the blog is as much an archive of my life for others to read down the road, for better or for worse.

A couple of technical things:

• If you’re subscribed via a feedreader, please update your feed settings to pull from feeds.feedburner.com/derekmooney.  The old feed link will work for awhile, but at some point I plan to try to redirect it and eventually shut it down.
• I installed an iPhone plugin, so give it a try.  The wpTouch plugin is really nifty.
• I do plan on updating the theme at some point.  It’s somewhat low on my list of priorities right now.
• I’m going to be working on a blogroll – if you’d like me to add your blog/website to the links section, add me to yours (please link to www.derekmooney.com, with either my name as the title, or “Dig in Deep”), and leave a comment with a link to your blog.

First, I’ll get the easy stuff out of the way. I am not changing jobs. I’ve been working at home for the past few months again, and I will be working at home from Gainesville, as well. Hearing that, people then ask why we’re moving to Gainesville. I usually give them the “short” answer – there is a church group starting there that we strongly feel called to be a part of. The frequent follow-up question is whether I’m going to be on staff at this church. Let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

God has been pulling us away from institutional Christianity for a few years. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you’ve seen the process somewhat. It started when we began to feel that there was “more” to church than what we were experiencing, and left the church we had been a part of for five years (and the denomination that I had been a part of my entire life).

Part of that process put us into a house church. If you’re interested, you can read a good recap of my journey up to that point. While it was far more relational, and was a step along the journey God had in mind for us, He was also leading us to something far more organic than what we were experiencing there.

What do I mean by organic? There are many ways to describe that. One way to say it is this:

[It is a] church that is born out of spiritual life instead of being constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grassroots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meetings (as opposed to pastor-to-pew services), nonhierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering. (see “What is an ‘Organic’ church?” at housechurchresource.org)

The other key to an organic church is that of apostolic leadership. This style of leadership functions by providing a glorious revelation of Christ as a foundation, assisting the church in growing into every-member functioning, and watching out for problems that will inevitably arise. Apostolic leadership instructs the church in how to live by divine life, how to experience the fellowship of the divine community, and prepares and equips others for apostolic work. These principles are not based on modern or ancient ideals of leadership, but on the foundation of how Christ trained the apostles and how they trained their successors to spread and express the Kingdom of God.

Many house churches lack a commitment to organic church life. Fewer still have any kind of apostolic leadership or even a desire for one.

One of the problems we have run into is that we feel very isolated when it comes to our view of the church. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining when I say this, but our efforts to share with others what God has revealed to us has largely fallen on deaf ears. I now realize that this is because we are sharing from a theoretical and intellectual perspective rather than from a perspective based on experience. Basically, we cannot create something that we have not yet experienced.

Which leaves us only one choice: to go somewhere to experience it.

The church group in Gainesville is being started by Frank Viola along with some of his other co-workers. Frank Viola is the author of many books on organic church life, including Reimagining Church and From Eternity to Here, among others, as well as a new book coming out later this year that takes the theology of his existing books and describes more practical examples.

We met Frank personally late last year, and as we were sharing our struggles and thoughts, he invited us to come and be a part of this group in Gainesville, FL. There are several people moving to Gainesville from around the country, some of whom we have already met, who have had experience with organic churches. Some of them have been involved with planting and equipping organic churches around the country.

We initially resisted, not even really taking it seriously. Moving to be a part of a “house church” sounds a little crazy. I also had my jaw surgery and that kept us from really thinking about it much.

But God didn’t leave it alone, and He seemed to close pretty much all the other doors. Nobody we knew was really interested in the kind of thing that God had laid on our hearts. Even the group that would have represented the best fit here wasn’t going to work, for a couple of reasons. And as our interactions with Frank and others increased, and we understood more of what God designed the church to be, we yearned more for an opportunity to experience it.

From a practical perspective, why move? We love this house. We like the area. Our kids were in a great private school. All of our close family is nearby. We have lots of friends in the area. We have a lot of history here. Things are comfortable, and for the most part, things are great.

But staying comfortable is not a reason to resist God’s call.

We are moving to experience the very thing that God has revealed to us and laid on our hearts. It is not something we can initiate without having first experienced it.

Furthermore, we are not starting something new with our peers, trying to figure this out as we go. We are entering into this with mentors, who have done this before, many times, and who understand the glories and riches of a Christ expressed through divine life. We may be losing proximity to family and friends, but we will be gaining spiritual fathers and mothers, who understand our desire for a church free from religion, free from clergy, free from institutionalism, free from denominationalism, free from legalism, free from pentecostalism, free from evangelicalism, free from passivity, free from treating church like a business, and free from anything other than Christ and Him alone.

And as much as we wish we could experience that here, it has become increasingly clear that we will not have that opportunity.

Sometimes it takes great pain to follow God’s call. It was difficult for Israel to leave Egypt. It was difficult for Israel to leave the wilderness and enter into Canaan. It was difficult for Israel to leave the comforts of Babylon and return to rebuild Jerusalem. But God had a destination in mind for them.

He has a destination in mind for all of us, as well, one that would not just turn us from stones into living stones, but to take these living stones and through divine life form a house within which he can dwell.

How long we will be in Gainesville, and where we will go from there, only God knows. We do know, however, that during our time there we will be trained and equipped, prepared for whatever God calls us to do and wherever He calls us to go.

This Tuesday marks the eight-week point from my jaw surgery. As I mentioned in my last post, dealing with TMJ issues for years, and going through the treatment for that, it became evident very early on in the treatment process that where my jaw joint needed to be and where my teeth fit together were too far apart for dental or orthodontic treatment alone. So surgery it was.

The surgery itself went very well, and the surgeon was very pleased with how things went. My first day or so in the hospital was kind of a blur. The swelling was atrocious, and actually go worse for the first week after the surgery. My head looked like I was in some kind of special effects for a movie to make me look fat. It made it very hard to eat or drink (I couldn’t close my lips for a couple of weeks), not to mention talk.

The other thing I hadn’t realized was how much the surgery would affect my sinuses. I knew he’d be up there and that I’d be stuffy – but I had full sinus surgery a few years ago (constant sinus infections, polyps, deviated septum, the whole deal) and the aftermath was as bad as it was after my sinus surgery. I knew how to handle it, really, with irrigation, etc., but having to deal with that on top of everything else was little fun.

Then there was the numbness and pain. I never lost any feeling in my tongue or throat, but otherwise my teeth, gums, lips, and chin were pretty much completely numb initially. That masked some of the pain, I think, but even at first I had a dull pain between the roof of my mouth and my sinuses, and that pain would be the worst at night when I was laying down to sleep.

Energy was probably the biggest problem, because my diet was basically restricted to things I could get through a straw (not even sucking on it at first, but pushing it through a straw with a bag), and not chewing anything. My diet consisted of smoothies, milkshakes, cream of wheat, some pureed soups, etc. When I could use a spoon things got a little easier and I had a few more options, but for weeks it was difficult to get up and move around for any significant amount of time, simply because I wasn’t getting a normal amount of nourishment.

For the first couple of weeks, I spent most of my time in the bedroom resting – watching a lot of TV, mostly. I caught up on a few TV shows, most notably Firefly (I had never seen it, and I was very impressed) and The Office (via Netflix streaming, and now I have another favorite show). I had hoped to get some reading done, but I found that I really didn’t feel like reading much. I eventually progressed to the couch and played some XBox games (Force Unleashed, Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Fable II) and movies (Kevin and I have been going through Harry Potter). So my downtime basically turned into a gluttonous media-fest.

At tis point, my sinuses are totally healed (took about 3-4 weeks to get there). Swelling is still present, but it’s not really uncomfortable. People who see me about once a week still comment that they can tell I’m getting less swollen. The numbness is still annoying, but it is receding and getting more “itchy” in different places. I have a lot more feeling inside my mouth than I had even a week ago. It’s kind of like having novocaine, but instead of taking 3-4 hours to get feeling back, it takes 3-4 months.

Last week, at my six-week appointment, I got clearance to chew for the first time since the surgery. I’m restricted to things that don’t offer much resistance, like pasta, soft chicken, ground meats, baked potatoes, well-cooked vegetables, etc. Some meals have been a challenge to figure out what to eat, but even still it’s had an amazing effect on my energy level. I’ve been doing lots of different things at home, and we’ve even gone out to eat the last couple of days for the first time in nearly two months – Doc Chey’s Noodle House (lo mein), IHOP (eggs and pancakes), Holy Smokes BBQ (chicken salad for me), and El Ranchero (chicken burrito and chile relleno).

With the improvement in my diet, my energy level has increased dramatically. Last weekend I spent all day Saturday doing laundry, and then Sunday and Monday Amy was sick (some kind of stomach bug, very flu-like) and I did everything for two days. Not that I wasn’t tired after all of that, but I was able to do it. A week earlier that wouldn’t have been possible on my mostly liquid diet.

This week, I’ll get clearance to eat anything softer than a raw carrot, which means pretty much anything I really want to try. I still have some issues with function – numbness inside makes it hard to tell when food is stuck in my braces, my jaw is still a little tight with the swelling so it’s hard to bite into big things, etc. But all of that is getting better by the day.

The difficult part is going to be trying to not gain my weight back. I lost about 10-12 pounds during this recovery, and I’d like to keep it off.

The orthodontist has also started tweaking my braces again, so I’m on my way to the final stretch of this whole mess. Sometime this year, I’ll get my braces off, and this multi-year process will come to an end.

Lastly, I want to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who helped us out during all of this. We had a lot of meals brought by (and Amy got very good at turning many of them into a soup I could eat), people came by to help do some chores around the house, or just watch the kids so Amy could run some errands or even just get some extra sleep. All of your efforts were very much appreciated.

I’ve had TMJ issues since I was 16 or 17. It basically started, rather suddenly, by me waking up one morning and not being able to open my jaw. That really freaked me out – it took a couple of hours of trying to work it open, when it suddenly popped open, quite painfully. Since then, I’ve regularly had tension and popping in my jaw, building to a point over time where I get headaches and migraines regularly.

I went through nightguard therapy when I was 19, which helped tremendously, but over time my teeth shifted and I was no longer able to wear it. My symptoms were tolerable until about five or six years ago, when the migraines returned with a vengeance, building to a point where I regularly had a migraine once a week.

So I began a new splint therapy with my dentist, this one not designed to just alleviate symptoms but to move my jaw into the correct position. He determined that my jaw was not operating within the joint correctly, and the splints are designed to push the jaw back up into joint over time. After your joint gets to a stable position, the symptoms go away (which they actually did) and your bite can be analyzed to figure out how to adjust your teeth to make them line up with your ideal bite. This can involve dental procedures (grinding, adding to the teeth), braces, and/or surgery.

In my case, the difference was (and is) severe. At some point I’ll get some pictures from the dentist and/or orthodontist that make that clear – but basically, when I slide my bottom jaw into the stable position, it is pretty far behind my top jaw. In addition, my teeth don’t come together now, either. When my back teeth touch together, my front teeth are still very far apart.

So it was pretty clear, early on, that orthognathic surgery would be required to reposition my jaw. This kind of surgery can involve the top or bottom jaw, or both at the same time. In my case, it will require both. The bottom jaw is where they move the teeth forward and back, but the top jaw is where they adjust the angle that the teeth come together. Braces are actually required first to line the teeth up and prepare everything for surgery. I started braces last January and they got that finished up moving teeth a couple of months ago, but I’ll still be wearing braces for the surgery and for quite a while afterwards.

Basically, the surgery involves cutting the jaw bones, repositioning them according to the plans they’ve set up, and screwing the bones back together. After surgery, I’ll be on an all-liquid diet, restricted from chewing anything at all for a couple of weeks. It will be a couple of months before I can chew somewhat normally again, and half a year before the doctor would be comfortable with me chewing anything particularly hard (and before any tweaks to the braces can be done). Swelling will also be an issue.

Those are the downsides, along with normal pain and swelling following surgery. The upside is that as a result of my surgery my teeth will be in a position consistent with where my jaw joint should be. Which means that as the swelling comes down, I should have permanent relief from the TMJ issues that I’ve been dealing with for over 15 years.

It’ll probably be a year or more before all of this is over, mainly finishing up with the orthodontist. I’m not at all looking forward to the surgery – but I’ve been through enough surgeries that I know how the general process will go. But I’m particularly dreading having a difficult time eating a drinking for awhile afterward.

More than that, though, I’m very much looking forward to all of this being over. This has been a four year process now, leading this point, and it should be worth it in the end.

One of the good things about having new roommates is that there will be more people around to help, but I do ask you to keep Amy and the kids in mind and after my surgery. Ask Amy if there’s anything you can do to help out. Make a meal, take the kids out for the day, come over and help clean up, etc.

My recovery will take a few weeks – I’m planning on about four weeks off of work (thanks, short-term disability!), and my time will largely be spent sleeping, reading, watching TV, or on the computer. I’d probably enjoy the downtime if I could eat normally and wasn’t dealing with pain and swelling. Talking will probably be very difficult at first, so e-mail or chatting on the internet will probably be the best way to contact me.

Please keep us all in your prayers as we go through this – surgery is on the 13th.

To put it simply, we’re making the move into intentional community, and we have invited our good friends Kevin and Faith Blackwell to come and live with us. They are excited about it, and will be moving in this Friday.

When we bought our current home, we were looking for a house that fit a lot of criteria. But two of the things we were looking for was a place that would be ideal for hosting a house church, and a place where we could pursue community in a more direct way. We had two options in that regard. The fourth bedroom in our house is off of the kitchen and has its own private bath. We also have a huge basement that is still mostly unfinished and has lots of windows – there is plenty of space that is ideal for an apartment.

We learned a couple of weeks ago that Kevin and Faith were going to be moving back up this way, and into a less than desirable situation. Amy and I were already making plans to move the kids’ bedrooms around and free up the fourth bedroom. So we brought up the conversation, and Kevin and Faith were very excited about the opportunity. We laid out two options – we could work towards finishing out an apartment where they’d have their own space, or we could have them move into the main level and share the kitchen and living spaces with us.

Without really any question, all of us were in agreement that we wanted to share the space. Our house is really too big for just one family, anyway.

This is really exciting to us for several reasons. First of all, Kevin and Faith are very good friends of ours. I first met Kevin nearly eight years ago, at Faith Community Church, where he stepped up as our main drummer there. We played together there for five years or so, but more than that, we shared a lot in planning, dreaming, and working in ministry.

Kevin and Faith have always been great with our kids, and our kids have always loved Kevin and Faith, as well. For those keeping track, Odie spent some time with Kevin and Faith, too.

There are some practical reasons why sharing a house with others make sense. Sharing groceries, utilities, appliances, etc., makes the cost of living a little less for us all. Sharing the tasks of cooking, cleaning, etc., means less work for any one person overall.

More than that, though, are the spiritual and relational benefits of being more connected in day-to-day life. We have seen, through other members of my family who are doing similar things, the joys and struggles that accompany this kind of living. In marriage, your closeness reveals flaws in your character and is supposed to sharpen you and move your further towards righteousness. We all fully expect to experience each other’s good and bad times, and we feel that we already have the strong friendship in place to help us weather the storms that will come.

We are blessed to know others living this way who can help us navigate the options of how to share groceries, how to handle rent, how to deal with noise, kids, etc. Each situation is different, though, so we have to rely on God to connect us and lead the way. We would appreciate your prayers as we begin this.

Of course, many people simply won’t understand why we would choose to do this. Many assume that it is simply to help some friends out, as a temporary situation – Kevin lost his job at Circuit City, and is looking for a job, by the way. While we would have been willing to help out friends on a short-term basis, that’s not an accurate summary of what this is about. We are setting this up, quite intentionally, to last beyond just the “helping a friend out” stage. I think for many people it is very difficult to understand why we would be willing to give up our “private” spaces and share it with another family. Simply put – I believe God is glorified when we seek to form deeper communities with each other, and deeper commitment to each other. We are also very excited to see how God will shape us through this phase of our lives.

Buck Rogers was my favorite TV show as a little kid. I remember, vividly, trying my best to be good and finish my supper quickly so I could watch it. And then being glued to the TV for a full hour. It was just like Star Wars, only on TV!

I even had the Buck Rogers hair until 6th grade. (The funny thing is, that’s exactly how Jeremiah likes his hair right now.)

Watching it back, I totally see why I was so enthralled with it. It was cheesy, the special effects were bad, the set dressings rather crude (I think I saw a Texas Instruments calculator in one shot), but it was perfectly designed to appeal to little kids who were fascinated with Star Wars.

Also included are the A-Team, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Battlestar Galactica, Miami Vice, and others. See more at NBC’s Way Back Wednesdays.

When we left our church home in 2006, where I was a worship leader, we felt God leading us to pursue a more authentic form of church. We did not know at the time what that would look like. We visited several churches, but when we visited a house church we were amazed at the difference. We began to feel a calling to eventually host a house church, when God opened up the opportunity for us to do so. Since that time we have been further challenged to rethink what it means to “be the church.” While we did not know exactly when God would set this task in front of us, it is unmistakable that the time for us to do this is right now.

You may have never been to a house church before, and possibly you’ve never heard of one, either. So a brief description may be helpful. We are seeking to build a community:

• That seeks, first and foremost, to see Christ revealed through His body of believers (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-27);
• That thirsts for a church family based on the love of Christ;
• Where communion is a full meal, shared regularly;
• Where gatherings are controlled by Christ through the Spirit, and where each person can contribute;
• Where leadership is built from within, based on maturity and gifting;
• Whose resources are used to help those in need – in the church, the local community, and throughout the world;
• Where membership is defined only by belonging to Christ.

We are not seeking to build a community based on how other churches do things wrong. We are seeking to build a community based on the principles and commandments given to us by Christ and His apostles. We want to build a church family that is focused on Christ, without the overhead of buildings, budgets, or unnecessary traditions.

Gatherings of the church will not be based on coming to listen to someone else speak. Gatherings of the church will be based on coming to hear Christ speak through each of us. (See 1 Corinthians 14:20-31.) Gatherings of the church will be designed to have time to be together, to love each other, to help each other, and to grow together. Exactly how that will work will vary from week to week, depending on who joins us, and depending on how the Spirit leads.

Over the past year, we have also been a part of a network of house churches. This larger group currently gathers once a month, on Saturday evenings. Sometimes these larger gatherings are focused on worship, sometimes on discussion, sometimes on fellowship. We are blessed have the support, guidance, and participation of others who have been down this path.

One of the main questions people ask is: what is your plan for kids? Different house churches handle kids differently. Our current plan is to keep children in with the initial part of the gathering, and to practice engaging with our children through song, Bible readings, discussion, and prayer. After a while, we’ll have someone take the children downstairs for more activities and playtime while the adults continue meeting. We are looking for people for this role – if you know someone you would recommend, please contact us!

Based on our experience, we feel that this is a good balance between learning our spiritual responsibilities as parents, and having time without kids to really focus on what God has to say through each of us.

We will have our first gathering on Sunday, September 28th. We will join together for a full meal, as communion, around 1pm, followed by a time of worship, discussion, and prayer. There will not be an official start time or end time, so feel free to come when you can get here and leave when you need to.

If you are planning on sharing a meal with us, or will be bringing children with you, please contact us to let us know you will be coming so we can make sure we have enough food and enough supervision set up for the kids.

If you live in or near the East Lawrenceville, Grayson, Loganville, or Dacula areas, and any of this resonates with you at all, even if you are just curious, we invite you to come and join us. If you know anyone who would be interested who lives near us, please pass this along to them as well. To all of you, we ask specifically for your prayer and support as we enter this new phase of our lives and ministry.

If you are interested or have any questions at all, please contact us! We’d be more than happy to tell you more about all of this. We hope to see you here on September 28th!

1995 – June 3, 2008

Odie was, simply put, the greatest cat in the world.

He passed away last night, at home, after a couple of weeks of not eating well and losing a lot of weight. The vet visit on Sunday confirmed that all of his blood cell counts were decreasing, which indicated a bone marrow problem. We tried some prescription food with him Sunday evening and yesterday, but he wouldn’t eat anything. We even tried plain tuna last night and he completely ignored it.

Odie was a stray when we found him. Before we were married, Amy was living with some friends in an apartment, and one day as she came home there was a kitty cat outside. She called to the kitty, and he came towards her, and the cat enjoyed the attention – something very unusual for a stray. Amy also noticed that the kitty’s leg had been injured, like it had been broken. She took pity on the stray cat and started feeding him occasionally.

Before long, calling for “kitty” would result in him running towards her, meowing as he came. We took him to the vet, who told us that he was about a year old, and had FIV – the feline version of the HIV virus – and should be kept separate from cats that did not have FIV. With this condition, they said, he could live a couple of years or as many as 10.

His leg had indeed been broken, but had already set and it would be a major ordeal to re-break it and heal it correctly. He didn’t seem to have any trouble getting around, so we left things as they were.

We named him “Odie” after the dog in the Garfield comic strip, for several reasons. First, he came when you called him. He also starting responding to snapping fingers – we’d snap and he’d come running. He also tended to drool a lot. He was always looking for attention, and would let you pet him like a dog – including petting his tummy, something I do NOT recommend trying with other cats (especially if they have claws!).

I kept Odie outside at my parents house, initially, since my sister already had an indoor cat. Amy and I were married in 1997, and he became a part of our family. He was there when we moved into our apartment.

It was always apparent to us that Odie had not always been a stray. He was way too interested in human affection, but also the first time we opened a can at our apartment he went nuts. So we knew he had been fed from a can at some point.

Like a dog, Odie was an over-eater. If we filled his bowl with food, he would eat the entire bowl in one sitting, even if it meant that most of it would come back up later. So we quickly learned to feed him the “right” amount, twice a day, just like a dog.

When we had guests over, including a large party, Odie was always in the middle of it, looking for attention. The picture above was taken at McKenna’s birthday party in December. Odie was right in the middle of it, like he always was.

When McKenna was about 2 and a half years old we discovered that she was having mild allergic reactions to him. After petting him her face would have a minor rash, even if we washed her hands afterwards. So we started looking for another home for him.

After awhile, our friends Kevin and Faith took him in at their apartment, where Odie had his home away from home. Odie spent a few years there, until Kevin went to college, and married housing didn’t allow pets. Meanwhile, we were finishing our basement at our new house that would be a great place for Odie to hang out. So last fall Odie came home.

McKenna and Jeremiah had really begun to enjoy Odie again. We kept wanting to see if McKenna still had an allergy, but McKenna insisted on petting Odie only with her bare feet. Which didn’t bother Odie at all.

A couple of months ago Odie stopped eating as well as he used to. We tried to start using canned food with him, and that improved things, but soon after that he wasn’t eating that very well, either. We took him to the vet about three weeks ago, where they discovered a heart murmur, and found that all of his blood cell counts were low – which indicates that the bone marrow is not doing its job. Last Sunday’s visit confirmed that diagnosis, but we really thought we could get him eating prescription food (or plain tuna) enough to go on for a few weeks. We also thought that this process would last a little longer, but it seemed to happen so quickly.

Even up to the very end, Odie was still a sweet kitty. Last night I was downstairs with the kids playing a video game with them, and Odie came up and sat down right between us. Looking for attention. Naturally, we obliged. We tried to give him lots of extra love over the past couple of days, including a good brushing (which he always loved).

We will miss Odie. I’m really glad that he was able to be at home with us for a few months, and that the kids could get to know him again.

McKenna wants to know if Odie is in heaven. I told her that if dogs and cats go to heaven, Odie is surely there – he was such a loving, sweet, and gentle cat. If Odie is in heaven, his heaven is likely to be a place with lots of hands to pet him and lots of feet for him to rub on.

In many ways, he spoiled us, because after having the greatest cat in the world, any other cat won’t quite do.

One of the great things about Picasa is that I can upload pictures in really large sizes. I decided awhile back to upgrade the amount of storage I have (beyond what they provide for free) so I can use it as an online photo backup.

But perhaps the best thing about Picasa’s web albums is that it supports RSS – so you can actually subscribe to my online photo albums, and get notified when I upload more stuff. If you read my blog you probably already know about this, since I’ve mentioned two times already. This also means that I won’t be metnioning when I update pictures – so if you want to see the updates, you’ll need to subscribe to the RSS feed from Picasa.

Now that I’m caught up with that, maybe I’ll have some extra time to post something else soon!