The Cats Meow

Always remember to forget
the friends that proved untrue.
But don't forget to REMEMBER
those that have stuck by you...

Always remember to forget
the troubles that have passed away.
But never forget to REMEMBER
the blessings that come each day...

ARE THE CUPS HALF FULL?
OR ARE THEY HALF EMPTY?

Our perception will change with our choice of attitude.
We can decide to see the cups as "overflowing" by
shifting our focus to what's GOOD in our lives.

You'll make the world a better place
by making YOURSELF a happier person,
then, if you should see someone without a smile ...
YOU CAN GIVE THEM ONE OF YOURS!

~Source Unknown~

Reprinted from Inspiration Line.

Things To Ponder

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Mark Twain

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
- T.S. Eliot

Reprinted from The Learning Curve

Don't wish it was easier; wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenges; wish for more wisdom.
-Jim Rohn American Businessman, Author, Speaker, Philosopher

Reprinted from Motivational Quotes

"Instead of tug o' war, let's play hug o' war." Shel Silverstein

Reprinted from Just For Grins

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
--Buddha (563BC-483BC)

Good advice appearing 'everywhere' in the last few months!

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Reprinted from Wacky Zoo

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind....

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.

How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." - William Shakespeare

Reprinted from Mr. Mom

Reprinted from A href="http://www.worldstart.com">Just For Grins

Reprinted from the 4 Homeschool Info website.

Reprinted fromMarianne's Goodies

"It really doesn't matter my children!
Which side you are, when there is a fight.
But you should always remember, that
Two wrongs can never, never make a right".

Reprinted from Nascent Dewdrops. You may also subscribe by email to NDD.

The Barnyard Parable Glenn A. Hascall

The sun was just peaking over the field to the east of the farm house. The farmer was milking the cow and his wife was gathering eggs from the chicken coop.

As the resident hog, I watched the proceeding, tossing in a grunt here and there and I buried my nose in the morning food, willing a certain itch from my back.

I had come to terms with the truth that there would come a time when I would pay the ultimate sacrifice. My body would be given to supply food for the farmer and his family. I took pleasure in knowing that my life had a purpose and a plan.

Yet I noticed that the farmer's wife spent more time with the chickens and the farmer spent more time with the cow than either of them did with me.

Why was that? Why was I so neglected?

As the sun rose high above me the cow sauntered toward me pen and I thought it was high time I got to the bottom of this state of affairs.

"Cow," I began, "you and the chickens spend much time with the farmer and his wife. Don't they realize how valuable I am? Why, someday I will give my life for their family, yet I am treated like any other common swine."

"Well," Cow spoke slowly, chewing his cud, "I think there;s a reasonable explanation for that." Then he began walking away.

"Care to share it with me," I squealed.

Cow walked back to me and said, "Pig, there will come a time when you give your all. Truth is, so will I. So will the chickens. But there is something we do that you do not."

"What's that," I snorted indignantly.

"We give while we're living."

Reprinted from Mr Mom

     Those familiar with Gemetrian Numbers or Numerology may find this interesting:
"...the numeric value of "Adolf Hitler" is 110, which is the same numeric value as "Osama Bin Laden" (as bad luck would have it, Adolf and Osama share the same Tarot card and birth path as well). "

Reprinted from Facade.com

("Saddam Hussein" = 161; I have no idea if this is significant or not...but, if any of you study numerology -- and it is significant, please let THE CAT'S MEOW know! -ed., TCM

"God's Perfection"

In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career, while others can be mainstreamed into conventional schools.

At a Chush fundraising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son, Shay? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God's perfection?

The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's anguish and stilled by the piercing query. "I believe," the father answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child."

He then told the following story about his son Shay: One afternoon, Shay and his father walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they will let me play?" Shay's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shay's father understood that if his son was chosen to play it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging. Shay's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if Shay could play.

The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said "We are losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning." Shay's father was ecstatic as Shay smiled broadly.

Shay was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base.

Shay was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shay bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay should at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.

One of Shay's teammates came up to Shay and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay and his teammate swung at the ball and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first base man. Everyone started yelling, "Shay, run to first. Run to first." Never in his life had Shay run to first. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shay, who was still running.

But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head.

Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second." Shay ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home. As Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base and shouted, "Run to third."

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shay run home." Shay ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

--Author unknown

"How To Be Happy"
by Robert Louis Stevenson
1. Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple things.
2. Make the best of your circumstances.
No one has everything, and everyone has something of sorrow intermingled with gladness of life.
The trick is to make the laughter outweigh the tears.
3. Don't take yourself too seriously.
Don't think that somehow you should be protected from misfortune that befalls other people.
4. You can't please everybody.
Don't let criticism worry you.
5. Don't let your neighbor set your standards.
Be yourself.
6. Do the things you enjoy doing but stay out of debt.
7. Never borrow trouble.
Imaginary things are harder to bear than real ones.
8. Since hate poisons the soul, do not cherish jealousy,enmity,grudges.
Avoid people who make you unhappy.
9. Have many interests.
If you can't travel, read about new places.
10. Don't hold postmortems.
Don't spend your time brooding over sorrows or mistakes.
Don't be one who never gets over things.
11. Do what you can for those less fortunate than yourself.
12. Keep busy at something.
A busy person never has time to be unhappy.

Reprinted from Inspire Today

WAR -
It is your game.
I want no part of it!
GOD

Reprinted from Messages From God

     Of course, THE CAT'S MEOW knows our caring subscribers are already supporting our troops with cards, letters, and e-mail. But, you can support them in another way, too! Give them something to do in their off hours! Donate Books For Soldiers!!! (We LIKE this one!)
Free to agree OR protest? Thank a soldier!

False Evidence Appearing Real

When I was young, my parents wouldn’t let us watch a lot of things that came on television. They told us that certain programs were for adults only and therefore, we weren’t allowed to watch them. One of the things my parents wouldn’t let us watch were Soap Opera’s, yet, my mother was an avid fan of Days of Our Lives.

The grammar school that I attended was right around the corner from my house, which allowed me to come each day for lunch. One day, at lunchtime when I arrived home, my mother, as usual, was watching Days of Our Lives. I sat down at the kitchen table to eat my lunch, which my mother had already made for me, and placed myself so that I could get a glimpse of what was happening on the television. My mother was so engrossed in the show that she didn’t notice me sneaking a peek.

I remember it as if it were yesterday. I guess I remember it so well, because I was doing something that I knew I had no business doing. I was watching Days of Our Lives, which was only for grown-ups and here I was, 7 years old, and watching it, with my mother right in the room.

There was a woman who walked into her bedroom and from under the bed jumped a man wearing black clothing and wearing gloves. When he jumped from under the bed, he scared the living daylights out of me. I must have jumped clear out of my seat, which drew attention to me and my mother raised her voice to tell me to turn around.

Well, that was enough for me. I was totally petrified. I have no idea what the man did after he jumped from under the bed. But I created an entire ending in my mind. It scared me so much that for a long time, I was fearful of going into my own bedroom. I was so scared that I would reach into the room and turn on the light without entering the room and then jump, clear across the room into the bed because I was afraid of the man who I just knew was now hiding under my bed.

Every morning my mother or father would get on me for falling to sleep with the light on. “We don’t own Public Service,” is what they would say to me. “Turn the light off. That costs money.” But I was afraid to turn the light off because if I turned the light off, I simply KNEW he would come out and hurt me the same way he hurt the lady on television.

This went on for about six months. After about that time, I started wondering how come he never came from under the bed. So, I got up the nerve one day, during the daytime, to check under my bed and that is when I discovered that there was no one under there. And, I simply had to laugh because with the amount of dust that accumulated, I could tell that no one had been under that bed for quite some time.

See how I created a terror in my own mind. Without any evidence whatsoever, I believed, with all my heart, that there was a man living under my bed, waiting for the right time to come out and hurt me.

What proof did I have? Absolutely NONE. It was all something I created in my mind. I created a man living under my bed. I believed that he was there. I created the fact that he had nothing better to do with his life but to stay under my bed and wait for the opportune time to come out and hurt me. Yet, he never came out.

That’s the way most of us live our life. We work on jobs that we hate that don’t pay us nearly the amount of money we are worth. But we stay on the job because we fear if we leave, we won’t be able to find anything else. We create an entire scenario that if we quit or get fired, we will lose our homes because we won’t be able to pay the rent or mortgage. We picture our families, and ourselves living on the street, with nothing to eat and nowhere to go. We picture ourselves reaching retirement age with no income and having to rely on public assistance to make it through the month.

But none of this is real. All of these are things we have created in our mind. There is no evidence that any of this will be true. Yet, we believe it so much because fear has us crippled into believing that it is true.

Motivational Speaker, author and salesmen, Zig Ziglar states it best. He says that FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real.

All fear is false evidence appearing real. The Bible tells us that God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

When you go to a scary movie and it scares you to the point that it makes your heart beat faster, yet you know that this is just a Hollywood story and these are just actors. None of this is real. It’s simply something someone created using their imagination. But, that doesn’t stop us from being scared.

When you know what you want to do with your live, but fear holds you back because you are fearful of what your friends and family might think. Shake it off. It’s False Evidence Appearing Real. When you tell your friends and family, you will notice that most of them will support you and your idea.

When you have to make that contact that will help you get to the next level, but fear stops you from stepping up to the plate, it’s simply false evidence appearing real. The same way you created in your mind, a negative scenario, change it to a positive scenarios. Imagine the person is sitting there waiting to hear from you. If you don’t make that contact, you will, in fact, be hurting that person in some way.

It’s all how you look at it. You are the one who creates the fear. Therefore, you are the one who can remove the fear.

ACTION POINT: If there is something in your life that FEAR is holding you back from, take time and think about exactly what it is that you are fearing. Try to come up with the evidence that your way of thinking is correct and that you have proof that supports your beliefs. Then take that same scenario and create, in your mind, something positive. Think constantly on the positive and push out all negative, fearful thoughts. In time, you will discover that the thing you feared was simply the false evidence you were feeding to yourself and by simply replacing the negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you will be able to overcome that fear.

Reprinted from Your Life's Purpose

At a supermarket, I overheard two women talking in the next aisle. "Horace and I have been together ten years now and he makes me very happy," one said. "So I don't mind buying him what he likes even if it is more expensive."

"Well, with my Benny I have no choice. He's just plain fussy," her friend replied.

I turned into their aisle. Both women were loading their shopping carts with high-quality cat food.

Reprinted from Smile Awhile

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