Dan and Hannah have a party for Sadie, our new Cat (It’s not as pathetic as it sounds.)

A major theme of the Boots (our missing cat) series on my blog was my pining for a neighborhood that was truly a community.  My laments and embarrassments of not knowing my neighbors were woven throughout my postings.   (Perhaps, you wondered if I had any cheese with my whine?)  Our minister Marlayna then suggested that Hannah and I have a neighborhood party to celebrate the new feline in our lives and get our neighbors together.   She threw down the gauntlet and I had no place to hide. 

We created the invitation below that I hand-delivered to some 35 neighbors.

Neighborhood Gathering for Sadie

At Hannah and Dan’s Place

At 162 Chases Pond Road

Saturday, October 8, 2011 from 3-5 PM

You may be aware that we lost our cat Boots a year ago.  Another black cat with four white paws made multiple appearances in our yard this past September and led us down the path thinking that this cat was our long lost Boots.  With the use of a Super Zoom lens on Photoshop that recreated the faces at 10,000 megapixels, we definitely learned that this cat was not our Boots.   On the plus side during our hunt for Boots, we met more and more of our neighbors. 

On September 24, we adopted a new cat from the Another Chance Animal Rescue in North Berwick.  Sadie is a six-month-old brown and white tiger and Maine coon kitten who was abandoned in an apartment when renters moved out.


To celebrate Sadie joining the Rothermel family and to take the opportunity to establish ours as a neighborhood of neighbors, we'd like to invite you to our house to meet Sadie and begin to get to know one another.  If you are so inclined, please bring an appetizer/hors d'oeuvre to share.  We will provide beverages.

Please confirm with Dan or Hannah

We believe that pot luck-type get-togethers are sane alternatives to the hostess and host doing it all!  Who has the time or the inclination (or courage!) to cook for 30+!  If food prep is shared, it will be more likely that such gatherings and parties will happen.  


In addition to our local neighbors, we saw this party as a chance to invite some of our local friends, too.  Hoping for a big crowd, my expectations were tempered by that fact that this date was a busy Saturday of Columbus Day weekend with soccer games, home repairs, weddings, and visits to family in- and out-of-state.   The good news is that fourteen very cool friends and neighbors came to the party.  Thanks to some inspiration from that very morning, I have a new approach when thinking about the numbers who come to a party.

Earlier that Saturday morning, Hannah and I had been at workshop, Create the Life You Love by Willow Femmechild as a part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute based at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine.  (They are the next generation of elder hostels for those over 50 - http://usm.maine.edu/olli.)  As we began our four-hour, one-day course, Willow said something that resonated with me and that subsequently applied to our Sadie Party.

All the people who were meant to be here are here.

Later Hannah put it in her words, Everyone was where they needed to be.

And let me say that Sadie was in her glory.  She preened for over 100 pictures that were taken by our friend Connie.  Sadie mixed with the guests, sat on laps, stretched, and played with her presents of cat toys and catnip.  It was a glorious Saturday afternoon.