My kitty is one of my best friends- she loves me no matter what. She keeps me grounded, she reminds me that I need to take care of myself. Mostly, though, she keeps me from feeling so alone. And ain't she purty? :)

My other favorite animal is the moose. My former roommate had a bull mastiff named Moose, who was one of the dumbest animals here on God's green earth. He was scared of people even though he outweighed most of them. He slobbered to high hell. He even jumped in the shower with me. Because I missed that crazy dog so much after I moved out, I began to collect stuffed moose as a kind of replacement.

I have OCD, and one of my behaviors is compulsive calorie counting. A cognitive behavioral technique is thought stopping- usually picturing a stop sign when you're having obsessive thoughts. The stop sign never quite did it for me. So what I did is picture my OCD thoughts as a car and then pictured a moose standing in front of it and stopping it. Moose are my totem animals- they're strong yet gentle. They've kept me from calorie counting for the past three weeks.

So here's to moose!