Liam

As most of you know we have two black cats, Fiona and Liam that we left back in Boston in the care of our wonderful pet sitter. We talked about bringing them with us but since the journey would be long and the stay in quarantine was expensive we decided it would be better for them to stay behind. Fiona is a great cat and loves other animals (except for Liam).. She is the type of cat that is more like a dog, she's affectionate, playful and loves attention. I adopted Fiona when I was still living in NYC so she has been with us for a long time.

When I first moved to Boston from NYC I thought it would be good to get a companion for Fiona since she was used to tons of attention and Sean and I would be working longer hours than before. I looked on Petfinder.com and found Liam (who was named Tad at the time) and fell in love. He was only a few months old and had already been returned from two adoptive homes. He was found in the woods a week after the rest of his litter and was VERY timid. I thought that he'd eventually come out of his shell and welcomed the challenge of getting him to open up. He was so tiny and cute I just knew that we'd found a new addition and friend for Fiona.

Fiona NEVER warmed up to Liam, she hissed at him, bullied him, ate his food and her own and pretty much made it so that all he could do was hide out under the bed or in his house that we had to put up on a table once Brady came along.

Brady TERRORIZED Liam from day one - even though Liam was twice his size. The poor thing really should have been in a home where he was the only pet, where there were no children and his owners didn't travel. He would have been ideal for a much older couple who didn't have grandchildren. Anyway, because of his personality we knew that he would never survive a trip to Australia, we had to sedate him in order to get him into a kennel to take him for his yearly vet check ups.

So when the day came to give him over to our pet sitter/his foster parent we were very concerned about how he'd do at his foster house. Our pet sitter knew Liam well because she had been watching him for years when we were away, still we were worried because she has two dogs and cats of her own. We told her that he'd likely hide under the couch or bed for the first week or so but then start slowly coming out. We were hopeful that without Brady around he'd be able to do well enough until we got back in two years.

Unfortunately last week we found out that after that first day Janan never saw Liam. She thought he had been hiding this whole time and got concerned. Because she was leaving food downstairs for both cats and the food was being eaten she assumed Liam was coming out when he was alone. She invited her mom, sister and boyfriend over to look high and low to find him but they couldn't. She thinks he could have gotten out as some point when she was outside with the other pets but he's definitely not in the house.

Sean and I are sad but everything happens for a reason and obviously Liam was NOT happy with the new arrangement. We are holding out hope that he will either return or has met a new person who will feed him and take care of him. No matter what we are so happy for the time we have had with Liam and hope for the best.

Long Time!

Wow! It has been a LONG time since my last post and I have been put to shame by some other bloggers! I have been reading a blog that a friend of a friend is writing who moved to Australia around the same time we did (She's in Sydney for work) and she makes me feel LAZY!

She pretty musts posts EVERY day and does as much as possible: http://vegemite-not.blogspot.com/

I am still waiting for Sean to post the details of our Great Ocean Road adventure (maybe I can get him to do that this weekend) but he has been pretty swamped with work. He gets up at 6:15am and doesn't normally get home until 7:00pm, part of that is due to traffic (it's terrible here).

So what have we been up to?!

Last weekend was a holiday weekend here "Queen's birthday Weekend" but we pretty much took it easy (for a change). We ordered in dinner on Friday night and caught up on Breaking Bad Season 2 - SO GOOD! Saturday we went to our brunch place (we have gone every Saturday) and then went out shopping in search of World Cup wear (Team Australia). Unfortunately the track coats were sold out in Sean's size so he got a scarf instead, scarves are big here for showing team colors. After that we went out to dinner with some people from the company to a Shri Lank-an restaurant that was very, very good. Dinner and drinks was fun so it ended up being a great Saturday night.

Sunday we met up with our only Aussie friends for brunch and then went home to hang out (it was a rainy, windy day). We spent the rest of the day planning my trip to Sydney (next week) where I'll start apartment hunting. I went to bed fairly early and Sean woke up at 4am to go into downtown Melbourne and watch the first game of the world cup in Federation Square (where they were showing it on a big screen). Unfortunately team Australia started losing to Germany early on so the scene was a bit deflated so Sean didn't stay for the whole game (although he did bet on it - another huge thing here). I will try to get Sean to post more details on this outing as well!

Monday we were invited to a dinner party at one of Sean's colleague's homes and it was fantastic. They have this amazing house in Melbourne that is much bigger than it appears because it has a HUGE underground living area. All of the food, wine and company was exceptional and it was a great night - it was so nice to talk to other Americans and other people that Sean works with.

This week I spent a lot of time looking for apartments online and starting to look for a job. In reality I only sent one resume out but I did reach out to a contact I had made in Sydney to try and arrange a meeting for next week.

Wednesday I went to the Immigration Museum, which was very interesting and is a must see for visitors to Melbourne. It just makes you realize what a young country Australia is and all of the ways that they tried to incentivise Europeans to move here as well as detour the Chinese. I could have stayed at the museum for quite a while but there were a few classrooms full of students under the age of nine that made it impossible to really focus in on one area for long.