It started in Hawaii where we lived in a high rise with windows that went all the way to the floor. Kylie would lay on the floor and look out the window down at the street at the passersby and it was like she was watching tv, it was her soap opera (actually it was more like reality tv I suppose). After awhile we noticed that she was reacting to different people in different ways, sometimes she would growl, sometimes she would wag, sometimes she got really riled up. Since we lived across the street from a bus stop we figured she most likely was seeing the same people at the same time every day, and it seemed she had decided who was nice, and who was not, and who was especially suspicious. It certainly kept her entertained and best of all for her, there were never any reruns!

Then in New Jersey her very own reality programming became more like animal planet! In our first apartment there she would manage to get herself up onto the rather narrow window sil and watch the squirrels on the roof of the building next door. And most of the time it was like they were performing for her, or maybe it was more like they were taunting her. Jumping and flipping around doing acrobatics, pointing at her and laughing, juggling acorns… okay maybe they didn’t literally do all that but they did know that she was watching them and that she couldn’t get to them so they had fun teasing her.

In our second apartment in Jersey we were on the ground floor and she could look out the sliding door or hop up on a stool and see out the back bedroom window, and in either direction see ground hogs, rabbits, or even deer. It was like Wild Kingdom! And Kylie had only recently discovered the joy of barking (a story for another time), so it was very exciting -and noisy!

Then we moved to Colorado where we had no easily accessible windows for Kylie to be able to “watch her stories” so we had to do some modifications. We bought her some cat window seats. They attached to the window sill and even though they supposedly supported up to twenty pounds we reinforced them with stronger material. We also had to arrange ramps or furniture so she could get up to them, then she was all set. She loved it, she would sit there for hours! Once she even sunburned her nose in the west facing window so we put car window tint on that one. She would sit there rain or shine, snow or sun, but at some point we started making her get down if it was just too hot we were afraid she would cook herself!

Sometimes she would get “grounded from the window seat” if she just would not stop barking at every little thing she thought was noteworthy outside. We would move the ramps so she couldn’t get up there for the rest of the day, which she thought was just cruel! Of course we never told her that her beloved window seats were really made for cats! She would not have appreciated that!

Once we bought the house and she had her own big back yard.. there was no need to install window seats anywhere. Although on occasion she would hop up on the back of the couch and look out over the front yard and up and down the street, Kylie was far more concerned with patrolling and exploring her domain than worrying about what was going on in the rest of the world. Why watch things happen when you can make things happen?!

Our friend just found these pictures of Kylie that she took during a visit.

It was just a casual car ride, but look how happy she looks – not to mention cool! She makes everything fun!

We have literally over 7,000 pictures of our Kylie girl, but it is such an amazing gift to find something now, even though we didn’t know we lost it. It’s something new, something of Kylie we’ve never seen before, it’s so bittersweet. Because that’s what we really miss, experiencing the newness of everyday with Kylie.

Thank you, Lisa.

We decided we wanted to have our friend/photographer Nicole do a special photo shoot of Kylie and her best non-friend, Min, as a gift for Min’s mum & dad. It turned out to be a cold, rainy day so we made it an inside shoot so we went with a theme that worked well indoors..

Then at some point we had been focusing on Min for awhile trying to help her get over her camera shyness to get some great shots like this..

Well apparently Kylie had gotten bored waiting, or wanted to get back to the center of attention, because out of nowhere she kind of stumbled into the frame with her hood over her eyes! We were laughing so hard we didn’t get any photos of her walking around with her nose up and her eyes covered, but then she plopped down right in the middle and Nicole got a couple like this..

She had been wearing her hoodie for some earlier shots, but we have no idea how she got the hood on. It was so obviously intentional, and so hilarious!

She was such a clown and just loved to make us laugh!

[You can see many, many more pics from Kylie & Min’s photo shoot on nicolehowardphotography.com]

We received a wonderful comment from a reader named Sara recently:

This is a beautiful tribute to your beloved friend. Thank you for sharing this with me, (everyone). I know myself how hard it is to go on without our best friends. I have heard they will be with us in the after life also, but I know the one question I want to ask God is why are their lives so much shorter than ours? I mean it is inevitable we will be hurt one day. I know that reality doesn’t keep me from loving these wonderful companions at all! I would not trade anything for the time I had with Angel my best friend, she was my service dog, well after I trained her and helped her, she was a rescue, but really she rescued me!!

God Bless you both. Keep sharing.
……………….

Thank you, Sara, for the  kind words and encouragement.

Kylie, We haven’t been sharing much lately, but its not because we haven’t been thinking about you. We think about you all the time, we miss you every day, every minute. And now we’ve got you with us all the time.

You were already tattooed forever on our hearts, now you are with us forever on the outside too.

Yes, that is your actual paw print, including the toenails that clearly needed to be clipped (people are giving us a hard time about that). Remember all those times we made you stick your paw on the ink pad then stamp all those christmas cards? You were pretty annoyed with us, but tolerant as always. We also had the artist mix some of the ashes we have with the ink so you are now literally a part of us. Obviously, they’re not healed yet, but neither are we.

Not that we needed a tattoo to keep you with us always, we just wanted something to show the world how much you mean to us inside and out.

—-

Whenever Kylie was just lying around the house, meaning not laying on her couch or one of her many beds, or curled up somewhere comatose; you know just hangin’ out, nothin’ much going on… She would almost always have one leg out behind her.

We called it her kickstand..

We think she did it so she could be comfortable but all she had to do is stand up and she was already taking a step forward.

You know Kylie, always ready for action!

As a follow up to The Cookie Bar story, here’s a video of Kylie complaining about the lack of service she was getting..

She was one crazy customer (and noisy)!

We had a really difficult time getting through the anniversary of losing the sunshine of our lives, our rock star, our unicorn. And I wanted the next story to be something really special, and there’s nothing more quintessentially Kylie than The Cookie Bar..

In Jersey we moved from Edison to Lawrenceville, and on the first evening I was making dinner in the new condo I got a surprise. Kylie hopped up on some boxes in the dining area, put her paws up on the service window looking into the kitchen, which putting her face about a foot from what was cooking. She had a big grin on her face like she had found the best place ever to play peek-a-boo, so I laughed and of course gave her a bite of what I was preparing because she was just so darn cute! So the next day when she hopped up there again, looking cute again, she got a cookie, and just like that she had trained us. So we put her customized, indoor dog house (we’ll have to tell you about that later) under the window in the dining room to give her access to the service window, put her cookie jar on the ledge, and presto.. The Cookie Bar was born!

We would tell her, “go to the cookie bar,” and she would run over, hop up put her pretty paws on the window and wait for her treat. Of course then she started to take the initiative and run over there, hop up, tap her pretty paws, a little insistently and request a treat. Then of course that became her m.o. when company would arrive, “Oh, hello, nice to see you! Now go to the bar and give me a cookie!” And then, it became the only way you could apologize to her, whether you offended her on purpose by giving her a bath; or on accident by stepping on her tail or something. She would go straight to the cookie bar!

You can see how that first cookie bar in NJ went from plain to fancy. Then everywhere we moved after that, a location for the cookie bar had to be immediately established…

..until that is, we moved into this house that has a tiny kitchen but a big back yard. Once Kylie saw that big yard there was no looking back, she no longer needed a cookie bar, she had her Own BACK YARD!! I think we actually missed having The Cookie Bar more than she did, But don’t worry, she still got plenty of cookies!

My favorite song to sing to Kylie..

You are the sunshine of my life
That’s why I’ll always be around,
You are the apple of my eye,
Forever you’ll stay in my heart

I feel like this is the beginning,
Though I’ve loved you for a million years,
And if I thought our love was ending,
I’d find myself drowning in my own tears

You are the sunshine of my life,
That’s why I’ll always stay around,
You are the apple of my eye,
Forever you’ll stay in my heart

You must have known that I was lonely,
Because you came to my rescue,
And I know that this must be heaven,
How could so much love be inside of you?

__

One of the few things we regrettably don’t have photos of is Kylie using her hands. Not just like paws, but like hands, like a raccoon!

You know how you can hold a small dog with their back against you like a baby, or cradled in your arm like a baby? Well, we could do that with Kylie and then hold things out to her and she would hold them in her hands. The best example was a q-tip, and I have no idea how we figured this out or why we did it the first time but it was amazing! She would hold one end of the q-tip between her paw/hands and bring the other end to her mouth and chomp on it then take it back out of her mouth and look at it.

You could even throw her ball to her like that and she would catch it – not in her mouth, with her hands! Then she would bring it to her mouth IN her hands! Just crazy, and so funny!