the sapphire cat profile picture

the sapphire cat

just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.

About Me


my brother tim, my sister gelsey, and me ~ mike & gelsey's beautiful new england wedding, september 2006
courtney muirGrew up in NY & Western Australia, am half English and all American (meaning that I am also 1/4 Polish and have Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Czech, Mexican, and German in my blood), fluent in 2 languages, English and Cat, and am looking forward to creating a new future for myself. I unabashedly love my family & friends, my cats, animals of all shapes and sizes, and am enthusiastic in saying so. I also love honoring our troops by being a part of the fantastic organization Soldiers' Angels http://www.soldiersangels.org/ (my forum name is SapphireCat), being outdoors, and days off. I was divorced 2 years ago, have not yet been blessed with children, and as you can imagine, I am besotted with my first niece who was born June 3rd.
My volunteer work and my writing energize me and keep me happy. My mother, knowing I loved history, is directly to blame for this, as she's the one who signed me up to volunteer at a 19th century living history museum when I was 14 in an effort to overcome my terrible shyness--and over time it was pretty successful.
I spent the last seven years living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. During my tenure there, I fostered countless cats and kittens and had to stop because at home the resident Cat Council had a meeting and vetoed all future fostering activities (plus it became too hard to give them up, or give them back to the shelter to be killed when an appropriate home never surfaced). I also volunteered at the shelter, and after learning everything I could about cats and the community and how to run a large non-profit organization, I then spent the next 2 years running a volunteer program in cat rescue.
Now I am currently taking a much needed break from the crazy human folk and spending time relaxing and recovering, and just enjoying life as it comes. And when the cats let me, I do some writing and blogging at http://catismycopilot.blogspot.com/, and occasionally work on one of those 1001 half-completed sewing projects I have stuffed in the closet.
courtney muir camping on nantucket island
what is most important is to find peace and share it with the world. thich nhat hahn courtney and the teagie monster.
when i let go of what i am, i become what i might be. lao tzu.

My Interests

friends & family, cats, laughing, buying & selling at flea markets, writing/blogging, sewing, ballet, crafts, soldiers' angels, gardening, museums, writing letters with colored pens, camping, anything to do with home decorating, reading my favorite milblogs, restoring furniture, braiding rugs, reading, women's domestic history, film--basically if it is thought of as women's work, i love it! i feel strongly about community and do a lot of volunteer work--it's great fun, valuable, and a good way to meet great folks! my guilty pleasure? trading celebrity news back & forth with my sister. the funnier & more ridiculous, the more we love it! (although we'd definitely prefer if the lady-folk would keep their underwear on. that's just not funny!).

I'd like to meet:


...anyone with a story to tell, people who appreciate there are many different types of intelligence, members of SA, those who look at the bright side of life despite their circumstances, the author of any MilBlog (mudvillegazette.com)), anyone who is part of the Milblogging community (Milblogging.com) or in animal rescue, animal lovers, crafty folks...Anyone, really. :) If you're an interesting person with a good heart, I'm happy to know you. If you neglect & abuse any living being (past or present tense), you best be movin' on. You are the evil so many of us are working against. That said, I also try hard not to interact with mean, elitist, negative, judgmental snobs (unless we're related or you're a cat). My Life is too precious to waste on your bad attitude!
my pretty niece teagan muir

Movies:

pride and prejudice (a+e bbc version), amelie, particles of truth, spitfire grill, sixteen candles, bride and prejudice, a very long engagement, serenity, period or historical films, mysteries, bollywood, foreign films, anything really: drama, romance, comedies.

Television:

firefly, gilmore girls, medium, ghost whisperer, agatha christie, hercules poirot, a haunting, the muppet show, sensing murder, psych, little house on the prairie, queer as folk, monk, law + order SVU, fawlty towers, the magic garden, anything on HGTV or BBC America HGTV, British TV. my favorite shows are detective/mysteries and stories with eccentric, quirky characters (being i am one myself!).

Books:

daphne dumarier, jane austen, beatrix potter, noel streatfield, doris lessing, pema chodron, ken goodman, temple grandin, michelle tea, eudora welty, alice munro, maeve binchy, ee cummings, tristan crane, patricia cornwell, lillian faderman, many others...

Heroes:

my brother & sister; women courageous enough to be themselves; my cat Cody; honest + kind people; anyone willing to give their lives for what they believe in (not necessarily in that order), and every Soldier in every branch of the military.

My Blog

when we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe. francois de la rochefoucauld

for one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.rainer maria rilke...
Posted by courtney muir on Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:54:00 PST

trusting my {heart} to the ice cream assasin

6:58 are you sure where (your) spark is? i want you to know this is me trying. i am giving you the space you seem to require. when you don't hear from me, it's not because i am ignoring you. i ...
Posted by courtney muir on Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:47:00 PST

myself within

I HIDE myself within my flower,That wearing on your breast,You, unsuspecting, wear me tooAnd angels know the rest.I hide myself within my flower, That, fading from your vase,You, unsuspecting, feel f...
Posted by courtney muir on Sat, 06 Oct 2007 03:55:00 PST

my nightly constitution

every day and night i walk the neighborhood. yesterday whilst on my nightly walk i stumbled across this house and just had to return today to get some pictures. it's just a few blocks from where i gre...
Posted by courtney muir on Sat, 06 Oct 2007 01:32:00 PST

this too shall pass

went over to the cemetery tonight and discovered it was fenced off. it was still accessible from the front but i was at the back and didn't want to walk all the way around by myself in the dark. so i ...
Posted by courtney muir on Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:27:00 PST

me and the baby wonderful

teagan muir and courtney muir having an early morning snuggle in bed after my dear friend read my recent posting she sent me this: don't forget you are not the only person in the world who doesn't h...
Posted by courtney muir on Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:20:00 PST

the things i have done

the things i have done are in boldBought everyone in the bar a drinkSwam with wild dolphins (oh, but i want to!)Climbed a mountainTaken a Ferrari for a test driveBeen inside the Great PyramidHeld...
Posted by courtney muir on Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:05:00 PST

but whichever way i go i come back to the place you are

i want to touch the light the heat i see in your eyes without a noise without my pride i reach out from the inside in your eyes i see the doorway to a thousand churches in your eyes the resolution of...
Posted by courtney muir on Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:59:00 PST

good news

sirius was so calm at the shelter. he settled into his cage with nary a complaint. he just let me pet him and kiss his head and didn't do anything to increase my guilt. in fact, he was so good, the ...
Posted by courtney muir on Mon, 17 Sep 2007 01:43:00 PST

the seams of my heart are snapping, and snapping

today i am bringing sirius to the shelter. i don't want to. but i have to. i am leaving town on sunday and he needs to have his surgery staples removed on monday. ~~~ someday i will tell the wh...
Posted by courtney muir on Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:01:00 PST