I want to bring you back to yesterday afternoon.  I had my weekly smile for this week all figured out.  I had returned to New Hampshire and was running, planning the post in my head as I went.  But then it changed…

I saw an animal cross the road in front of me, from one wooded area to another.  It was just a black silhouette with no detail.  I thought “cat”, but it was pretty big.  It also moved like a wild animal.  My next thought was “Fisher “, but it was taller, with longer legs.  After crossing, it turned toward me (I know it saw me before) and must have decided that I was moving faster than original thought, so it ran into the woods, again not running like a domestic animal.  For a half a second I though “gray fox”, though it would have been on the large side.

When I got even to were I saw the animal, I slowed and scanned the woods.  The road is on a hill and it is steep where the animal went.  After the initial thick underbrush, there was a small clearing at about eye level.  In the small clearing was a rock and on the rock was a cat.  The cat watched me as I ran slowly by. The face was the face of a wildcat, but I thought pretty small.

Later I compared the size of the face with Albert.  Albert is, at 15+ lb a big cat, head and shoulders bigger than a “normal” cat.  The “little” cat face I saw in the woods was about twice the size of his face.  Twice Albert’s size?  Maybe 30 lbs?

I am about 95% sure I saw a bobcat.  They are relatively common in New Hampshire.  I thought the tail looked a little long, but it was within the range, if somewhat on the long side.  The silhouette looked exactly like a cougar, but it was too small.  A lot of people claim cougars are in NH, but officially they aren’t.  I’ll just go with bobcat.

This is the first time I have seen a wildcat in the wild.  So cool!

That is my smile for the week, seeing a bobcat in the wild.

What made you smile?

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Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week.  Why don’t you share it?  I hope you can join in!

Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas.  If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity.  Don’t smile about the misfortune of others.  Don’t smile in a way to excludes others.  Make sure a 12 year old can read it.

And remember, the Smile can be anything, large or small.  Nothing, nothing at all is too small for a Smile!  Sometimes taking time to notice those small, every day smiles is more important than those once in a lifetime huge ones :)

To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile.  Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one).   You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me).   Next week I will compile all of the Smiles and do a separate post of them on Monday morning just before the smile.  (I will shoot for around 7 AM EST).

Try to use the hashtag #WeeklySmile when you use Twitter or other social media that uses hashtags. I searched Twitter and found that #weeklysmile had been used only a handful of times back in 2012 and 2013. It hasn’t been used since. So it’s ours! I also registered it on Twubs.

You can use the graphic at the top. It is the official graphic for the event.

Now go out there and find something to smile about! :)

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“There are days I go in search of the kind, compassionate, loving and beautiful. Despite what we sometimes see on the news, FB and elsewhere, there is much more beauty in the world than ugliness, much more kindness than hate or cruelty. Perhaps we should all have a goal to make at least one person smile every day.”