Speaker 1: Hello, feline friends, Welcome to Cata Tune. I'm your show host,
Michelle Fern. Today we have an author with us who
has written the most amazing book about a very special
cat and his journey to bring the cat home my pen.
It's an incredible book. Stay tuned. I don't want you
to miss this. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone. I would like to welcome Brad Bayer.
He is the author of Slope, a true story of
Love and Resilience. Welcome Brad.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Michelle, How are you.
Speaker 1: I'm great. How are you doing.
Speaker 4: I'm doing wonderful. Thank you, and thank you for the
opportunity to speak with you today.
Speaker 1: It's my honor to have you on my show. Thank
you for your service to this country.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that so much, and as do I'm shore
all of my listeners. So this is a really unique book.
I've never read anything quite like this because it talks
about your life in this service, but also when you
rescued this kitten in another country and your journey back.
But there's a lot of backstory. What motivated you to
write SLOPI well.
Speaker 4: And really I owe it to my wonderful and beautiful life.
It was a couple of years ago we were actually
cleaning out our basement after Christmas. It usually gives you
that time of the year where you want to fin
things out, and I remember going through our storage rooms
and trying to empty some toats and make some spaces
in some space in our home, and I stumbled across
a box of my old memories and I popped the
box open, and inside I found some of my army memorabilia,
had from the Army, some medals and one of those
things I found was a picture, and a picture was
a little black and white kitten laying on a foot
locker among the stars and stripes newspaper. And I held
it up for my wife to see, and she looked,
and just as only wives can do, she went, oh,
you know what, you really need to sit down and
write her story. The country could use a story like
hers right about now. So I sat down and I
just started writing about how I found this kid, and
this kitten stumbled into my life and in many ways
changed my life and I changed her life.
Speaker 1: It's a great story. I'm trying to go to the
picture that I have.
Speaker 4: That was the picture I pulled up for her to
see at that point.
Speaker 1: Beautiful tuxedo. Would you call her tixedo?
Speaker 4: I think I would. It was yeah, yeah, she had
the most beautiful coloring. What was beautiful about her as
the white that went up her nose and then was
kind of complimented by her little pink nose at the end.
So really I kind of gave her an inquisitive look.
Speaker 1: Molly is a black and white and she has a mustache,
so she looks half French. It's only halfway.
Speaker 4: It's amazing amazing what God does with coloring for our animals.
Speaker 1: Yep, and her nose, Molly's nose is black. So okay,
it's very amazing the things that happened. So let's talk
about your background. So you had an interesting background. You
went into the service and it seemed like from what
I read, it was kind of well, I don't know
if I'm going to do this or that, let me
go here. So what made you decide to go into
the service.
Speaker 4: Well, I grew up in a city just outside of
Philadelphia called Naharastown. It's about it. It's a city about
thirty five thousand people, blue collar town, just good salt
of the earth people. And both my parents grew up poor.
They met each other, not surprisingly, they struggled with money
for a good period of their life, and when I
was a teenager, they went through a devastating bankruptcy and
parents pulled my younger brother and I side and said, hey, listen,
we have no money left. That was kind of devastating
to hear. I always knew my parents would take care
of me, but certainly devastating to hear, hey, we have
no money left, but we'll always love you. And at
that point, as a teenager, I kind of I made
the decision that I was never going to struggle like
my parents did. But at that point I had no
idea how I was going to do that. And coming
from a blue collar town, especially in the late eighties
at least where I was, a lot of kids didn't
go to college there. I was one of five children
at that point. None of my siblings had ever gone
to a four year university. Mostly the parents in our
town didn't go to universities and things like that, so
there was no college tours, and I knew I didn't
want to go to any more schooling at that point. Actually,
I was quite terrified of the thought of going to college.
So I decided, hey, I wanted to serve my country.
I had a great deal of patriotism then I do now,
So I said, hey, I came home from school one
day and I told my parents, Hey, I'm joining the army.
And that started it and I ended up about eight
months after that I joined. I was enlisted and sent
to Fort Benning, Georgia, which is the home of the
US Army Infantry, and that started my career. I went
in thinking, well, I'll just retire from the military. I
come to realize it wasn't necessarily a good fit for me,
but that's how I decided to go. It was really
just that sense of patriotism and knowing I wanted to
serve and definitely didn't want to go to college.
Speaker 1: Okay, so not what I said earlier, But it's interesting
college terrified you, yet serving your country and all that
entailed did not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have to wonder about the intelligence of somebody. Right,
You find a US army a lot less scary than college.
But yes, that's the that's the way it started for me.
Speaker 1: I think you need a lot more hood spot. I
don't know God's to just say I'm going to serve
my country rather college. To me, that's a lot easier.
Speaker 4: You would think. But to me, I chose the military first.
Speaker 1: So well, thank you again for your service. I might
keep saying that do there, but I really do respect
all the people that serve our country. I don't think
they get enough appreciation at times.
Speaker 4: So well, we have that in common. I agree.
Speaker 1: In the book, you give a good background of what
it's actually like to be in the army, and you know,
most of us as civilians, only know by you know,
what's in TV, what's in movies. Maybe some of us
have read other military books, but do you really talk
about it in detail? What was your purpose in doing
this to set up what happened later in the book?
Speaker 4: Well, I kind of think not only did it talk
about service and what my journey was to finding Slope,
but I think it kind of explained how I got
there and what I realized going in the military. It
was it's a hard life, especially going through infantry school
and things like that, where your whole job is really
learned to how to kill other people and to break
their equipment, and that's really what it comes down to.
And as I was going through this, there was times
I'd questioned myself and my faith, like it would God
be okay if I had to beg and met another
human being. And through all of that you realized a
how much you miss home, b how much you care
about the people that you serve with. But at the
same time you also realize that it can become very
self focused and really focused just on yourself and how
miserable you are and how homesick you are. And it
wasn't really until I found Silopi that she helped to
bring that maturity out in me, that hey, the world
is bigger than just you and your own problems, and
you have to learn to care about others as much
as you do yourself. And in this case, a little
tiny kitten that I found out in the desert.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you about that. How did you
find her so out in the desert? I mean, a
little kitten surviving in the desert.
Speaker 4: It was just after the time when I went in.
It was just at the end of the Cold War.
So I was stationed in Berlin, Germany, which was an
interesting time to be there because a couple months before
I got there, the Berlin Walls just began to fall.
But right at that time we went into Operation Desert
Shield that sam Hussein invaded Iraq, and luckily that war
went relatively quickly. But my unit, being that I was
in Berlin, we didn't take part in that. But immediately
after we had what we called Operation Provide Comfort. And
if you can recall back then, a lot of the
Kurdish refugees were fleeing Iraq, Northern Iraq, and what our
unit was supposed to do is to help rescue those
Kurdish refugees, help to provide them safe transport into Turkey.
So that was what my unit was there for, along
with a number of other countries that formed the Operation
Provide Comfort Coalition. And it was one day we were
out in so SILOPI, to give you an idea, is
about a mile north of Iraq and about two miles
from Syria, so it is right there, really in the
middle of the desert, and it's about one hundred and
twenty five degrees every day, just beating heat, very dry.
But we had a giant tent set up that's where
we had our chowel haul and walked. I went in
one day and I sat down and there's picnic tables
within the tent, and because it was so crowded that
particular day, I threw my hat on the floor next
to my feet. And as we're sitting there eating the meat,
I just hear this little chirping. This just kind of
beat me. I'm looking around. Nobody else seemed to hear it,
and I looked down and inside my hat curled up
is this little black and white kitten. And I looked
at it and I said, guys, there's a cat in
my hat. So upon hearing that, I kind of realized, Hey,
doctor Seuss may have written the book, but I lived
the story, you know. So I had this little black
and white kitten in my hat and I picked her
up and we all just sat there looking at it,
and she's looking back at us, probably thinking, you know
what are these alien creatures staring at me? And somebody
came up with the idea at that point of Hey,
let's take her back to our tent and we'll make
her a pet. And that's kind of where our journey
with Silopie started.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, we're going to take a short break. We'll
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Speaker 3: Let's talk past it.
Speaker 1: Let's dunk Petal Headline.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone, we're talking to you Brad Byer. He
is the author of Slope, a Story of Love and Resilience.
So we're at the point. So you just found Slope,
you decided to make her pet. Do you think that
Slope provided some support to you while you were there?
And I know you said the Army makes you very
self focused, So besides that, do you think she provided
other support other than, you know, caring for something else?
And I guess the love that comes.
Speaker 4: With that, right, Oh? Absolutely? And I would say I
don't think necessarily the army makes you self focused, But
being a nineteen year old, twenty year old young man
who's miserable and just wants to get home, you know,
I think the age and the homesickness tend to make
me a little more self focused. And finding her, we
really kind of are unit and when I say our unit,
there was probably about fifteen twenty people in our tent,
and she kind of became our little mascot. And what
was interesting about her is here I am it was
a unit. At that time. There were next to no
women in this employment, so it was a bunch of us, dusky, dirty,
smelly men, and in all of this dry, arid earth
and dirt and heat, she became this little piece of
sweetness in my life. That was something that was really
at the end of the day, after working in one
hundred and twenty five degree heat and working around ammunitions
and all of these other men, I would come back
and find her curled up on my cot and it
was for me a little sense of sweetness, a little brightness.
It was almost as if God kind of said, hey,
this is a little creature that you need to look for,
you need to care after. And it was just a
little bright spot that she brought every day, I think,
to not only need, but really everybody in the tent.
Speaker 1: Did your peers in the tent, did they help hid
her well?
Speaker 4: It was interesting because at first everybody was on board,
and we took her back to the tent and got
her kind of all cleaned up, and so that the
very first night, I put her in a box with
a little towel and just thought, hey, you know, I
made her a litter box. I had no experiences with
cats whatsoever, but somebody suggested, hey, let's create a litter box.
So I made her a litter box. She immediately went
to the bathroom in a litter box, which I thought
was this. Hey, she's the smartest creature I've ever met.
You know. I didn't realize that was pure instinct. But
that evening I put her in a box and she
went to sleep. It was just like having a little baby,
and I thought, all, this is great, until about two
o'clock in the morning she decided to wake up and
did a Helen Ready, I am woman. Hear me roar rendition,
screaming at the top of her lungs, and our lieutenant,
who was in the bunk directly across from me, suggested,
very forcefully, buy her get that cat out of this tent.
So I tipped the box over and she ran out
and skid it out of the tent. That was the
end of my great cat experiment, I thought, anyway, But
until the next morning I woke up and I felt
something tickling the top of my head, and I thought
one of the guys was messing with me, so I
reached up to slap their hand away, and I grabbed
a handful of fur. And then what I realized is
she had gone out in the middle of the night
and somewhere during the evening, came back, took residents on
my pillow, and was now licking the top of my head.
So in two days, this little kitten had found me twice.
And it was at that point that I realized, you know,
she's not a ten mascot. She belongs to me at
this point. And that's when I realized, Hey, I've got
this other life that I need to look after, I
need to take care of.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for sharing that. When you brought Slope
back to the US. You had to go through I
mean you were on I think it was two or
three flights, and you had to sneak her in, but
it all seemed to work. That like another sign.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's the biggest The first one is to
get her out of Turkey, because after you know, after
three months of really hiding her from everybody else in
the camp, at one point the military police came through
because there were stray dogs in the area that people
were making pets. And the military police came through and said,
we have to exterminate all the pets or all these
animals for fear of rabies. So I had to hide
her from the military police. And then it was time
to leave the deployment, and I'm thinking, I can't leave
her behind. You know, I've been feeding her this long.
She's gonna starve to death. So at nineteen twenty years old,
I figured out I have to get her out of
the country. But how do you sneak a kitten out
of the country of Turkey? And we had to go
through inspections and looking at our persons. So I had
to secret her out of Turkey until I got her
back to our unit in Berlin, and then I had
to hide her from the rest of the unit in Berlin.
And then it finally came time to bring her home
to Pennsylvania, back to the Philadelphia area, at which point
that was the next big thing. My mother, who has
is a voracious cleaner and a neat freak and really
had no pets growing up to speak of. I had
to convince her, hey, can I bring this cat home. Well,
of course, she couldn't picture what a Turkish cat looked like.
I think she thought I was bringing home a Bengal
tiger or something like that. So so yeah, I basically
had to bring this a little tiny kitten across continents
so I could finally bring her back to my family
home in the Philadelphia area.
Speaker 1: I think it's a miracle you made it back with her, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Michelle, it's twenty My wife and my mother in
law and my son and I just flew down to
Florida a couple weeks ago and we took our dog.
It was a little lap dog. I was stressing out
with her on the flight. My wife said, how did
you ever do this with Silopi? And I really think,
and we had paid for a seat for the dog.
I really think it was just kind of divine intervention that,
you know, God brought Silopi into my life and she
changed my life. I changed her life, and the rest
is history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right. Okay, so we're not going
to give away all of the story. But at one point,
once you're home and you're you know, you're at your parents.
Out of your commitment for the service, you went to school,
things change, and at one point you decided to make
the decision to leave SILOPI like, let her stay where
she was rather than move with her.
Speaker 4: Well, and that actually wasn't my decision. That was my mother's.
And it's interesting because she was very hesitant to have
a pet, and very hesitant to have this Bengal tiger
that she thought I was bringing home. But it came
time to move on to my life and start my
professional career, which required me to move out of state.
And so I went and I mentioned to my mother, Hey,
I've got this new job opportunity in the Detroit area
and she said, well, what are you going to do
with Silope? And I said, well, she's mine. She's going
to come with me. And she said, well is that
really fair to her. You're going to be working odd hours,
she's going to be home alone a lot, and wouldn't
it make more sense to leave her here? And that's
when I realized that this neat freak with obsessive compulsive
tendencies who always wanted her house spotlessly clean kind of
had fallen in love with this cat just as much
as I did. And well, she was happy for me
and willing to let her son go. At that point,
she really wasn't willing to let her grandkitten go. So
I left Slope behind with my parents and at that
point she became their cat.
Speaker 1: So do you think that when we make these decisions
it's I mean, it's not always the easiest to do,
but sometimes you have to come to decision of what's
right for my fur kid. You know, what's the right
thing for them, whether it's either relocating or deciding to
adopt and thinking about if you're going to change your
lifestyle or not, or can.
Speaker 4: You absolutely I think it comes to the form just
like regular kids, whether they have fur or not. Right,
sometimes you have to make decisions not based on what
you want, but based on what's best for them. And
at that point I realized that she had become so
attached to my mother. She especially became attached to my father,
who was just always just an animal lover and a
sweet human being. And yeah, like I said, they were
happy for my ability to move on with my life.
They just weren't quite ready to give her up yet,
and they didn't. I think it was the right decision
for both Silopia and my parents.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, what about for.
Speaker 4: You that there was guilt feelings about that. But sometimes
the love you have for other people and for other
creatures sometimes supplant what you might feel about yourself. So difficult,
and I wrote in the book that was a difficult
situation as I backed out of my driveway for the
last time and saw her sitting in the window looking
at me, And that was very emotional time in the book,
very emotional time in my life. Here I am turning
this page and I'm really leaving kind of the sweetest
bookmark of that page behind me.
Speaker 1: So I think that was very It was very thoughtful
of you.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Not easy, but thank you.
Speaker 1: You know about your parents, You thought about your cat Selope,
they were, you know, with her all the time. I
do believe when you adopt, you know your furbabes can
acclimate to your lifestyle. My first adoption was two dogs
at different times, and I was working, but I had,
you know, at times, I had a pet sitter come
during the day, or we adjusted my lifestyle. Some times
you have to do that. But then there's also the
other side of coin, where your lifestyle is not going
to work, and maybe it's there's a better place for
this furbabe. Well, it's sacrifice, right, sacrifice exactly either way.
Speaker 4: Well, and as you can see in the book and
as you hear in the book and it comes out
of the pages at you, Yeah, there was not a
doubt in my mind that she knew she was being
rescued and saved and being given it a better life.
And she did everything she could to make sure I
stayed safe and getting her out of the country and
back home. That it was kind of a no brainer
as far as doing what was right for her when
it was my time to sacrifice.
Speaker 1: What is your opinion on this, Because when you adopted Slope,
it wasn't optimal time. It was difficult, it was I mean,
you're in this service and then you have to, as
you said, go through, you know, over a continent to
bring this little kitten back. So wasn't optimal time. And
sometimes you know, us as humans, we never really have
an optimal time in our life when we're considering, you know,
should I adopt a cat? Should I not? Is it
a good time? And by the way, two is always
better than one. They keep each other company. So two
cats adopt two at one time, it's much better. So
But what do you say to those that say, well,
it might not be a right time. I don't know.
It could be difficult, because I have my opinion on that,
of course, But what do you think you know?
Speaker 4: I would agree with you, and I don't care if
it's a cat, a dog, a child. If you wait
for the perfect time for anything in life, you're going
to constantly be left waiting. And I think the joy
and the love that you miss out on. I always
like to say life is what happens while you're busy
making plans, and sometimes there's never going to be a
right time to do anything. But certainly when it comes
to bringing love into your home in the form of
a pet, sometimes there's always that leap of faith. And
I certainly did it with Sillopi, and it sounds like
you've done it with your cats and then your dogs
in the past. Their ability to worm their way into
your heart is crystal clear in reading my book, but
it's crystal clear for anybody who's had a pet before.
And if you just wait for that perfect time, I
don't think you're ever going to get there. I think
it's love always takes a leap of faith.
Speaker 1: I think You're absolutely right. Because when I moved across
the country and I was deciding should I adopt or
should I not adopt? It took me a while and
I actually worked for a year and thought, let me
think about this, because I work a lot, is it fair?
And I finally decided, you know what, I'm doing this
because I'll make my life work. I'll make it work.
And one of my best decisions. So my dogs I adopted.
My cats all adopted me. So that's you could just
I'm in South Florida, so it's warm here most of
the just about all the year except if we get
this lone cold fronts, so cats are always around, especially kittens.
So's I could have been adopted by probably eleven. I'd
had five at one time.
Speaker 4: I do find you, that's for sure. Certainly testament.
Speaker 1: They find you, especially during kitten season. They find you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Also, I would like to mention that you did not
let your fear of college stop you.
Speaker 4: I did not. That changes something about the military and
laying in the forest and getting rained on and snowed on,
and you know, toxic or cs gas thrown at you,
and you become real quick. Yeah, I think I'm ready
for college now, So that's a great way of finding
what you desire in life.
Speaker 1: Can you share your degrees? Because I thought it was
incredible from having a fear of college too, I should
call you doctor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's yeah for this young kid from Narstown
who had no interest and was terribly afraid of going
to college and it ended up. You know, I ended
up with a bachelor's degree, to master's degrees and a PhD.
So that's kind of one of those things you never
say never. And I think that gets to that part
of resilience in the book of you know, even when
things are difficult, you just keep pushing through, and you
just keep trying to succeed one step at a time,
and literally you just never say never.
Speaker 1: I was asking about resilience and defining it, but you
pretty much said it. Never say never. I mean persevere.
I think we all have challenges thrown at us, whether
you know, we grow up with certain situations, or whether
we have physical limits or financial limits, or there's a
lot of kinds of limits. But the big thing is
to just persevere or just do it.
Speaker 4: Michelle, I agree with you wholeheartedly, and you know I
have one of my sons is in college right now,
and I think many things we've done wrong in our
society is trying to take that fear of failure or
trying to take difficulty away from our children. Because really, ultimately,
in life, whether you're successful or not depends on whether
you just keep going. And I keep telling my current
college student is you know, it may not be fun,
but life isn't always fun. But the difference between people
who succeed and don't is the ones who just keep
going and not stopping are the ones that ultimately succeed exactly.
Speaker 1: And how many times have you heard that it's okay
to fail, just don't do the same thing more than once.
Speaker 4: For sure, that's a great way of putting it. Yes,
I'll be using that from now on.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I heard that, but no, you
know what it is. It's okay to make mistakes, just
don't make the same mistake twice. The same thing with failure.
I mean, that's a mistake, right, and you're going.
Speaker 4: To fail, And what you have to realize is you
just keep going, so you have to keep going.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I love your book. It's Slope,
a story of love and resilience and the name. Actually,
if you're doing author search, Bradford J. Bayer, Brad where
can people find your book?
Speaker 4: You can find it on anywhere you get books, Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, things like that.
Speaker 1: I know I'm doing it again, but I have so
much respect for our service people, So thank you again
for our service. Thank you for coming Oncatitude. I so
appreciate it, and thank you for sharing your story with us.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Michelle, It's been a great honor.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. I hope you all enjoyed this book again.
It's called Slope. It's a true story of love and
resilience by Bradford Bayer. It's really a wonderful book. I
couldn't put it down. I loved it. I want to
thank Brad Bayer for coming on Catitude and sharing his story.
Thank you so much. I want to thank my cat crew, Dennis,
Charlotte and Molly who taught me what it is to
love a cat, So thank you. And of course a
huge thank you to my producer, Mark Winter for working
his magic on my show and making it sound amazing
for everybody listening. And a huge, huge Thank you to
my listening audience. Thank you so much for listening to Catitude.
I so appreciate it. And hey, remember lose the attitude,
have catitude.
Speaker 5: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlight
radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Don't e