Random Thoughts

There is probably nothing better than running down the hall and jumping back into my warm bed after letting the dog out in the morning.  Well, okay, that's an exaggeration. There are lots of things better, most of them having to do with chocolate. Still a warm bed and another hour of sleep are pretty near the top of my list. Sweetie has trouble with his back so most nights he wanders out to his chair and sleeps there, covered from nose to ankle. It makes me cold just to look at his bare feet sticking out from the blanket turning blue. Not so blue that they need a tag on the toe, but they do look sort of cadaverous. When I open the door behind him, I usually check to make sure he's still breathing. I'm sorry Sweetie doesn't sleep well in the bed. However, I have gotten used to crawling into the middle of a bed, now made for one, and surrounding myself with pillows and covers. This is often the time Boy Cat will jump off his perch above the TV and join me, or knock so...

... the more they stay the same. Since I've been concentrating on giving my inner writer a voice, my inner quilter has had to take a back seat in my creative life. That artist persona put her foot down last week and has been sewing and cutting and piecing around the clock.  I'd forgotten how fun it is to see something take shape right in front of your eyes. A lot has happened since my last quilting frenzy. I used to sew on the dining room table, where my mother taught me how to sew when I was 13 years old. My mom used to walk up behind me and watch, quiet as a mouse. When I'd crawl around on the floor positioning squares, she'd stand in the doorway and nod her head yes or no.   Dad would also make his opinion known.  My habit when I finished piecing the top, and again when the quilt was finished, washed and ready to go to the person it was made for, was to spread it out on top of Mom and Dad's king sized bed and take a picture. Like my parent's the tab...

"Blood is that fragile scarlet tree we carry within us." Osbert Sitwell I got a call yesterday from my vet, Dr. Barbara Kempf, with an unusual but not entirely unexpected request of my Boy kitty, known at the clinic as "Him." Him has a disease called polycythaemia which is a fancy way of saying his body makes too many red blood cells. A year or more ago, Boy Cat woke me up by doing somersaults across the bed. Seriously, he appeared to have channeled Mary Lou Retton during her Olympic floor exercise routine. You know the one, where she starts at one end of the mat and flips herself forwards and backwards and all around until she gets to the opposite corner where she stops on a dime with no part of either foot off the mat. Well that was Boy Cat, except he didn't stop. I had to grab him and when I did he could hardly breathe. We rushed him to the vet who took one look at him, hooked him up with an IV, put an oxygen mask over his face and pondered. First things fir...

"Cat's cradle is a well known series of string figures. The name of the entire game, the specific figures, their order, and the names of the figures vary. Versions of this game have been found in indigenous cultures all over the world--from the Arctic to the Equatorial zones."* I don't know where the name "Cat's Cradle"comes from. I began to get a clue, however, when I woke up to find a ball of yarn strewn across two rooms. Undoubtedly a certain girl cat who had a way too much time on her paws was to blame. The evidence is circumstanial. I don't believe it would stand up in a court of law. But I know these black felines pretty well. The girl cat is not afraid to sniff around a bag of yarn when the lights are low and the house quiet. Boy cat might watch and egg her on, but there's no way he's brave enough to do the dirty work. Take a look for yourself and see what I mean. 1. Down the hall 2. Around the corner 3. Into the den 4. Onto the desk 5...

I may be a churchy kind of girl, but I'm not much of a Bible student. I'll be honest, I don't spend time "in the word" even though I'm sure there is a lot of wisdom to be had there. Still, there are a few Bible stories I've heard over the years that they are somewhat recognizeable. Such as the one about King Solomon and the two women arguing over a baby. They both claimed the baby was hers. Wise old Solomon's advice, to cut the child in half, was something akin to what my father used to suggest when shown a little girl's booboo. Instead of kissing it and reassuring the daughter du jour that the limb containing the booboo will surely survive in one piece, my Dad would offer to cut off the affected leg/arm/foot/hand and let the blood drip in a bucket. Nice .... Without skipping a beat, the women considered the advice. Afterall it was given by the king. Lady 1 actually thought it a great idea. "Let the baby be neither mine nor hers, but divide it...

I just read anitjen's post for today. It was about one of her cat's aerial abilities and another of cat's hunting prowess. I also have two cats. Cat's who aren't supposed to be in high places. Cats who don't know that there is life beyond the back door. So imagine my surprise when, as I was reading Jenni's post, the girl cat wanders in with a mouth full of feathers. She is acting like she just won a feline version of the lottery. She is tossing around feathers like they are actually attached to a body with wings. In reality she's found a bunch of feathers that I collected and banded together in a kind of feng shui feather bokay and stuck in a plant. Said plant was in the sink being watered. I suspect said cat got up on the counter where she doesn't belong and took the feathers right out of the plant. I'm thinking this is against the house rules, but like Jenni, I feel kind of proud that her natural instincts weren't completely bred out of her...

I think this post will be twitteringly short. I've had a sinus/eye/tooth ache all day which only stopped bothering me when I slept - which happened to be all afternoon. My sweetie and I have been experimenting with different bedding styles. We've gone the traditional bottom sheet/top sheet/bedspread route for most of our time together. Recently, however, it came to my attention that I am a cover grabber. I don't really believe this. But since once I close my eyes I am asleep, I can't very easily come to my own defense. I have to take the word of the person next to me with blue lips who is rolling me off his share of the blanket. Looking for a good solution, Jack suggested we use a king sized top sheet. I had to wonder why we hadn't thought of this sooner. Except that the sheet drags the floor this solution has worked quite well. Then I got a wild hair. I washed the linens from the top of the bed to the bottom. Even the mattrass pad. What's that all about? Fall ...

Once upon a time in the land of sunny days and humid afternoons, there was a house. It was a nice house, with a brand new kitchen. I live in the house. My job is to make it a comfortable place to live for both the people and the animals who share the space. My pets include two birds, two cats, one dog and an untold number of dust bunnies. [Photo L to R: Ewell and Hoppin' John] For no reason other than that's the way the chips fell, the four-legged animals are all black. The dog, Black Beauty, has a muzzle full of white hair and a blaze of white on her chest. However, in the wee hours of the morning, on the way to the bathroom, it's hard to see the little spots of white. In fact it's hard to tell that there is even an animal sleeping in the hall at all. Suffice it to say black is even blacker when one is half asleep. [Photo L: Him and Her] Like most of us who live in the house, Beauty is old, perhaps 70 in dog years. She has arthritis in her hind end so she moves kind of...

I've heard people say they don't like cats. I've even met a few. Mostly those people are men who think of felines as some kind of fru-fru girly thing, obviously never getting the cat/human connection. I don't think I could ever really trust or like a person who professed a disdain for soft furry things that meow and purr and walk circles around your ankles at dinner time. This has been a tough month for cats in our family. First of all Oliver, Shannon's friend and understanding partner, had to be euthanised. A big and kind of icky word for one of the hardest things a person can do. Next, Wendy's Lou Pucci took a nose dive out of his window perch several stories above the ground, but thankfully not so far from the balcony below that he couldn't land on all 4 feet - albeit, a rough landing. There have been Lou sightings since his Flying Wallenda escape. I still believe, he's smart enough to know a good thing when he had it. It might take awhile, but I bet...

Not much, except that in the last few days, each has brought a special kind of joy to my ordinary, some might call ho-hum days. Part I: Recently I got two kittens. Well, not actually baby kittens, more like adolescent cats. The vet guesses that the frisky felines have just passed their first birthday, and in cat years that probably makes them the human equilvalent of 16 year olds who like to sleep all day and get into mischief in the wee hours of the morning. Long, sleek, black, and panther-like, it's easy to see these rescued-minutes-from-drowning-in-a-well cats have some Siamese in them. If you've seen the movie Lady and the Tramp, my two are every bit as troublesome as Si and Am. Sometimes, I even think I can hear them singing, "we are S i-am-ese if you ple-eese." A little shy and skittish at first, they are each coming into his/her own persona. Not yet given names that exactly fit their personality, their veterinary records have them labled as "Him" and ...

I understand that humans are a more refined species than say, cats or dogs. We walk upright; we shake hands instead of sniff bottoms; we eat food that has been cooked and made to look pretty; we walk around, instead of roll in, really stinky stuff, and we, for the most part, don't like to throw up. Still, I can't for the life of me understand why a 16 year old cat who's main objective in life is to eat and sleep, and who can no longer leap tall buidlings or make it to the top of a table without a lot of head bobbing and a good dose of "I think I can" will attempt to climb the cat equivalent of Mt. Everest just to nibble on a house plant that he knows is going to act as an instant emetic. He risks life and limb for a green treat that immediately comes right back up. What's that' all about? Recently I brought in a plant that had been residing outside and needed some TLC. I trimmed off the brown parts, replanted it into a perky little pot, gave it a good dri...