Catching Up
When did I lose control of my journal-keeping? Was it in October, when Punkin was so sick? Or in September when Mom was hospitalized with serious heart problems? Or back in August, when the convergence of summer visitors and the pressure of outdoor activities and household events made it all I could do to keep up with daily life--much less document it?
Whatever the case, my satchel is littered with yellow sticky-notes and scraps of notebook papers with partial journal entries or rough-sketched notes and dates...so this is a rather catch-all entry.
I haven't really mentioned the kittens yet, have I?
It was the first weekend in August that we noticed we had kittens. Or rather, the little tortie we'd been feeding for the last year or so had kittens. The one I had been earnestly hoping was spayed... Oh well.
I came out the door one morning in August to go to work and two little furballs bolted off in a panic--an orange blur and a white blur. We knew we had to do something or we would be watching little kitties get killed by predators, cars or weather. We watched for a week while making our plans. We wanted to be clear how many kittens there were so none would be left without their guardians when we trapped the whole boatload of them and had the parents neutered. I knew enough feline genetics to know there had to be a black one somewhere in the mix.
Turns out, there were two black ones. The tortie (who I was calling "Baby" because she was so small and delicate-looking) or her mate (a black shorthair who has been hanging around for a bit longer than her) would bring two or three of the kittens down to eat at quiet times in the morning or evening. Rarely were all of the kittens together at one time.
We rigged the cat run so we could pull the door shut from the kitchen window, blocked the cat door from the shop and took to feeding the strays in the cat pen for several days. Their reflexes were so good that it was hard to get the jump on them. Our first attempt netted only the dirty-looking white kitten. He spent a rather miserable night and day alone in the big cage in the spare bedroom, hunched in a hidey-hole and scared spitless. I felt so sorry for the little guy...
The next evening, though, we hit the jackpot, nabbing the three remaining kittens in one fell swoop. We quickly had them stampeded into carriers and transported to the big cage then re-set our trap. With all the commotion, I didn't expect much luck with trapping the adult cats but they both turned up within minutes and began looking for their babies. So we nabbed them as well.
Baby was obviously an abandoned housepet. Within minutes, we had her purring and rubbing against us. her mate was another story--spitting, lunging and hissing. We put him in the smaller cage until we could get him neutered. Once he recovered from surgery--still showing no inclination to be a housecat--we released him back into our yard.
Baby, after her surgery, ended up going to Cold Bay where Denny had found her a home with friends. Denny and I handled the kittens to the point where they would tolerate it, then I took them to the Animal Shelter. After two weeks, the red and the black boys were shipped to Kodiak where they found new homes. But the little black female and the dirty white male were another story.
The little girl didn't seem to be growing as fast as her brothers, so I brought her home to fatten her up. The male kitten--who was slowing turning into a flame-point type a la the Ugly Duckling--was still scared and unsocial, so I took pity on him as well and brought him back home to keep his sister company and--I hoped--get socialized.
Suffice it for now to say we have two four-or-five month-old kittens in the house. The small black female I had at first called "Daisy"--a name that never quite suited her. Somehow the name has changed into "Lola", which seems to be the right one. The ungainly, shy flame-point male I dubbed "Clarence," but Dennis calls him "Pinky" or "Toute-Suite". (Don't ask me--maybe it's that latent French-Canadian blood coming out.) Friendly and fun, Lola is a good candidate for finding a home but poor Clarence is so shy we may be stuck with him.
Come to think of it--I don't have a Siamese-colored cat yet. I am hoping that Denny giving him nicknames signifies some sort of bonding. Also, while I was in Fairbanks, he took a couple photos of the kittens sleeping. We *are* trying to break the causal chain of ever-more cats in our house, but I haven't found my Last Cat yet... Or maybe I have, and his name is Clarence.
I am fine-tuning my low-carb cheesecake recipe. This week, I tried fewer eggs, more cheese and a half-cup or so of whipping cream. I was happier with the results. I made an almond-flavored and a lemon-flavored cake and have been eating a slice of one of those for breakfast. This is *some* diet, ain't it?
Poor Little Miss Newt has good days and bad days. On the good days, I start to think she might make it til Christmas. On the bad days, I fear she has only hours to go. Sometimes, the good days turn out to be bad days when--after being encouraged by her appetite--I find she has lost her previous meal in some out-of-the-way spot. The medications I try to settle her stomach seem to have no effect. I continue to tempt her with her favorite foods but even those seem to have lost their appeal to her. It hurts my heart to feel how thin she has become. I am thinking I will take her in to see the vet tomorrow in case there is anything we have overlooked in making her comfortable. She seems cheerful and happy--purring whenever I pet her--but this morning she seemed distracted and wandered around as if looking for a place to crawl into and hide. She wants to go outside but the weather is forbidding today. I finally let her go into the back room with the boys--there are plenty of cubby-holes to tuck herself away in back there and the boys are scared of her so they will leave her alone.
I hate feeling so helpless and inadequate. I *know* I don't have the power to stop death. Not even medical science has that power. But I always feel guilty and failed when one of our dear cats passes on.
Damn it.
Anyway, on other cat-related fronts, I hopefully have defused some of the tension between Frannie and SunSpot by creating a bed for Frannie atop the cupboards over the sink. Since Sunny appropriated the top of the pantry next to the refrigerator as her own, Frannie has clashed with her several times daily in an attempt to re-claim her favorite sleeping spot. The spot over the sink is even higher and more private, so I am hoping that Frannie will accept it as a substitute and quit baiting Sunny.
Even as his companion fades, Johnny still plugs along with the same innocence and general good health that have characterized his last fifteen years. It is impossible--by looking at him--to guess his age. I was cleaning the cat run a few days ago and he jumped up on my shoulders, wrapping around my neck like a fur stole--something he has done since he was a kitten. His warmth and solidity felt comforting.
Denny is supposed to be home from Cold Bay tonight. The plane leaves late and snow showers are forecast in the mountains. I hope he isn't troubled by them, though he told me that the S10 has studs on all four tires. I guess my days of driving the Crown Vic are very limited now.
Whatever the case, my satchel is littered with yellow sticky-notes and scraps of notebook papers with partial journal entries or rough-sketched notes and dates...so this is a rather catch-all entry.
I haven't really mentioned the kittens yet, have I?
It was the first weekend in August that we noticed we had kittens. Or rather, the little tortie we'd been feeding for the last year or so had kittens. The one I had been earnestly hoping was spayed... Oh well.
I came out the door one morning in August to go to work and two little furballs bolted off in a panic--an orange blur and a white blur. We knew we had to do something or we would be watching little kitties get killed by predators, cars or weather. We watched for a week while making our plans. We wanted to be clear how many kittens there were so none would be left without their guardians when we trapped the whole boatload of them and had the parents neutered. I knew enough feline genetics to know there had to be a black one somewhere in the mix.
Turns out, there were two black ones. The tortie (who I was calling "Baby" because she was so small and delicate-looking) or her mate (a black shorthair who has been hanging around for a bit longer than her) would bring two or three of the kittens down to eat at quiet times in the morning or evening. Rarely were all of the kittens together at one time.
We rigged the cat run so we could pull the door shut from the kitchen window, blocked the cat door from the shop and took to feeding the strays in the cat pen for several days. Their reflexes were so good that it was hard to get the jump on them. Our first attempt netted only the dirty-looking white kitten. He spent a rather miserable night and day alone in the big cage in the spare bedroom, hunched in a hidey-hole and scared spitless. I felt so sorry for the little guy...
The next evening, though, we hit the jackpot, nabbing the three remaining kittens in one fell swoop. We quickly had them stampeded into carriers and transported to the big cage then re-set our trap. With all the commotion, I didn't expect much luck with trapping the adult cats but they both turned up within minutes and began looking for their babies. So we nabbed them as well.
Baby was obviously an abandoned housepet. Within minutes, we had her purring and rubbing against us. her mate was another story--spitting, lunging and hissing. We put him in the smaller cage until we could get him neutered. Once he recovered from surgery--still showing no inclination to be a housecat--we released him back into our yard.
Baby, after her surgery, ended up going to Cold Bay where Denny had found her a home with friends. Denny and I handled the kittens to the point where they would tolerate it, then I took them to the Animal Shelter. After two weeks, the red and the black boys were shipped to Kodiak where they found new homes. But the little black female and the dirty white male were another story.
The little girl didn't seem to be growing as fast as her brothers, so I brought her home to fatten her up. The male kitten--who was slowing turning into a flame-point type a la the Ugly Duckling--was still scared and unsocial, so I took pity on him as well and brought him back home to keep his sister company and--I hoped--get socialized.
Suffice it for now to say we have two four-or-five month-old kittens in the house. The small black female I had at first called "Daisy"--a name that never quite suited her. Somehow the name has changed into "Lola", which seems to be the right one. The ungainly, shy flame-point male I dubbed "Clarence," but Dennis calls him "Pinky" or "Toute-Suite". (Don't ask me--maybe it's that latent French-Canadian blood coming out.) Friendly and fun, Lola is a good candidate for finding a home but poor Clarence is so shy we may be stuck with him.
Come to think of it--I don't have a Siamese-colored cat yet. I am hoping that Denny giving him nicknames signifies some sort of bonding. Also, while I was in Fairbanks, he took a couple photos of the kittens sleeping. We *are* trying to break the causal chain of ever-more cats in our house, but I haven't found my Last Cat yet... Or maybe I have, and his name is Clarence.
I am fine-tuning my low-carb cheesecake recipe. This week, I tried fewer eggs, more cheese and a half-cup or so of whipping cream. I was happier with the results. I made an almond-flavored and a lemon-flavored cake and have been eating a slice of one of those for breakfast. This is *some* diet, ain't it?
Poor Little Miss Newt has good days and bad days. On the good days, I start to think she might make it til Christmas. On the bad days, I fear she has only hours to go. Sometimes, the good days turn out to be bad days when--after being encouraged by her appetite--I find she has lost her previous meal in some out-of-the-way spot. The medications I try to settle her stomach seem to have no effect. I continue to tempt her with her favorite foods but even those seem to have lost their appeal to her. It hurts my heart to feel how thin she has become. I am thinking I will take her in to see the vet tomorrow in case there is anything we have overlooked in making her comfortable. She seems cheerful and happy--purring whenever I pet her--but this morning she seemed distracted and wandered around as if looking for a place to crawl into and hide. She wants to go outside but the weather is forbidding today. I finally let her go into the back room with the boys--there are plenty of cubby-holes to tuck herself away in back there and the boys are scared of her so they will leave her alone.
I hate feeling so helpless and inadequate. I *know* I don't have the power to stop death. Not even medical science has that power. But I always feel guilty and failed when one of our dear cats passes on.
Damn it.
Anyway, on other cat-related fronts, I hopefully have defused some of the tension between Frannie and SunSpot by creating a bed for Frannie atop the cupboards over the sink. Since Sunny appropriated the top of the pantry next to the refrigerator as her own, Frannie has clashed with her several times daily in an attempt to re-claim her favorite sleeping spot. The spot over the sink is even higher and more private, so I am hoping that Frannie will accept it as a substitute and quit baiting Sunny.
Even as his companion fades, Johnny still plugs along with the same innocence and general good health that have characterized his last fifteen years. It is impossible--by looking at him--to guess his age. I was cleaning the cat run a few days ago and he jumped up on my shoulders, wrapping around my neck like a fur stole--something he has done since he was a kitten. His warmth and solidity felt comforting.
Denny is supposed to be home from Cold Bay tonight. The plane leaves late and snow showers are forecast in the mountains. I hope he isn't troubled by them, though he told me that the S10 has studs on all four tires. I guess my days of driving the Crown Vic are very limited now.
