Spoiled Rotten Cat..

Jack snapped this picture after church today. Spook, the rescue cat that was so uptight and scared of his shadow when we got him a year ago, has really come a long way towards coming out of his shell. There's no way he would have sat like this long enough to contemplate the photo op, get the camera, and take the picture for a long time after he came to live with us. When I let go, he sat like that for quite a while before I finally gave him a little push to get him moving. He was quite content to sit in Mom's lap and purr.

Had to share...

Jack finds the neatest stuff online....

My friends with felines will understand this completely. A larger version of this can be found at http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z143/huntslodge/_last.gif.

CATS!

Jack and I are going to see Cats!!!!!!!



I have wanted to see this live for as long as I've ever known about it. I found it was going to be playing at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum while looking up information about a Casting Crowns concert coming in April. Cats will be performing on March 18th and 19th, and wonder of wonders, Jack is off on both of those days. When I asked him if he'd like to go, we went over the details, and he said "Sure." We're going to the performance on the 18th, at 7:30pm. Yeeehhaaa!!!!

Now I can tell Mom & Dad what the birthday cash they sent is going to go for. :o)

Cat Cartoon

I found this on MySpace. It makes me soooo thankful that my cats haven't mastered handling large objects without thumbs...

Bad Kitty

Meet Spook

We adopted another cat today. Spook is 4-5 years old, fluffy and has a stubby tail. He's been neutered and declawed, so he definately stays indoors. I've been told that it's easier to shove him in a toilet than it is to shove him outside, anyway.

He was adopted from the animal shelter 3 or 4 months ago by the sister of a friend of ours. I got a call yesterday from our friend. Her sister has found out that she has asthma and can't keep a fluffy cat.

She brought him over today and he's now hiding behind the loveseat. He's come out to explore a few times already, so I imagine he'll settle in without too much trouble. I think he's going to be a Daddy's boy - he won't let me get very close yet, but he walked right up to Jack and let him scratch his ears. Harry and Oreo are back in the bedroom, sulking I think. Harry has come out to check out the new brother from a distance.

Of fishtanks and goofy cats...

I've had a fishtank for a little over a year now. Nothing really exotic, just some little Neon tetras. We started out with 10 of them, a bottom-feeder, and one of those black goldfish with the big bubbly eyes. We're down to five neons and the bottom-feeder.

The goldfish only had one eye. The other one was deflated, probably in a fight with another goldfish. Jack named him Winky. We let Winky go in the pond last summer after we found out that goldfish poop is toxic to other fish. Might explain why we went through 3 bottom-feeders rather quickly - they consumed lots of the stuff. I couldn't stand the thought of flushing a perfectly healthy fish down the toilet, so we decided that the pond behind our house would give him a fair chance to grow into a big, happy goldfish. Anyway... back to the fishtank.

Like I said, I've had this tank for a little over a year now. The neons are quite happy, and the bottom-feeder stays hid. We named him Fugly to begin with, but decided that wasn't an appropriate name to be calling out in front of little ears... "Mamaw, what does 'Fugly' mean?" Um, yeah... so we've changed his name to Fergus. He doesn't care one way or another as best I can tell.

Harry, my big grey fluffy cat without a brain, has just discovered the fishtank. It's in the same place it's always been, he's just finally noticed it. Silly cat. He likes to sit right next to it and watch the fish. He'll sit at one end of the tank and peek through the glass. The fish, on the other hand, will all run to the other end of the tank and huddle under a rock and just wait him out. Fergus has started going *to* the cat, though, like he's challenging him or something. I think in a fair fight, Fergus would win. Harry's a bit of a wuss. Jack caught him peeking through one day. He snuck up on his hands & knees to the other side of the tank and popped his head up. Scared the cat witless.

Harry hasn't tried to go fishing yet, but I imagine that will be coming soon enough. I've told him that if he ever starts putting his paws in the water, I'm buying some piranah to go in there. He just looks at me and blinks uncomprehendingly. There really is no intelligent thought going on in there. It's a good thing he's got a very friendly, affectionate personality and he's gorgeous. If he had to rely on his smarts for his survival, he'd never make it.

Home for a few days

Made it in to the house late last night. Dad and Mom are both doing great and there isn't much for me to do to help them out, so they shooed me back to TN. It was soooo nice to sleep in my own bed, with my own critters last night. I'll go back to their place for a few days when Dad comes home, but I don't think they're really going to need me all that much. Dad is already maneuvering around the hospital on a walker. He'll do very well with a prosthetic leg in place.

Before we left yesterday, I took Jack to Foy's, a really interesting collection of stuff all crammed into one store. They have all kinds of penny candy (it's a nickle now), gag gifts, party decorations, crazy kid stuff like kazoos, spider rings, and rubber snakes, a hardware and small houseware department, and lots and lots of costumes. It looks like Oriental Trading's Halloween edition exploded in there, and then some. When I was a kid, I could wander in there for hours and never get bored. Still can, as we found out yesterday. :o)

Our mission at Foy's was to find a pirate's parrot. When I was making phone calls following Dad's last surgery, somebody asked if he would be issued a parrot and a peg-leg. Well, no, but that is a wonderful idea! We couldn't do the peg-leg, but we did find the parrot. Dad loves him! He's perched on the trapeze bar that is hanging over Dad's bed in the hospital, and Dad says he is a great source of comments from visitors and staff.

Mom called a little bit ago and said that the surgeon had come in to inspect his handiwork. She was there when the dressing came off the leg. She said "It looks beautiful... all pink and healthy, nothing dark or bad going on there...." Yeeehaaaa!

On another, sadder note, our household is down to 2 cats as of this morning. When we got home last night, April, the grand matriarch, was sitting in Jack's computer chair, ignoring us. We figured she was mad at us for going away for a few days and went on to bed. This morning, she was still sitting in the same spot, had not moved one bit. We took her to the vet's office. Bloodwork showed numbers that indicated pancreatic cancer that went off the chart. The vet was surprised she was moving around at all, let alone trying to argue with him when he drew the blood. He said he could make her comfortable for a few days, but that she'd be back very soon. We decided the kindest thing to do was just let her go. She'd lived 18 years and had been fairly comfortable most of it, and was most definately spoiled. She had a good life, and I'm glad to have had the chance to be her people.

Close call...

Wow, had a really close call at work today. I hardly spend any time at the office, anyway, so it's kind of odd that this would happen on the day that I come in.

Somebody dropped off a kitten. Not just any kitten. He looks like he's a blue-point Hymalayan. He's about 5 or 6 weeks old, and he loves to snuggle up just under your chin and purr very loudly. And he's got the sweetest little mew. He reminds me so much of the fluffy grey cat when he was a baby.

I kept telling myself that I do *not* need another animal. I do *not* need another cat, specifically. My geriatric matriarch of a cat wouldn't tolerate him very well. My youngest cat is paranoid enough without upsetting the balance of power in the household, which introducing a new creature into it most certainly would do.

Still, he was hard to resist.




Gotta' love my camera phone!


In the end, the production manager took him home for his mother. He'd told her about him during lunch. She lives alone and wanted the company, and will spoil him mercilessly, just as he deserves. Still, it was a close call...

And while I'm sharing pictures of the fuzzy beasts, the fluffy grey one was helping me with my most recent crochet project last night.


He's working really hard, guarding this ball of yarn. It was the safest ball of yarn in the house last night. :o)