Sometimes, Fun Things are a Chore

Another animal day.

First off, woke up and looked for Carey on the deck, like I do every morning.  No Carey.  It's really hard to keep my hopes up when I hear the coyotes cry all night.

Then, deer, not once but twice.  They savaged my super-expensive ($2.45 for only 25 seeds!) broccoli, but I didn't see that.  What I did see was a doe with her spotted fawn helping themselves to our apples.  Which was fine, and actually really cute.  We have more apples than we know what to do with this year.  There's really only so much applesauce, apple pie, apple tart, apple juice, baked, fresh, and caramel and/or candied apples a person can eat, you know.  They did a nice job of picking the fallen ones first, before moving on to the ones hanging from the tree branches.  How nice.  Every time a car or truck went by, the doe would look annoyed and the fawn bounced around or dashed like mad for cover.  They left, and then returned for more after about an hour.

Last but not least, the suicidal baby robin.  I tried to save it.  Really I did.  The girl and I chased it around until I caught it and put it up in our big trees.  It should have been able to hop and half-ass fly from branch to branch all the way back up to the nest.

But, of course, when I went back out to change the sprinkler, there it was.  The Poop was stalking it.  She ran for it at the same time I did.  She dropped it because I yelled at her at the same time that one of the parent robins dive-bombed her.  The Poop jetted for the edge of the tree's dripline while I dutifully put the stupid, spotted thing with not enough flight feathers or tail to fly back into the tree.  All the cats were then banished to the house.

If it's still alive when we get home, and on the ground again, we might have a guest for a week or two while it finishes fledging out.

Wildlife.  Ugh.  Didn't I used to marvel at it when I was a child?  Actually, I still do, and it's neat that we get to experience this up close most of the time.  Sometimes, though, it makes me a little crazy.

Happy Sad Dreams

I'm at Papa's Ice Cream & Deli, having a yummy sandwich with my DH and the girl, who just passed her final exam at driving school.  Soon now, she'll have enough practice to try for her driver's license.  I'll warn y'all if she gets it.

Still no sign of Carey.  I sometimes (often, actually) dream about our animals after they've gone missing or died.  In the dream she came home in through the dog yard.  For a few minutes I was completely, ecstatically happy.  I wanted to run and tell the girl, but first I had to pet her and pick her up and tell her what a good kitty she was.  Then, of course, I woke up.  The dogs were barking, so I went out in a robe and slippers and looked around just in case.  No cats, no coyotes, no raccoons, no deer.  The dogs calmed down after I went out.  I think the fog, which was pretty thick and smelled like dry dust, kind of freaked them out and my going out and looking around reassured them.  Or maybe they thought they were all in trouble.  Maybe both.

I spent a few hours typing on a book and then went back to bed.  Today is going to be a loooong day, with maybe five non-consecutive hours of sleep.  I feel okay now.  I'm dreading the carb crash later ....

Carey

The beloved Fluff, Carey, is missing.  We're looking but we don't have as much hope as I'd like to have.  Between the weasel and the huge number of coyotes (more than I've ever heard since we've moved here) ... yeah.  She's not on the side of the road.  We called our local veterinarians to see if anyone brought in an injured cat matching her description.  Today we'll go to the shelters with 8 1/2x11 pictures of her.  I miss her very, very much.  While eating fried chicken, her favorite, I wanted nothing more than to see her waiting patiently by my feet, expecting her share.  The other cats don't mooch for food, so it felt like I was eating dinner alone.  I had a terrible, empty feeling that my daughter (Carey is her cat) felt the same emptiness, though we sat in the same room together.

The other kitties are being forced to stay indoors much more.  They were out for only a few short hours yesterday.  The whining and wheedling first thing in the morning was amazing to behold.  They expect to be let out before we do anything else--before going to the bathroom, breakfast, coffee--preferably before we're awake enough to do anything except stumble to the sliding door and open it.  They'll get used to it, eventually, I think.

The other thing I miss is seeing Carey on the driveway, watching Chase race the cars driving by.  If it was a coyote, that's probably where he grabbed her.  She never goes out of sight of the house except to go next door to our down-the-hill neighbors, where I suspect she has a kitty friend.  Our neighbor takes in strays too.  He was the first one we talked to when she went missing, to see if she might not be there.

Living in a rural area is wonderful, except ...

Of course, in town, there's the traffic issue, and stray dogs, and raccoons, and people using rat poison ...

The world isn't a safe place.  I won't lock up all our animals 24/7 to keep them safer.  Might as well keep our chickens in tiny cages and the goats locked up under artificial lights, etc.  If I could go back and do things over, I wonder if it might not have been better to keep Carey an indoor cat.  She's a long-haired kitty and they do better indoors full time anyway.  But she loved to sit on the driveway, and sleep on the deck, and walk out to the barn and to the veggie garden while we did our chores.  I wonder why she's the one that's missing, when the other kitties go so much farther afield and don't spend as much time close to us when we're out.  Just one of those things, I guess.

Veronica, aka the Poop, sleeps where Carey used to sleep inside the house.  She's been crying by the sliding door most of the night the past few nights.  It's hard to say if she wants us to help her look for Carey, or just wants out.

There's a chance, of course, but hope is fading fast.

Carey with her best friend, Veronica

Oh deer ...

Just for fun ...

No, it's not photoshopped. This is just life on the hill.

Copyright © Kamila Zeman Miller, 2011

More Sweet Kittehs

In honor of Moody Minstrel's potential future litter, we haz more kitteh pics starring Carey and Veronica, aka the Fluff and the Little Bird Poop (affectionately, mostly due to her colors but partially because she's still a little stinky thing.)

Aw Kittehs

we haz cuteness u r slaves now

Teh housework, it was full of ick, but it's all better now. I wasn't able to put away the hand towels, though, because the kitties ... well, you can see for yourself. Their cuteness grows daily. Soon they will rule the house! I have a long video of Carey (the gray fluff) grooming Veronica (litt'l white kitteh.) It goes on a bit so it's one of those things that only a kitty mommy could love, so I probably won't post it on You Tube (ha, see how I act as if I know how to do that?) but I'm sure you can imagine.

Add purring to both this image and the unseen video and you have a pretty complete pic.

I haven't had two cats get along this well since, well, Chi Chi (the first) and Missy. Chi Chi was also a gray kitteh, and fluffy, found as a stray kitten. My father put his foot down. Absolutely no kittehs in the house. My mom let her in during the day while he was at work and fed her. One day she hid, and he came home, and she crawled up onto his chest, purring like mad ... and we ended up with our very first cat ever. Chi Chi was already a middle-aged kitteh when we adopted Missy, a short-haired gray and white thing. Something similar to the pic above was the result.

I love these sweet memories and moments.

All My Children

We've almost gotten all the tansy out of both pastures.  That's where most of it was.  We figure tomorrow morning we'll have it all done.  Our neighbors plan to have their lower west field cleared this weekend.  It all comes together at once, like poetry, only with sweat.

O bought his first piece of furniture with his own money.  I think it'll work well for him, a kind of portable mini-papasan chair.  He's so happy and proud, justifiably so.  He got it very inexpensively, and it was love at first sight, the way lasting purchases ought to be.  It fits in his room, with his room, like it's always been there.  I suspect it will not only follow him to college, but into his first apartment and maybe beyond, one of those things his first live-in girlfriend will tell him is way past throwing out but he'll hang onto it even though it's threadbare and has a smell.

Lately, though I've been trying to be more and more frugal, it feels like money is pouring out of my accounts.  Part of that is car stuff, and part is animal stuff.  Carey, our fluff-fluff, is very ill.  She started looking a bit raggedy a couple of weeks ago.  The vet has done blood work and we're anxiously waiting on results.  She's lost over four of her original 11 pounds she had when she was at a healthy weight and fully recovered from her bout as abandoned outdoor kitty.  You can feel her spine clearly when you pet her.  The vet gave her a camelback (fluid infusion) and that helped perk up her appetite.  She ate twice today, much more than she has in a while.  She's going to be on rich, fatty wet food and restricted to A's room so we can monitor all her stats.  The vet told us one of three common things might be responsible for her rapid weight loss--thyroid, cancer and diabetes, in order of likelihood for a kitty of her age.  I didn't like to see cancer as #2.  My mom has a kitty with thyroid problems and that would be something I could deal with.  It was wonderful how quickly Lady bounced back once she was on the right meds.  

Anyway, the other animal thing is that Dakota (who is doing well, don't fret) needs a wellness check and arthritis check in order for the vet to be able to legally extend her arthritis med prescription.  I doubt he'll order any changes, but it's a necessary formality, as in if anyone catches a vet prescribing meds to an animal s/he hasn't seen within a certain time, that's considered malpractice.  Dakota has been camping with us and seemed to enjoy it.  I expect she'll hop right into the car expecting more camping fun, and will be terribly disappointed.

We're still working on getting the garden and house ready for ABBB.  It's a huge job.  Safety is the primary focus of the garden, with appearance coming second.  That's good news for the western goldfinches, who are enjoying the thistle seeds throughout the garden.  They'll be working off of a depleted supply before too long, as those are pokey plants and I don't want anyone walking the paths to get scratched up.  But mainly we need clear stairs with flat surfaces (level molehills, fill mole holes, weed wack,) mowed pathways (so that people recognize sudden changes in grade,) and blackberry access (so that they aren't tempted to lean out to get berries--I want berries in easy reach, no guests falling into blackberry patches please!) and a completely weed-free firepit area to reduce fire danger.  In the house I need the kitchen and bathrooms to be spotless, floors to be completely clear of anything trippable, all tabletops clear so we have places to put food and drinks, beg borrow and steal chairs from wherever I can get them, arrange furniture for lots of open spaces, and steam cleaning the carpet so that folks with animal allergies are a little more comfortable.  

Piece of cake.

Sometimes all that plus prepping for an important sekrit arrival to the household plus trying to have something approximating a writing career plus fretting about whether I'll get a job offer before we spiral into financial oblivion plus volunteering for a big job for OryCon (head of programming) plus trying to keep the kids engaged in stuff that'll be good for them (SCA, fencing) feels like too much.  But I haven't started drowning yet and I don't think anything has is being seriously neglected, so I must be doing okay.

Snapshots

The downstairs is nearly cleared out.  Time to paint the walls.  No, we're not set up for Halloween.  Those are real cobwebs.  And yes, we haven't vacuumed in a while.  I'll never go hungry, er, I mean, vacuum the downstairs again!

Carey is still settling in.  She feels crummy today, I'm sure, recovering from her distemper and upper respiratory battery inoculation and her gigantic shot to get the microchip in place.  That thing was almost the size of a drinking straw.  I kid you not.

Catching up on meme stuff.  Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the photo I took on the night I found the meme on Yeff's blog (it really was an accident!) but to make up for it I found a rare pic of me with glasses that I took to test Photo Booth when I got this computer back from the shop.  BTW, they did end up replacing the logic board.  So I wasn't going crazy.  Or, at least that doesn't provide ample evidence if I am.  Everything is working swimmingly now.  Finally!  Anyway, here's the meme instructions:  Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes. Don’t fix your hair. Just take a picture. Post that picture with no editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable. Don’t go posting an eight megapixel image.) Include these instructions.

I'll have writing news some time next week if not earlier.  In the meantime, I'm working on finishing my submission for WotF.  Once that's done then yay! I can finally work on editing Masks.  This will be the best edit evah thanks to the Lucky Labs and INK.