A familiar scene

Today's pic is of my mom, but it could just as easily be of me.
Sitting on couch? Check.
Cat on lap? Check.
Netbook open and ready? Check.
Crafty project in hand? Well, after a 4 week hiatus, I returned to knitting a sweater this week. I suppose that's a long way of saying "check".
And although you can't see it in the photo, I assure you that the TV is definitely on.

Hey. I'm a multi-tasker.

Such an exciting life I lead, yes?

15 Pounds of Patience

I took Millie to the vet today. Not to worry. It was just time for her to have her annual physical. There are a couple of issues we have to take care of, but all in all we think she's okay. She was a perfect patient, as always, and totally stole the hearts of the employees at the vet's office.



It doesn't make sense, but her perfect behavior at the vet's office makes it extra hard for me to take her there. She doesn't cry. She doesn't fight. She submits to whatever they want. You would think she would wiggle or act annoyed or something, right? But instead she's a perfectly patient, patient. The only thing she does is fold her ears back and occasionally glace over at me so she can give me Bitch Face. Because she knows that the only reason why she's there is because I took her there.


Luckily, she got to go to the vet in a proper cat carrier this time. No more pillow cases for my baby! I think that made it a far less traumatic experience for her. Within minutes of coming home, she was already snoozing on the living room rug rather than cowering under the bed in the guest room. I'm taking this as a good sign. Maybe next time it won't be as traumatic for me, either!

It's a catastrophe

As some of you may know, certain individuals have declared today - 9/9/09 - A Day Without Cats On The Internet. These people seem to think that cats get too much play on the web.
Ludicrous.
Despite the obvious madness of this suggestion, these anti-cat people have somehow brainwashed a number of websites into participating. Cute Overload? No cats today. Even NPR has agreed not to post anything about felines for 24 hours.

In the words of Hall & Oats ...
I can't go for that.
Oh no.
No can do.

So I'm rebelling in the only way I can.


Internet + cats > belly rubbins!
And that's sayin' somethin'!

Kick it, kitten!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present ...
Millie
playing air guitar
in her sleep.


Extreme Close-up!

Our garden - Spring '09

Recently some of my on-line pals at the forum where I hang out requested that I post some more photos from our garden. What better day than Earth Day, right?








Here's one of the wild violets that grow on the west side of the house. They are the #1 reason why I won't use harsh chemicals on our lawn.











We have 8 azalea bushes in the back garden. This is my favorite one this year. The color is amazing!




Millie loves soaking up the sun, too.


And that's not all! I took some pics at the gorgeous Duke gardens last week, so I'll share those next time. Hope you can get out & enjoy the beauty around you this Earth Day.

How to feed a cat in 10 steps or less

Sunday afternoon I was sitting around, playing about on the computer, when I realized that it was February 22nd. That was the same date that we adopted Millie last year. That meant is was - tah dah! - her first Cat-iversary! Woo hoo!

It's strange to think of our lives without Millie around. That's especially true in the mornings. Millie has a VERY specific morning schedule that we must adhere to, lest she pester me until I get it right.


1. After Tim leaves for work, Millie plants herself by the open bedroom door & looks at me as if to say, "Get up, lazy bones. I feel the need to feed."
2. I walk out onto the landing & scratch Millie on the head. As I descend the stairs, Millie takes a fake swipe at my leg with her paw. She never actually makes contact with me or my clothing when she does this, so I totally don't get it.
3. Millie waddles to food dish & looks at me expectantly. She may meow as I get out her food.

4. I put a scoop of dry food in her bowl. Then I must pet her. The petting is an important step for her. If I don't pet her, she'll give me The Look. If I've already left the room, she may find me & give me The Look. And if that doesn't work, she'll poke my leg with her paw. If I ignore her, she just keeps prodding at my leg & The Look gets slightly more severe.
5. Millie eats just a bite or two, then waddles into the living room & positions herself in front of the glass doors.
6. By this time I have usually opened the drapes so Millie can look outside. If not, she will find me and remind me to do this (see step 4).

7. Millie stares outside. She may also meow - her way of asking to be let out on the back deck.
8. If Millie goes outside, it's only for a minute or two - just long enough to make sure there are no squirrels invading her precious deck.
9. Millie returns to the kitchen to eat more of her breakfast. But, again, she wants to be pet while she eats. No, not just wants - needs. As mentioned before, she will hunt me down, stare at me, and repeatedly tap my leg with her paw until I give in to her whims.
10. After a few more strokes along her back, Millie settles in and happily eats her breakfast.


Other than this, Millie is very laid back. She naps in sunbeams. She hangs out on the couch while we play Rock Band. She curls up by my side every night so that I can cuddle her like a doll from my childhood. She's a wonderful cat. She's just picky in the morning.

Hey, we all have our quirks, right?

Snowy steps

Yesterday morning Millie went to the back door - as usual - and stared outside. She didn't seem terribly thrilled with the snow on Tuesday & Wednesday mornings, but I thought I'd give her another shot at it.

She didn't get far.

But she tried. And trying is good.

Today's high should be in the 50s & all of the snow will be gone, but before it does, I would like to post this little video for george. Yes, it's juuuuuust for yoooou! It features Ingrid Michaelson and it's cute so you'll have to watch it.

Homecoming

The Xmas break is officially over & we're back in North Carolina. Usually this is the week when I sit around the house & mope. After spending 2 action-packed weeks surrounded by friends and family, it was always hard to return to an empty house in a town where I barely knew anyone. After Tim's first day back at work, he would come home in the evening and find me still in my robe, curled up on the couch, with streaks from dried tears (or possibly fresh ones) running down my face. The first week of the year had become the worst week of the year.

But this year is different. Late Monday night, I found myself back in the same house in the same town, an 18-hour drive away from so many people I love. And yet I've been smiling contentedly ever since I got back. I think the difference this year is that I didn't return to an empty house. Rather, I returned to a cuddly little lump of love named Millie who was thrilled to welcome me home.

Millie is a pretty laid back cat and doesn't seem to show much emotion, but it's clear that she is just as relieved to see me as I am to see her. Since I got home late Monday night, she has rarely left my side. If I'm sitting, she's on my lap. If I'm lying down, she's curled up next to me. Sometimes when I step out of view, she emits a panic-y meow which only stops when she sees me again. Yes, she's a bit clingy and needy at the moment, but honestly, I missed her so much that I'm happy to spend so much time with her now. Her soft purr makes me feel - more than anything else - that I am home. And it feels really good to be home.

Happy House-iversary

As you can probably imagine, not a lot happened this week, but that's not a bad thing. It was actually rather nice. Last Sunday we met up with some people from an on-line forum where I hang out. And I did some yard work. Watched some episodes of "Gilmore Girls". Went out for Mexican. Checked out the new pastry and chocolate shop in Carrboro. Read some more of "Eat Pray Love". Rubbed Millie's tummy for hours and hours. Stuff like that. Nothing big.

The only pseudo-important event of the week was our first House-iversary. We have now been living in this house for a whole year. Hooray! Funnily enough, this week I finally filled the memory card I bought for my camera shortly after we bought the house - almost exactly a year ago. So here are some of the final shots from that card, all of them taken around our house this week.

7000 words or less

I should keep my camera with me more often. I saw so many interesting things in the last week.

- At Kevin & Shawna's place, I saw their adorable hedgehog & their 2 bunnies. One of the bunnies let me pet it for quite a while even though I wasn't feeding it at the time. That's a major feat.
- Saturday morning at the Duke Gardens, I saw a jazz band (The Dixie Dukes) made up entirely of senior citizens. They played "Honeysuckle Rose" & it was fabulous.
- While riding home from the fish shop, I saw a gaggle of young men playing some sort of combination of football and frizbee. What would you call that? Frizball seems wrong since there was no ball involved and Footbee sounds too cute to be a sport. We need a new word!

All of those things sound cool and all, but they'd be so much better if you could see them ... the old "picture is worth a thousand words" thingamy. I'm finding that most of the time I actually prefer posting photos on this blog than writing. That doesn't mean I intend to turn this into a photoblog, but I like that photos allow me to show you all of the things that I just can't properly tell you about over the phone or in an e-mail. Besides, my life might seem more interesting in photos. I mean, do you honestly want to hear me talk about filing my taxes? Or about how crampy my period was this month? Or about how disappointed I am that Katarzyna got kicked off of ANTM this week? Wouldn't you much rather look at photos of my cat? Of course. So with that in mind, allow me to share some sights from around the house from the past couple of weeks, m'kay? M'kay.








And lest we forget ...

No, they don't make dentures for cats

Yesterday Millie had 7 teeth pulled. Seven! Can you even imagine? The vet said that some of her teeth were loose & others were so rotten they had holes in them. Of her 4 canine teeth, she only has 1 left. Poor baby. Poor, dear, snaggle-toothed kitten. On top of this, she has bald patches on two of her legs for the IVs. She has been through so much! As soon as she got home yesterday afternoon, Millie ran to her favorite room - the guest room - and has rarely ventured out of it since then. I don't blame her one bit.

The good news is that, amazingly enough, Millie does not seem to hate us. I was sure she would reject us completely for days, but she has actually been quite affectionate. Don't get me wrong. She has spent a lot of time snoozing under the bed. But if I come into her room, she walks right out, purring away, & pretty much demanding to be pet and scratched and scratched some more! It's as if there's no such thing as too much affection. Tim thinks she wants to be reassured that everything is okay. I just find it odd that she's looking to us for that reassurance - the people who dragged her out from under the bed, stuffed her in a bag, and left her at the vet's office. But hey. Whatever makes her happy, ya know?

The vet says she should be mostly healed in a week. In the mean time, she has to take painkillers and antibiotics twice a day. The great news is that both of these drugs are in liquid form and can be mixed with her soft food (which she is eating with as much gusto as usual). Things will only get better from here.

And in case you were wondering, I bought a proper, soft cat carrier. No more pillow cases for my baby.

Don't know whatcha got til it's gone

Picture me, if you will, wandering around my neighborhood, my hair unbrushed, tears streaming down my face, an empty can of cat food in my hand, as I poked around the fringes of my neighbors' properties, sqinting my eyes as I strained to look under their bushes. That defined most of Wednesday afternoon for me. It was a bad day.

Here's the short story: Millie got out, but she came back. It was an emotionally exhausting affair. I cried myself into a migraine that made me so nauseated I nearly threw up (Which is amazing for me. It's been a decade since I last puked. TMI?). Tim even left work 3 hours early to help look for her. In the end, we found her curled up on our bed (do not ask me how long she had been there). The important thing is that she's back at home and safe and healthy. She was especially cuddly and lovable afterwards - as if she had finally realized that this is her home now & she was happy with that fact. All was good in the world of Millie.

Well, not quite. I noticed this week that Millie was having trouble eating. Sometimes while eating crunchy or chewy food, she would yelp and refuse to eat more. So yesterday I took her to the vet's office for the very first time. She knew something was up when I tried to put her in the cat carrier - a carrier that is far too small for her I realized. So instead I put Millie in a pillow case. Yup, I put the cat in the bag. Heh heh.

The good news is that Millie won the Best Cat of the Day award at the vet's office. She didn't bite or scratch or yowl or anything. She didn't run away or hide. Her tail didn't fluff up & her ears didn't flatten back against her head. She didn't even flinch when they took a blood sample. What an amazing cat, right?

The bad news is that she has lots of bad things going on in her mouth: missing teeth, possibly some broken ones, too, and ulcers. I got to see her gums, which were blood red and swollen. No wonder she was hurting! It's clear that she needs to have some work done. So on Monday morning, I will have to put her back in that pillow case and return her to the vet's office. I will also have to pay a hefty bill. But it's worth it.

Ah yes. Millie. The best $50 $500 we ever spent.

Feline paralysis

It's been a quiet week 'round the house. We watched the first F1 race of the season with Mark (Hooray for Lewis Hamilton!). And I baked some delicious ginger cookies (I'll share the recipe if you want). Tim got some nice compliments for a program he completed at work. And the Bradford pear trees in the neighborhood bloomed and it rained a couple times. So that's all quite nice.

But the biggest news this week is all about the Millie cat.

Miss Millicent is an interesting cat. She loves to be around her people. It is very rare to find her in a room alone. She'd just rather be with us. She even slept on our bed her very first night here. She will even walk right up to strangers & expect them to give her a nice scratch behind the ears. She's quite friendly in her own way. However, she has never been a lap cat. She might curl up near us on the couch or even sleep by my side at night, but she has showed very little interest in snuggling up on our laps ... until this week.

On Tuesday morning, Millie approached me while I was on the couch and she gingerly stepped on my leg. Before I really realized what was happening, she sat down in my lap. She sat there for a full 10 minutes before she got up and wandered off. This was a major achievement! I was so excited I almost sent Tim an e-mail about it. But it got better! Later that afternoon, Miss Mills curled up in my lap and stayed there for 2 hours and 40 minutes! Hooray! What a break-through! The only problem, of course, is that I didn't want to get up & disturb her - a condition Tim calls "feline paralysis" - so I wasn't able to run the errands I had intended to. But no matter. Millie was snoozing on my lap and I was pleased as Punch.

In the few days since Millie started sitting in my lap, I've been doing everything I can to encourage her. Yesterday she sat on my lap on 4 seperate occasions & slept by my side all night, too. Today I've been a bit busier, but she managed to sit on my lap for a while after I returned from the grocery store. This is really encouraging. More and more, she feels less like some distant relative who is staying with us for a while and is feeling more like our own, sweet baby cat.

Good Things Tuesday

Here's some stuff that is making me happy right now.



1. The Song Chart photo pool on Flickr. A bunch of people have taken song lyrics & turned them into graphs and diagrams. Brilliant. Click here to see my favorite one.

2. The Soop Shop on Etsy. They make these adorable rings that cost only $12 each. I need the squirrel one. I really really really do.

3. The "Stuff White People Like" Blog. Yes, it's wrong. I like it anyway.

4. Eddie Izzard is going on tour! EEEEE!!!! Just a shame he isn't coming here.

5. Design*Sponge, a really cool blog about home decor & such, has posted a Design Guide for my neck of the woods. Now I wanna go shopping.

6. Fluffy kitty belly.

Kitty Quirks

It's now been a week since Millie came home to us. In that time, we have come to learn a lot more about her.

For instance, Millie can't jump very high. She has trouble simply getting up on our bed (she uses her claws to get a grip on the edge of the mattress & hoists herself up). This is good because it means that she cannot jump up on the kitchen countertops. How great is that?! Also, she has a squeaky snore that is very endearing. And she often likes to lay on her back with belly exposed and her feet in the proper "paws up" position. Very very cute.


There were a few early quirks that worried us that, luckily, we've already overcome. Millie was nervous about venturing downstairs during her first few days here, but she seems to have conquered that fear with just a teensy bit of encouragement from us. I also noticed that she likes to sharpen her claws on the carpet, but I got her a scratching pad & she seems to prefer it over the alternative. All of these are moves in the right direction & we couldn't be happier.


But she has one quirk that we don't quite understand and are not sure how to handle. It seems that Millie prefers to eat while she is being pet. At the very least, she wants us standing or sitting near her while she eats. It's very strange. I can put down fresh food for her - even yummy canned food - and she will eat a few bites by herself, but she'll stop when she notices we're not near by & will go seek us out. We used to have her food in the guest room, so she spent a lot of time lingering by the door to that room, trying to lure us in there so that we could pet her while she ate. Now that her food is in the kitchen, things are a little different. If she wants to eat she will walk up to me and literally poke my leg with her paw - no, seriously - and look at me in a needy, pathetic way. If I ignore her, she pokes me again. When I give in to her wishes, she will happily chow down & eat quite a bit, purring the whole time while I stroke her back. Even if I just stand next to her and just watch her eat she seems much happier and will eat more. It's bizarre.

Can anyone explain this? Why does she want us to be there? Do you think she's a social eater - that maybe her old owner used to feed her cats at the same time that she fed herself? I honestly have no clue. Luckily, she does not try to wake us in the middle of the night when she goes down for an early morning snack. At least, I don't think she does ...

I Can Haz Kitteh?

So here's how it went down. Wednesday evening when we met Millie, I was a bit concerned. She was so unbelieveably calm and ... tolerant. She let us pet her & scratch her neck & at one point she even flopped over & let me pet her tummy. However, I was afraid that Millie didn't like us. I feared that she was just being polite or something. Crazy, I know. But honestly, I felt more like I was meeting a potential roommate than my future fur baby.

I voiced my concerns to Tim. He tactfully told me to get over myself. "We're getting the cat, okay? No excuses." Thank goodness my husband is as patient and loving as my adorable new cat.

Friday night Annie and Tony (the foster people) brought Millie over to our house. I was worried that Millie would hide or be distant. I figured that at the very least she would choose to sleep in her cat bed rather than with us. But I was wrong. She happily ate the food we provided and purred at our every touch. When we went to our room to sleep, she jumped up on our bed, where she curled up & drifted to sleep at our feet.

I have not stopped smiling since.

I am officially in love. I feel this urge to go out and tell everyone how splendid Millie is & post oodles of photos of her & write long posts about the cute little noises she makes & the funny way she walks or about the tiny white tip on her tail that is so cute I just want to eat it.

Dear, sweet, silly Millie. Definitely the best $50 we've ever spent.