This picture was taken after one of our cats came back from the vet last year. A lot of times Junior wanders off and finds a new place to sleep. I remember this particular day we couldn't find him. Who would ever think to look in the pet carrier. Especially when it is difficult to get the other two into that thing knowing where they are going and not liking it.
The problem is, Junior has never been transported to the vet in that carrier. He had no idea what it was other than a neat place to climb into and snooze. I highly doubt I could use that to take him to the vet because as you can see he fills it out nicely. He's quite a big boy.
I just threw this picture on here for the heck of it. It was a full moon and I was testing my new camera not only for the closeness but also to see how it would work at night.
This litter belongs to our Stumpy who was born with half a tail. There is a black one (runt), a black and white one, and a gray and white one. They are four weeks old now. We have never had a gray one in all the litters over the years. Other colors, yes, but never a gray one. I have to think of a special name for that one.
To name this one was fairly easy. He is the color of sand on a beach, thus the name Sandy. And then we discovered he is a male so my husband named him Snuggle, like the bear in the fabric softener commercial. I was so used to calling him Sandy and I couldn't drop that name so now he is known as Sandy Snuggle. He is now around eight weeks old and still has the blue eyes. His coloring is a first for us also. Hmmmm...there must be a new sheriff in town.
Yep, another birthday for me. Not that I look forward to them. But once they are over with I tell myself that I have a whole year till the next one. Clever, aren't I?
Dale Jr. finished 4th in Sunday's race!
And the Giants lost...
I do not like attics. There, it's out. Off my chest. Well, actually it's not such a big secret.
When I was around 4 or 5 years old my parents moved into a house with an attic. A hateful attic as far as I was concerned. Up until then I had no idea what an attic was. I wish I'd never found out.
Lucky me...I got the room with the door that led to that awful attic. One thing though, I never had the distinct pleasure *written with sarcasm* of visiting that attic. Unless I did and just blocked it out forever.
The house was old with lots of creaks and groans and squirrels rolling nuts around up there. When you are a little kid and you hear things like that you think you did something really wrong and the devil was coming for you. I wasn't old enough to do things to make the devil come after me. That came a few years later. And I might talk about those days in another post in the future.
It didn't take me long to figure out that I needed a light on so I could go to sleep. Those early days scarred me for the rest of my life and to this day I am still very scared of the dark.
When I was eight we moved to another two-story house with a very large attic. All I could think was, here we go again. Are they going to stick me in that room with the door that leads to the attic? Nope, not this time. My older brother was the lucky one and only because that room was smaller than the other bedroom which I shared with my younger sister.
When I married and moved out, my first husband and I lived in an apartment. No attic there, thank goodness. Then we bought a house. A rancher. Again, no attic. I moved into another apartment, got divorced, moved into this house, got married and again no attic here as this house is also a rancher.
I may be afraid of the dark, and attics in particular, but I ain't stupid.
It was on a Saturday back in 2009 on the 12th of September when my husband and I left the house to embark on our annual tour of the local vineyards to sample their wines and purchase the ones I liked. The weather wasn't perfect like other years as it was softly raining...just enough to mess up my day for taking pictures. It also wasn't a good omen of things to come.
We returned home around 4-4:30 pm which was feeding time for all the cats outside. As I walked alongside the garage on my way to the back of the house, I heard what I thought was a faint mewing of a kitten. By then the rain had gotten heavier and traffic was noisier so I dismissed what I thought I heard. I have been known to imagine things far worse.
I fed the cats and came back inside. But I was unsettled. Did I imagine that mewing or was it real? Finally I mentioned something to my husband and he suggested we go out and investigate. It couldn't hurt.
At that time we had a truck bedliner upside down on our car trailer. When my husband lifted it up, sure enough, there was a tiny orange kitten that started screaming his head off. He was hungry as hell and he wanted his mommy.
What he didn't know was his mommy (Mini-Me) had been hit and killed by a car in the front of our house. We found her when we came home before we even pulled into the driveway. That was pretty tough for me to take. It still is. But somehow we move on, don't we?
Our next step was to bring the little one inside, make him warm, and get some kitten milk inside his tummy. I knew he was 5 weeks old as he was born August 9th along with four siblings. He had been the only survivor, as the others weren't strong enough to make it. I actually thought they all had died.
His new home was a cardboard box with a screen on top, and that was kept in the bedroom at night so if there were any problems with him I would be right there to deal with them. Every morning I would wake up and lie in bed listening for him to make a noise because, to be honest with you, I worried myself sick that one morning I would walk over to that box and find he didn't make it either.
He never made a noise, no mewing, nothing. I guess he screamed enough the day we found him and lost his ability to meow. Poor little fellow.
His first visit to the vet was within a week after bringing him inside. A few days later we were informed the fecal sample we took revealed that he had giardia, a parasite, and it was wreaking havoc on his tiny body. After many weeks of turmoil and worriment he finally turned a corner and got healthy but not until that parasite was banished from him.
So, may I present Punkin' ~
My husband named him Pumpkin due to his orange coloration but when he started showing his personality, I altered his name to Punkin', Punk for short. And he is sometimes called Prince Punk.
Today he's a happy, lively cat. He only weighed 11.5 ounces at 5-1/2 weeks of age and was always underweight and although he is still tiny for his age, he has grown into a beautiful young cat. He still doesn't meow but sometimes when I pick him up and he doesn't want to be held he gets a little testy and makes a squealing noise, almost like a puppy bark. I am hoping that eventually he will start talking. Until then, he's here, he's healthy, and he's very much loved.
As I sit here and look at this picture of him, I think back to his early days and what he went through, both outside and with us. And I can only thank God for letting us get to know this beautiful cat.
This is a quick impromptu post. I feel bad if I don't post every couple of days. I follow a lot of blogs and when they go longer than a week between posts it drives me nuts. Therefore, it drives me nuts when I fall into that same pattern.
With that said, this will probably be a bitch and moan session. And I am going to start with my favorite sport, NASCAR. Ever since Dale Jr. joined Hendrick Motor Sports 2-1/2 years ago I have been waiting patiently for him to win a race. I can't really count his win in Michigan two years ago because that turned out to be a win of fuel mileage. He didn't have the best car and would never have won on strength alone. He has won other races but they were non-points races.
I am so disappointed in the #88 team just as I was disappointed last year. And yet nothing gets done to change things up. The announcement has been made that his crew chief, Lance McGrew, will be calling the shots in 2011 again. And probably in 2012 too. Dale Jr.'s contract with HMS runs through the end of 2012. I really am wondering what he is going to do when his contract is up at that time.
Of course, Dale Jr. has won in the Nationwide series and I am grateful for that. It's a different car, one that he knows. This COT car used for the Sprint Cup races sucks beyond sucking. And if that is bad English, so be it. I get pissy and whatever comes out of my fingers comes out.
The fact that Junior is 19th in points right now is another thing that has me really irritated. There is no way on this green earth that he should be 19th in the points. It's downright embarrassing for all us Junior fans. Don't get me wrong...I am not turning my back on him, nor will I ever do that. Not even thinking about it. But I do wish he would sprout a pair and start knocking others around on the track. Now THAT would make me happy.
On a different note, I would like to turn to the subject of football. I have been a fan of many teams over the years. When I discovered Joe Montana I became a diehard 49ers fan. I hated to see him leave the team and was kind of leery when they took on Steve Young. But Steve stepped up and came through for us fans. Thus, I have been a longtime fan. Until a few years ago. The 49ers became a last place team and I got a little tired of that too, year after year, hoping they would do better and all they did was get worse than the year before.
Although I was born in Pennsylvania, I spent my summers in New York, both in Manhattan and on Long Island. I had been a secret fan of the NY Giants for quite some time. But a few years ago I tossed caution to the wind, came out of the closet so to speak, and announced that I was a NY Giants fan. And now I read they don't hold much hope for them this year. But guess which team they have high hopes for...yep, you guessed it right if you said the San Francisco 49ers. What's a body supposed to do?
I suppose I have to support both teams this year, huh?Oh, and don't even get me started on those NY Mets.
Many years ago, maybe twelve or so, I worked for a company that moved 50 miles farther away from where they were. One of the office workers, who was not making the move with us, had a Spider Plant that she took care of while she was at work. It had a lot of "babies" and one was offered to me after she had gotten it to start growing on its own in a separate pot.
I brought that tiny baby home and nourished it to the point where it had its own little babies. I bought a macrame holder for it and hung it in the front bay window. It grew into a beautiful plant and I cherished it because I don't exactly have a green thumb.
Fast forward some ten years when my male cat, Junior, discovered that its leaves tasted mighty good. He chewed the ends off and they would get ragged and brown, so I took it away from him not only because it could be toxic but also to try and save its little behind. It was a beautiful healthy plant before he discovered it.
After I took it away I sorely missed it hanging in that window but it was dying and I knew I could never hang it there again if I wanted it to live. I put it in a room that isn't used much over a year ago and sort of kind of forgot about it. That same room does not get heated during the winter and so it sat, in a corner on the floor, like some crazed plant with a disease. Poor thing. I think I may have watered it a few times when I thought about it. Eventually it got emaciated, leaves turned brown and then black, and there were very few little green things left.
This past Spring I looked at it and could only shake my head in dismay. It was all but gone. I wanted to cry. Instead, I decided to hang it outside just the way it was. Either it died for good or it might grow a little. I had nothing to lose. And to my amazement, within a few short weeks, the little bugger started growing...and it hasn't stopped.
The problem I have now is when it gets cold outside, what do I do with it? I can't hang it inside where I had it. The babies and the leaves get very long and I would be right back where I started from with Junior and his lunchable.
These pictures were taken almost a month ago and since then it has grown by leaps and bounds and has more babies hanging down.
Help!
