Introducing...

Flaming Star/Flamingstar "Flame"
We adopted this little darling early this afternoon. She's about 10-12 wks old, exactly what we were looking for. She's already had shots, tests, micro-chip, spaying, etc. from the shelter we acquired her from. They had called her Dylan - somehow that just doesn't fit, and Nick has read the entire "Warriors" cat clan series of books - the only books he'll read that aren't assigned school projects! I can see it now, 30 years in the future, he's a cat hoarder or runs a cat sanctuary or something along those lines. Guaranteed he won't be a vet - he doesn't enjoy school and thinks it's 'dumb' even though his 2nd quarter grades were all A's and 1 B.

Raven is surprisingly hissy. Amazing what just a few weeks of age in a kitten brings. When Fanner was still here, Raven never once hissed and only wanted to snuggle and play and Fanner would have nothing doing. Now Raven hisses and spits and lashes out...even at ME when she smells my shirt where Flame was held! Oy!

They should settle down in a few days, weeks, hopefully not months! For now, they will only be together when they can be supervised. Flame needs to get accustomed to her new home, so we'll start with a small area as we did when Raven first came to us.

Fina-Lee Friday

Here we are again with yet another week having passed by all too quickly. The days are getting better, and I hope to be back on track with quilting reports on Sunday and Monday!! I have at least been working on cutting up scraps into blocks, squares and strips, so all has not been set aside.
We are in the process of looking for a 2nd 'kitten'...did you know there's a 'season' for kittens? I suppose in the back of my mind I did too, but it escaped me. I expected to be able to go to our local shelter and find several to choose from...not ONE!! and only a few adult cats. I then went to another about 30 miles away and goodness, I'd have had to wait over an hour and a half just to ask questions about adopting one of a couple we might've been interested in. Oh, and it was late in the day and I had only my prescription sunglasses for driving. Guess who didn't wait! We've since looked at photos of several kitties of various kitten/young ages that are up for adoption through rescue places. One in particular caught our attention, but we're 2nd in line and won't know until the 1st in line meets her on Sat. Raven clearly needs another cat to keep her company. I tried to update our Quicken data - impossible with this little monkey! So we played fetch on the stairs to tire her out a little and I think I have her down for a nap (sounds like I have a baby, huh?). She loves to be curled up on Nick's uber-soft bathrobe for her nap. She thinks it's 'mama' and tries to suckle and knead on it. Clearly she was removed from mama to soon, but no choice from the story of how we got her.

I was going to upload a video of Raven but discovered Blogger's max. is 100mb and mine is 285mb. So does that mean I just make a shorter version? So much to learn....still, lol.

Well, Wow, It's Wednesday

So I've been absent for a few days, I'll just say the days were pretty rough through at least Sunday. They're getting better. It's been quite awhile since I've felt the gut-wrenching pain of loss, and maybe it's because I'm getting older, or maybe we just loved our kitty TOO much (is that possible?), but I'm sure a lot of it had to do with also having to see and hear my 13 year old baby go through his first real loss and it being his cat at that. We are better, but we still miss that little fur-ball something terrible.

It took me several days to get to the point of being able to clean up her litter area. I forgot to mention in Friday's post, that one of her troubles was bladder stones. We had them surgically removed Dec. 2009 & they re-formed by July '10 which caused the urinary problems. The ones removed in '09 were the size of my little finger nail, so not small and presumably painful. Needless to say, this problem along with the others made for quite a messy litter station because she'd step in whatever she did, it'd stick to her feet...you can guess the rest if you have animals. I was using those dog training pads but there were still areas where wet tracks were found. I also finally switched to a pellet type litter which helped...wish I'd thought of it a LOT sooner; kitty sand everywhere isn't fun.

I baked the clay paw print that the vet gave us on the day of her demise. The vet & staff are very compassionate.

We have also started looking for another kitten now to keep Raven company. We checked our local shelter yesterday, but alas, no kittens - only big cats and sorry, but I don't want to bring in an adult cat. Did you know that this isn't kitten season? March/April would be better. We even checked County-wide via their online site and not too many kittens. There were a couple posted and we'll drive up there today (about an hour away) after school, but there's no guarantee it'll still be there. Otherwise, we may be forced to hold off a couple months until babies are born/old enough to wean. I was also surprised at the cost of adopting from both the shelter and Petsmart. $90 and $120 respectively. But then, I guess that includes their first rounds of shots, etc. The shelter also microchips as a matter of course. I think looking is helping Nick as well. I told him he also needs to talk about Fanner to help work through his grief. So we have been able to do that at times...without blubbering!

Raven is quite the personable cat. She's grown a lot since the end of Nov. She has confidence in her running, jumping, leaping, pouncing and does them all too well, lol. She likes to jump onto my chair and then onto my shoulder where she'll drape herself or chew on my hair and try to re-pierce my ear. She's quite rambunctious and clearly looking like she may have Oriental Shorthair genetics. She's very affectionate too and purrs a lot. I need to try to capture on video, her fetching ability. I'll throw the pompom down the stairs while I sit at the top and she'll chase after it, pick it up, bring it back, set it down and lay down until I pick it up and throw it again...no, she really isn't a dog, but she does behave a bit like one including following me around constantly, except when she's getting her cat-naps.

Fina-Lee Friday: All About Fanner

Not so long ago, a good day.
Many years ago.
Being held by Marty.
Sleeping soundly.

This is NOT a Friday I was finally glad to see. We, no, scratch that, I finally made the decision that not one of us wanted to make to have Fanner put to rest. I detest having to make such decisions. I would lay in bed at night and ask the Lord to take her so that I wouldn't have to make that decision. And the hard part was, she would seem 'OK' quite a bit, but I've watched her for months, years even, and knew she wasn't. She'd growl, huff when you'd pick her up, clearly painful. Her breathing was changing as was her litter using abilities. It was time, but it's still very painful.

She was so special. She was 'Nick's' kitty (even though he didn't take care of her), one he was supposed to grow up with for many more years. She was oh-so-soft, like rabbit fur, and a good lap kitty. But she had a lot of medical problems and the first time we almost lost her (and had the decision of her living or not) was when she was only 6 mos or so old. It took years to find out what was really wrong. At first we discovered she was allergic to fish. If you're a cat owner that feeds canned food, check the labels, fish-less food is not that easy to find. In Friskies, there's maybe 3 flavors that don't have fish in them. Fish in dry food didn't seem to bother her, maybe they use a different part of the fish.

But then she started having seizures too. And we almost lost her again when her first vet decided to give all of her necessary shots at one time, after that...no more vaccines for anything. We were referred to a new vet. She determined, even without the other uber-expensive testings recommended by ER vet when she was ~6 mos., that she had a condition known as liver shunts. More common in dogs than cats, but she was 'lucky' - hah! Actually, she was lucky: to have us to love and care for her for 7 3/4 yrs, and a vet who knew what to look for & how to treat her and keep her comfortable and who would work with us.

One time she escaped the house and a neighbor came over and asked if we knew anyone in the neighborhood who'd lost a cat with big feet (Fanner was polydactyl). She had opened her door & Fanner rushed in, likely thinking it was her own house as she'd never been out before. We didn't realize Fanner has scooted out our door when we answered it for a door-to-door salesperson after dark. Another time she escaped the back yard. I should mention here, that with her special needs, she also didn't have hind-quarter muscular strength and could barely jump up onto the bed let alone scale any 6' walls, and she had become 'blind' with maybe only being able to distinguish light and dark. This one time, a gate was slightly ajar and she got out. She was gone nearly 48 hours and Nick & I were especially fearful and heartbroken, we put flyers on light standards and people's doorsteps, took them to local vets in case she'd been hit by a car, and checked the pound, and we prayed for her return. Then one afternoon the phone rang, and the guy asked if we'd lost a cat saying he found one in his backyard by the pool just before he let his pit bull out (scary) - he had seen the flyer with our phone #. Turned out, he lived across the street, one house down. We knew each other minimally as neighbors here do, and incidentally, he's the one we acquired our new kitten Raven from at the end of November!

Fanner would sleep with either Nick or I. One time when she was with me I woke in the middle of the night and was scared witless. It seemed she wasn't breathing, she was limp like a dishcloth and for what seemed like an eternity, I nearly pounded on her to get her to wake up. She finally did, much to my relief, I truly thought she'd died then. This became a frequent event, and I learned not to panic. She just slept so soundly, that she was nearly comatose. We'd eventually laugh at how limp she'd be, but I'd always fear we'd accidentally break her neck or something. The one photo above is one of those times.

Fanner ~ we miss you! You will always be remembered.

Whatta Wednesday

Well, there's nothing really 'whatta' about it, but what can one say, it IS Wednesday and whatta-you-know, you know? OK, enough silliness.

I don't have any new pictures of anything today. My camera promptly informed me that the memory card was full and I thought I had a backup one, but can't seem to find it, so it looks like I'll have to go buy one, but I haven't given up looking yet.

I saw the dr. for my wrist today since PT is over. We decided not to do the cortisone shot nor surgery for now, but to rather give it a few months and see how it feels. It is better and only occasionally yelps at me, like the other night when I attempted to use the rotary cutter for the first time (mostly) in nearly 5 months. It only yelped briefly so I went ahead and cut up some scraps for quite awhile. It was a little achy when done but I let it be. The next day and evening, I did some more and didn't hear/feel it yelp at all, so I think I can finally get back to being quilt-productive.

Housework has fallen behind with using my wrist as an excuse too, so I guess I'll have to pick up the ball on that as well. Sure wish I could be like Jeanie or Samantha (remember back to those 1960s shows?) and just cross my arms, nod my head, or wiggle my nose and have everything clean, sparkling and in place - with the knowledge of where everything is! just once, that's all, just once. I promise to try to keep it that way. Well, it was a nice dream. At best I could probably hire a maid service for a week or so, but I don't think that'd solve my personal-negligence issues. So that said, I guess I'd better scoot, I still have the last of the Christmas decs to put away and set in the garage for Marty & Nick to put back up into the storage loft.

Have a terrific day and thanks for stopping by.

Design Wall Monday #1 of 2012

Yay! But hey, it's the same one I showed yesterday for the start of the 2012 UFO Challenge, and I'll show it again, just a different image. I haven't made any progress since yesterday aside from taking it's box off the shelf and looking to see exactly what is left to do. One strip segment still needs to be added to one of the borders and then the borders are ready to add to the top (unless I need to adjust for an accurate fit, I haven't checked that yet). I'm open to suggestions for how to quilt it. Keep in mind, I've taken only one class in free-motion quilting and haven't perfected it by any means, so would like to keep it simple - unless I practice more.

You can see some more wonderful works in process here at Judy's Patchwork Times.

Since I haven't really done anything quilty since before last summer's vacation (due to the wrist injury) I sat last night and trimmed scraps as per Quiltville's Bonnie Hunter's methods. The wrist is ok but yes, I know I was using it with that rotary cutter - I feel it!

I had been doing this manner of cutting to some degree even before finding her method, but will 'change my ways' as to how many sizes of blocks and strips, etc. Nothing will go to waste even if the slimmest of trimmings are kept for a long time to be stuffing for a dog or cat pad! After reading one of the string foundation methods on the testimonials there, I finally know how I will use some of the 'ugly' fabric pieces I likely would not use otherwise: they can become the foundation pieces using a portion of them to still show through along with the other strings - too cool!

I love the great ideas we can find out in blog-land, thank you to everyone for sharing...and for commenting :)

It's a Brand New Year

Happy New Year to you all out there in Blog-Land :)

First up, since it's Sunday, which means it's Stash Report Sunday (thank you Judy), I start with zip, isn't that fun? nothing in, nothing out (yet)!

Used this Week: 0 yards
Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 0 yards
Net Used for 2012: 0 yards

Next, Judy has chosen our UFO Challenge project for January. #5 . That means I'll be working on The Puzzler, a project from the Nov. '05 issue of Quilters' Newsletter. I think that's a good choice. It makes me happy. I have the piecing done and just need to sew the pieced border to the main pieced top, then layer, quilt and bind. It's expected to measure 70"x89" when done, and 'quilting' is still a bit intimidating unless I do just straight lines, lol.

This shows the main piecing of the quilt, very scrappy, and each block a sample of different blocks within.

Here it is laid on a bed with the side pieced borders laid next to it. Once the borders are on all the way around, I'll need to decide how I want to quilt it...for me, that's the real challenge, I think even moreso than actually quilting.

So, let's get rolling into 2012.