Feline Friday

 Whether you've been NAUGHTY....

 

 ...or NICE....

  

 

 We hope Santa left you some special TREATS!

 

   MEOW-Y Christmas to all!

Janet & Lily

Feline Friday with Rory

Could there be a cuter picture of Rory? 

Lately, her Meowmy has to put her in a sweater to settle her down at night. There's just too much excitement with the Christmas tree up!

But THIS is really the best picture because it includes my favorite girl!

Rory hit the jackpot when Bailey adopted her. She's got a wonderful home, a Meowmy who loves her, and a Cat Dad in training. What a great life for this spunky kitty who was found on the streets of Tyler, Texas!

Happy Feline Friday, y'all!

 

 

Feline Friday

It's been a couple of weeks since Lily has been featured on Feline Friday but no worries...she's the Featured Kitty EVERY DAY around here!

She has been doing very well since recovering from The Wipe Incident. In fact, she seems to be picking up speed, especially when it's time for us to go to sleep.

At bedtime, she joins me for a couple of Temptations, then wanders off to get a drink of water and use the potty. After she "exits the restroom", the running begins on the first floor. From the second floor, it sounds like thundering hooves. Occasionally she jumps up a wall and scrapes her claws all the way down (not good, as you might imagine). But mostly, she runs...faster and faster. 

Eventually she lands back in the bedroom where she sometimes fits herself under a very low dresser (it's unclear why this is happening...) and finally emerges to hop up on the bed and fall asleep. We experience some version of this nearly every night.

But one night recently she added something new at 2:30 in the morning:

She jumped onto the piano keys! I must say this was quite startling as no one was downstairs at the time except for Lily who, as far as we knew, doesn't play any instrument. 

 I immediately went downstairs to find her sitting innocently enough in the dining room as if to say, "What's the matter, Meowmy?"

 

Crazy girl. But I'll take it. It's great to see her running and playing again, even if it's in the middle of the night!

Happy Feline Friday!

Feline Friday with Rory

 Rory is back on the blog today because of an important development:

It's sweater weather! 

Rory is sporting the latest in cable knit designs for kitties.

As you can see, she's PAWS-itively adorable in it!

Rory says Happy Feline Friday, y'all!

Feline Friday with Rory

Last week, we packed up a box of my mom's silver ornaments and her white tree skirt and shipped them off to Texas.

 Thankfully everything arrived intact and now Rory is enjoying a new furry napping spot!

We hope everyone had a happy and safe Thanksgiving! Have a great weekend!

Feline Friday

 Hello, friends!

Friday is here again and Lily is looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend! Not that the weekend looks any different for her... LOL

Lily has continued to increase her activity level, even jumping up on the washer and dryer which had become a rarity prior to her July surgery. She's always interested in laundry baskets, and this one was no exception! While she was up there, she also checked out her catnip plant which I brought in from the patio. So far it's growing nicely and providing an occasional "nip" for my little buddy! It's great to see her curiosity return, now that her mobility is back to normal.

 

 But mostly she is just hanging out in her favorite napping spots! This old rug is her current favorite.

Have a great weekend, friends!

Happy Feline Friday!

Feline Friday: All is Well!

It's been a busy week but all is well here! Lily is back to her normal shenanigans:

 

She's FELINE great and I am so thankful to put The Wipe Incident behind us!

And Rory in Texas is also doing great, although we've had an unexplained lizard incident. Rory, as it turns out, is a fierce home defender! More to come....

Hope everyone has a wonderful and restful weekend!

Feline Friday: A Harrowing Week

 Hello, blogging friends!

We've had a very rough week around here. All is well now and I am so grateful for that!

On Friday of last week, I stopped by our local grocery store which is closing soon hoping to pick up another violet on sale. The violets were sold out but nearby I noticed a section with Burt's Bees products. I've used several in the past so thought I'd see what was on clearance.

I spotted their all-natural cat wipes which I hadn't used before, and since they were on clearance I bought a package to help with Lily's dander issues. Could be fun to try, I thought. I read some online reviews which were overwhelmingly positive, especially for senior kitties.

Back home, I left the wipes unopened until late Saturday morning when I thoroughly wiped her down, head to tip of tail. It was a beautiful day, so we took a long walk and worked in the yard. When I came back inside, I found Lily sound asleep in her basket (not unusual) but all the food from her 3pm automatic feeding was still in the bowl. On rare occasion, she has slept through a feeding but this time, she refused even a treat. Lily is highly food-motivated, so I knew something was wrong.

I kept an eye on her through the evening, my concern heightening. She wouldn't eat anything, even pieces of deli ham, and wouldn't move from her basket where she wasn't really asleep but stared straight ahead. She missed her 10pm feeding, which alarmed me even more. I got up around 4am to find her and she took a tiny bit of canned food from a spoon, then immediately vomited it back up. I knew she was in trouble.

Around 9am I loaded her up and headed to the emergency vet, a different one than I've used before. Although it seems painfully obvious now, it hadn't occurred to me that she might be having a reaction to the cat wipe I'd used on her. I truly had no idea what was going on -- which was completely terrifying.

After checking her in and speaking to the intake tech and later the vet, they suggested I leave her for a couple of hours while they did blood work and an x-ray. I suspected constiptation or a bowel obstruction based on her behavior and they seemed to think that was the likely cause. 

But when I got back home and walked into the kitchen, there on the table was the package of wipes. It hit me like a ton of bricks...I knew she must be reacting to something in the wipes.

I immediately called the clinic and reported my fears. The vet kindly got on the phone with me right away but assured me that allergic reactions to such products are typically respiratory in nature which didn't match up to Lily's symptoms, so she felt the likelihood of that was minimal. Thankfully, the vet ruled out anything dire and diagnosed gasteroenteritis of unknown origin. Lily was dehyrdated and clearly experiencing some nausea, so she got some fluids and medicine to make her tummy feel better.  

She seemed much more comfortable upon arriving home but still refused to sleep. 

 

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that the wipes were the culprit. Then I looked at more reviews and found a handful in which cats had terrible reactions to something in them. I FELT HORRIBLE, absolutely awful, that a product I used on her caused this.

On Monday I watched her closely while I waited for my own vet to call.  I continued to wipe her down with wet cloths to remove all residue of the wipes. Little by little, she started accepting wet food from a spoon and began to move around a little on her own. By the time I talked to the vet, she was much better. He agreed that it was likely a reaction to the wipes. The timing was just too coincidental. He assured me that whatever she reacted to would work its way out of her system.

To avoid constipation, he suggested I give her a couple of doses of stool softener and by Tuesday she finally used the litterbox -- the first time since Saturday.

 

I had to remind myself that Lily is a 14-year-old kitty and will recover more slowly than a younger cat. Each day, her normal behavior returned little by little -- vocalizing, walking to the fridge to peek inside, rubbing on my legs, accepting a treat, looking out the window, and actually sleeping soundly. I truly rejoiced at seeing each one return.

 

 By Thursday, I could finally say she was back to normal.

 

It was a harrowing week for sure, dominated by my feelings of guilt that this whole thing happened at all. I am incredibly thankful that she has made a full recovery. It's so good to have my little buddy back to normal.

Feline Friday: Feets!

 I've always thought that Lily's best feature is (are?) her little white FEETS. She wears four white socks, no two quite the same. When she was a rambunctious kitten, they were actually more like four white running shoes! Now that she's older and more "refined", her white socks are still adorable.

It seems she's always posing her FEETS in the cutest positions! Every evening (no lie), I'm running to take pictures of them, much to Spouse's dismay. I just can't help myself! Take a look and I'm sure you'll agree that they're the sweetest little FEETS in the world!

Look at how the white parts are touching! This is kind of a new pose as she usually tucks them all the way under.

And here's a pose I like to refer to as The Baked Potato. LOOK AT THOSE FRONT FEETS!

She's clearly working her angles here! This is a girl who knows how to get what she wants!

And, lest you think only the front two feets get in on the action....LOOK AT THE BACK FEETS!

This level of CUTE is just ridiculous!

Happy Feline Friday, friends!

Have a great weekend and stay safe out there!

Mystery Negatives

As I've been working through the photos I inherited from my grandma, I ran across an old envelope of 3x4 negatives. I assumed they were of our family, but when I finally got around to examining them more closely, I didn't recognize anyone in the images. In this post, I'll share the quick and easy way I got a better look at these negatives so that the mystery could be solved!

I placed them all into a pocket sheet protector, this one for wallet-sized photos. Any such pocket sleeve will do. The idea is to not have to handle the negatives, keeping them free from any oils or debris. Once safely in the sleeve, I opened up a blank Word document on my desktop computer so I would have a bright white screen to backlight the negatives. I don't have a lightbox, so this is the next best thing...and much easier than holding the sleeve up to a bright window!

 

I taped it in place, then with my phone, I took a quick photo of each of the negatives. I wasn't looking for perfection here -- just a clear enough image that would enable me to hopefully identify the people.

Once I had a digital image of each of the negatives, I dropped it into my photo editing program (I still use Picasa but there are obviously tons of options out there). In Picasa, there is an "invert colors" option. A quick click resulted in a decent rendition of the images:

It's amazing how much easier it is to identify a photo than a negative! Once I had these new images, I still didn't recognize the people so I shared them to a family Facebook group. Sure enough, one of my cousins recognized the little girl who happens to be our second cousin. I located her via Facebook and sent her the negatives and some better prints a few days ago. Now she and I have re-connected via Facebook, which is also a good thing!

I've also got two additional batches of photos I've identified in similar ways and am currently trying to track down extended family members via Ancestry who might be interested in them. Old photos and negatives are too precious to just toss. It's worth the effort to get them back to their proper place.

Janet

Time to Re-Group

 Blogging friends -- if you are still out there! -- it is time for me to re-group! The store where I teach stopped offering classes in mid-March when things started shutting down. Since then, I've been busier than ever making kits to sell online and am just now truly coming up for air.  Our dining room (and my craft room) has pretty much looked like some version of this since March.

Recently, I made a list of all the projects I've completed since this thing started and totalled it up. No wonder I feel like my head is spinning! I have designed 23 different kits (cards, scrapbook pages, tags, treat bags, etc.) and made 1020 kits to sell since March. That has kept me crazy busy with almost no let-up but I'm thankful I love what I do and can contribute in some small way!

But now... I've finished up all of my Christmas-themed kits, which is a huge relief. Christmas is our busiest time and is always a huge push for me. Now I'm truly enjoying a bit of free time to re-group.

Over the past few months, I've worked sporadically on my family history albums, trying to carve out a few hours here and there. I am pleased to report that I'm making noticeable progress! I've worked my way up through the generations to my parents and am now working on their section of the album. 

 

   Many moons ago, I wrote about setting up Life Binders for my parents and grandparents, an idea I picked up in a genealogy class. These 3-ring notebooks are just a temporary holding place for memorabilia that might eventually make it into the scrapbook. It was a Life Binder that helped me save the wedding invitation in the photo above plus a related newspaper article and a lot of memorabilia from my parents' lives so I could find it when I was ready for it.

I've been inching my way through these binders and have emptied my grandparents' binders and now my mom's, placing the memorabilia into an appropriate section of the family history binders. It's been a long time coming and it made me kind of giddy to empty another binder! Seriously, if there is one piece of advice I could offer anyone just starting to sort through a mountain of family history, it's this. The Life Binder will be your anchor.

Using the information from my Life Binders, I set up sections in my family history binder for highlights of my mom's employment...

...and also her many hobbies. In later years she enjoyed painting so I found a way to incorporate some examples of her artwork. Of course, I have many of her actual canvas paintings in various places around the house.

I still have several sections of my dad's Life Binder to work through, but I'm now  ready to start working my way through the photos I have from my parents' first few years of marriage, my birth, and beyond.  Although working on my parents' section of the album has been sad, I am really glad to get started documenting their lives. And I am excited to work on my own story. I've often wondered if I'd ever make my way to 1961 when I was born...and suprised to say that I'm almost there! 

So here's to re-grouping...coming up for air...and tackling a few of these important projects on my list.

Stay well, friends.
Janet

 

 

Feline Friday: New Friend!

 The squirrels have entered their busy season, scurrying to and fro to search for and dig nuts in our yard and garden area. They've even been digging in my patio pots...grrr!

 

As I've previously reported, Lily is much more "engaged" with the outside world these days and now enjoys watching the wildlife in the yard. She was recently thrilled to meet a new "not-of-my-species" friend!

 

 Look how they're almost touching paws! 

 

 

Credit to Spouse for taking these super-sweet photos!

Feline Friday: Where's Lily?

 As I've mentioned before, Lily has become much more active since her surgery back in July. Instead of just lying around all the time, she seems much more curious and engaged now.

She's back to her old tricks! I was unloading the dishwasher recently and left a cupboard door open, as usual. I returned to close it, only to see a glimpse of a striped tail quickly disappearing.

 Going....

 

 

 Going...GONE!

I waited briefly while she pivoted for her somewhat ungraceful exit. LOL

Of course, these little forays into the cupboards mean that I have to pull out everything to wash it. I'll remind myself that at least I got a couple of cute pictures!