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!
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!
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!
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.
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!
And here's a pose I like to refer to as The Baked Potato. LOOK AT THOSE FRONT FEETS!
Happy Feline Friday, friends!
Have a great weekend and stay safe out there!
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
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
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!
Look how they're almost touching paws!
Credit to Spouse for taking these super-sweet photos!
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
Hello, friends!
How is everyone doing? Anyone sick of this pandemic? LOL
I, for one, am really feeling it these days. As an introvert, I can honestly say I don't mind all the social distancing one bit but as someone who also has a tad bit of health anxiety, I am ready for this to be over. I am thankful that so far, we have stayed healthy. My heart goes out to all who have been touched by this public health crisis.
Don't you just wish you could be a cat, obvlious to all the current events? Lily is certainly not affected by these crazy times!
Here are a few places she was spotted this week:
Although the birds aren't coming by as frequently, Lily still gazes demurely out the window from her perch on the cat tree!
Here she got so tired of waiting by the pantry door for Meowmy to serve lunch that she just plopped down!
It's been so nice that we have had the windows open this week! Here she is partially sitting on her scratchers in a pose that Daughter calls The Split-Level. 😀
Cue the JAWS music! Lily can always be spotted lurking near food -- especially when there are dairy products to be had. Clearly she hoped to snag a little lick of that excessive butter on Meowmy's toast. Stress-eating, anyone? LOL
Hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend! Here's to brighter days ahead!
JP and Lily
Well, Lily went back to the vet this week for a re-check of her rear end. I won't go into the details (as my mom would have said, "It's not dinner table conversation") but suffice it to say something is not right. In spite of this problem, she's FELINE good and continues to be active as I've reported in recent posts!
I love how she's got her teeth around the bar of her carrier here!
I took her to the vet three weeks ago for this same issue and she was prescribed a 10-day course of predisone. The tablets are liver flavored which means she gobbled them up with gusto! But after 10 days, the problem persisted so back to the vet she went.
This time, she got a high-powered predisone shot which should correct the problem within a 10 days or so. If that doesn't happen, she'll go back and they'll try something else. I have no idea what that "something else" might be.
The great thing is that this week, she didn't have to be sedated for her visit. It's been YEARS since she's been at the vet without sedation, so I was very proud of her! Nevertheless, she was quite happy to be home and especially thrilled that our return coincided with her 3pm food drop from the automatic feeder.
So we're continuing on and doing fine...just want this little problem to be resolved! Hope everyone has a happy Feline Friday and a great weekend! Stay safe out there, kitties and humans!
As I mentioned in last week's post, Lily is "feline" SO MUCH better since her surgery! The most significant change is in her mobility. I can only surmise that her "rear end issues" were making jumping and climbing uncomfortable, if not painful.
She's never been a skilled jumper like Tinsel was, but she's doing a lot more of it now! In recent days, I've personally observed her jumping to places she hasn't in a very long time. Now, of course, I've seen her up on the table from time to time, but I don't see her JUMPING up there. She will typically CLIMB up to the table via a chair. To see her jump from the floor to the table is new for her!
Of course, she's not supposed to be up there, but I allowed it because it's so unusual -- and really good to see that she FEELS like jumping!
I've also observed her jump from place to place. Once on the table, she decided she could jump to the island! Here she's thinking about it...should I do it?
The next thing I knew, she was flying through the air -- island-bound!
In recent days, I also spotted her on the piano, a forbidden place she hasn't jumped on in YEARS. For many years I covered the piano with a throw because Tinsel was keen on jumping up there, but since Tinsel has been gone, I haven't needed to worry about Lily jumping up there. But not now! This is both good and bad as I really don't want her to be up there!
I stayed really close to her to make sure she didn't damage anything (she didn't). I thought she'd jump down and move on to a nice nap, but to my surprise, she decided to be a real dare-devil! Watch this if you dare! LOL
As you can see, Lily is a cautious jumper and measures thoroughly before attempting such feats! Amazingly, nothing toppled over during this jump even though she didn't quite stick the landing. I'll give it an 8/10 but a 10/10 for trying! :)
