Feline Friday

This week, we have replacement windows being installed in our kitchen and laundry room. Because of all the work going on, Lily has to spend the days in her upstairs “apartment” (i.e. the guest room). She doesn’t mind at all and it keeps her safe from all the activity! If left to her own devices, she would likely be underfoot.

 

As a result, I moved her cat tree -- positioning it quite close to the counter. When the contractors left, I let her out of her apartment to survey the day's work. 

 She quickly discovered with her cat tree moved, she had easy access to dinner preparation. When I turned my back to grab something from the fridge, she had launched onto the counter!

 

 Mmmm...this dill smells weird, Meowmy!

 

Lily remained quite interested in dinner preparations when she discovered salmon was involved. haha 

 

Clearly, it's a good thing the cat tree will soon be moved back to its normal position! 

 

Happy Feline Friday!

 

 

 

Feline Friday: Flannel Blankies for the Win!

Hey, kitties: Do you have an old flannel baby blankie to call your own?

This everyday object actually has many uses! Take a look at a few of Lily's favorite ways you can use a flannel blankie:

 On a cold winter's evening, you can keep your blankie on whilst traveling to the kitchen for a much-needed snack! Heck, you can even use your Cozy Wrap all year long. Just remember when you wake up from your nap, stand up VERY slowly and SAUNTER -- don't run! -- to the kitchen. This will allow your Cozy Wrap to stay in place. Kitties who master this skill may even be able to return to the original napping spot with it still in place. WHOA!

 Let's face it, from time to time that tasty snack comes right back up. It's especially gross because most kitties don't brush their teeth regularly and that VERY BAD TASTE can stay in your mouth. That's when your flannel blankie comes in very handy as a Tongue Cleaner! Place it carefully on the floor or over the edge of your Expensive Cat Basket, grab it with your sharp claws, and lick until all of that nasty taste is gone from your mouth. Pro-tip: In a pinch or if your Tongue Cleaner is the washing machine, you can also use Dad's t-shirts hanging in the closet! He will never even know you licked them all!

And finally, there may be times when strangers are in your house doing work such as fixing the cable or painting the walls. You want to be part of the action but not in plain view. That's when your flannel blankie can come in SUPER handy as a Disguise! Just cover your body with it and NO ONE will realize that you're there snoop-ervising their every move! Pro-tip: Use this technique when your meowmy needs to take you to the VET or trim your nails. She'll never find you!

Lily is excited to bring these tips to you today! We hope all of her kitty friends enjoy these great ideas on how to get the most from your own flannel blankie!

Feline Friday

 Now that Lily's automatic feeder drops some dry morsels at 5:30am, she no longer wakes me up at the crack of dawn for First Breakfast. (WHY DIDN'T I SET IT UP FOR THIS HOUR LONG AGO?)

After she enjoys First Breakfast independently, she waits (generally quietly) for Second Breakfast until I get up, often in the hallway right outside the bedroom door. 

This past week, however, she's taken to waiting for Second Breakfast on the stairs!

 

 I'm not so sure this is the best place for her to hang out...I must try to open my sleepy eyes, lest I step on Miss Lily! Still, I can see why she likes the purr-fectly cat-sized steps.

  And seeing that sweet face first thing in the morning is a great way to start your day! 

Second Breakfast...coming right up!

Feline Friday: A Visit with Rory!

 I've just returned from a very enjoyable trip to Texas to see our daughter, her fiance, AND sweet Rory!

 

While the focus of the trip was on more important tasks (like wedding dress shopping!), it was wonderful to also see Rory and experience a bit of her daily routine!

 

Rory is absolutely living her best life! She has gone from wandering the streets of Tyler, Texas to having every comfort a kitty could want: Her own cat tree, comfy blankies, all sorts of toys, wide windowsills, and cushy benches for viewing -- not to mention humans who love her.

By my observations, Rory is enjoying every minute of every day. And who wouldn't love continuous naps on a soft bench, plus a purr-fect view of Meowmy's beautiful flowers and all the neighborhood wildlife?

 

So glad I got to spend some quality time with this girl!

Feline Friday

Awhile back, we invested in an automatic feeder for Lily, one that she couldn't pry open. Twice a day, it dispenses her delicious dry morsels into a metal bowl. From Day 1, she recognized the sound of her Food Drop and would come running.

It didn't take long before she figured out the TIMES of her food drops, too. An hour or so before the programmed hour, she positions herself near the feeder so as not to be even a second late.

On a couple of occasions, we've had to change the times of her food drops and amazingly, Lily's figured that out, too. Yes, she even tells time!

Recently, we changed the time of her afternoon food drop dramatically to 5:30 am, a welcome change for all as it keeps her from begging me incessantly to get up and feed her. She does wake me up, however, at 4:30 am when she suddenly opens her eyes, stretches, and runs to the kitchen. Can't be late for breakfast, you know!

Her evening food drop is currently set for 9pm and at 8pm, like clockwork, you can count on seeing Lily near her feeder, watching it intently.

 Even if she's sound asleep, she somehow WAKES HERSELF UP and gets to the feeder well in advance.

 

A girl just can't risk being late for a tasty meal of Royal Canin Moderate Calorie Urinary SO. YUM! 😉

Feline Friday

 Lily has continued to be a trooper as we've weathered through our kitchen update! To her delight, we've had carryout on a few nights, including PIZZA, one of her very favorite things.

As soon as Spouse brought in the pizza box, she took her seat at the table, sitting up on her haunches with her little paws just like this! She was quite sure this was HER piece of pizza!

 

 Of course, I saw all of this happening and pulled the plate away from her just before she touched this piece.

 

But I'll confess that I did give her the tiniest bit of cheese and a small taste of sausage. As they say, "Everything in moderation!"

 

Feline Friday with Rory

 It's been awhile since we've checked in on sweet Rory in Texas. As you can see, she's living the good life! In nearly every picture I see, she's completely zonked out...totally relaxed!

  She's got the best bench for napping next to the front window. The flower garden provides pretty views with lots of butterflies and other critters to watch.

 Occasionally you'll find Rory on the half-wall at the top of the stairs, looking down over her queendom (AKA the living room). It's scary to see her jump up onto this narrow ledge, but Rory is a master jumper. She LOVES being up high!

It's also nice to cuddle up in her Meowmy's arms! 

How sweet is this?

Happy Feline Friday, y'all!

Feline Friday: Snoop-ervisor Lily

 Lily has had a very busy week! She's the Project Snoop-ervisor for our kitchen update which just got underway.

First, I needed to empty all the kitchen cupboards. Lily assisted me at every turn. She especially enjoyed it when all the cabinets were empty and she could go right inside to take a look-see.

 

This particular cabinet was one she had never inspected before!

 From her high vantage point, Lily could tell me where I needed to do more cleaning!

It took several hours for the two of us to empty all the kitchen cupboards and wipe them down.

As you can see, she kept a close eye on me the entire time! 

Lily was alarmed to see how much stuff came out of those cabinets. MOM, do you have to put it ALL back?

 The next day, the crew arrived and began the prep work for this kitchen update. The cabinets, island, and trim will be painted. The walls will be painted later this summer, after we replace a few windows that have unfortunately passed the point of no return.

While the crew is working, Lily is confined to her upstairs "apartment" where she has all the comforts of home and room service several times a day. She seems quite happy there most of the time and it keeps her from being underfoot.

At the end of the first day of prep, Lily did a full kitchen inspection. She checked her beloved corner cupboard and assured me her secret passageway to Narnia was still intact.

After the second full day of prep, Lily took another stroll through the work site. Everything looked weird and sort of space age! She expressed alarm that the fridge which holds her tasty food was not at all in the right place. I assured her that it was still plugged in and would dispense her NOMS at the proper hour.

Stay tuned for another update from Lily, Project Snoop-ervisor Extraordinaire. The train has left the station, as they say, and there is no turning back!

Memory Keeping: Organizing Slides

 

Have you ever put off something because it just seeemed too daunting? That's how I've been feeling about my boxes and tubs of family slides. What's on all those slides? Do I really need them? It seemed easier to just leave them in the tubs!

But, as seems to be the case lately, one thing led to another. In working on my personal school years albums, I knew I'd have to dive into those slides to locate school-related images. There was no turning back!

First, some context (I'm always all about context):

When I was growing up, we took a lot of slide film, much more so than camera film. We had a projector and screen that I absolutely ADORED setting up in the basement. I "curated" slide shows for my parents, cousins, neighbor kids, or anyone else I could get to watch. Sometimes I even set up the record player so we'd have music to go along with the presentation and spice up my narration. As soon as we'd come home from a vacation, I'd start planning our slide show.

In those days, I'd organize the slides into circular trays then meticulously write a caption for each one on the lines provided on the sides of the box. I started doing this in elementary school and continued through high school. As you can see, I truly was born to be a memory keeper!

Fast forward to 2013: After my dad passed away and I had empty my parents' home to sell it, my first priority was to find all of the family photos and slides. Sure enough, the slides were just where I'd left them...but more had been added since I left home many moons ago -- boxes and boxes. Since I hadn't been there to organize them, they were in a big mess.

 I carefully emptied the slide trays from my childhood and kept the lists to go with each one. I packed everything in tubs and brought it home.

 

  

Several months ago I bought some packages of slide sleeves, knowing this was a project that I'd eventually have to tackle. I didn't know if I'd like them but I DID know that sleeves would surely be better than broken rubber bands! At least sets of slides could be kept together and safely preserved.

 

So here's the process I used to get this mess of slides under control: 

1) Physically organize the loose slides into archival sleeves, sorting by date/subject

2) Digitally organize and label the slides that have already been scanned

3) Decide which additional slides to have digitized and drop them off at a local shop

4) Print and add selective images to my scrapbooks

 

Physical slide organization:

The first step was to group sets of slides together so I could figure out what they were. Although slides are obviously cumbersome to work with (you can't see them without a light source), there are two things that make them a bit easier than photos: 

1) Unless they're in a plastic housing, most slides are numbered with an imprinted or stamped number
2) Most slides have a date on the cardboard -- this is the "developed on" date, NOT the "taken on" date but it's a whole lot better than no date at all!

I slogged my way through mixed up tubs and tiny boxes of slides, putting them back in their proper sets by date and then into numerical order. I grouped them temporarily with rubber bands just to keep them corralled. Trust me, don't use rubber bands for the long haul. They'll break and your slides will get all jumbled together. Slide sleeves are the way to go.

 As I worked on this project, I felt the joy of newfound "ORDER" washing over me!
 

Once a sleeve was filled, I could hold it up to a light source (I used a blank MS Word document on my desktop computer) to see 20 slides at once. This makes it easy to pull out any duds and see if they're slides I want to have scanned.

 

To look at the slides more closely, I am using a small handheld slide viewer. My parents had a larger one (WHY, OH WHY DIDN'T I KEEP IT?) but this one is getting the job done. We do have a slide projector but unfortunately the bulb was broken and will need to be replaced.

 

 Digital slide organization:

When I first brought all of our family slides home a few years ago, I took many batches in to be digitized.

When you have slides digitized, they'll come back to you in a jpeg format. My developer used a numbering system for each set of slides but I'd never spent time on labeling the files. This was my next task.

  I used a consistent format as much as possible, naming the folder with the date and subject (1975 California Trip), then each jpeg file with the labels I found on my slide list (1975 California Trip - Disneyland). I'm not ready to scrapbook those years yet but it's great to know that those images are digitized, findable, and ready to go.

 

  As it happens, I have a couple of my diaries from my childhood years (truly hilarious reading) and some entries correspond to family vacations. I have to give a shout-out to my nerdy childhood self for writing down everything we did and saw on some of those trips, because now I can identify the California "Trees of Mystery" and other points of interest along the way. It has been fun to read my diary and look at the slides! I'll be sure to include those diary entries when I eventually scrapbook those trips.😎

 

  Decide which slides to digitze:

Will I digitize each and every slide? NO! It's not cheap to have them digitized so I will be selective.

Will I print and scrapbook each and every slide? NO! To save space in my albums and save time, I'll probably make a lot of photo collages using the slides, adding digital labels to the photos as I go. It's quick and easy to print off an 8.5x11 collage and slip it into a sleeve for the scrapbook. Collages work great for making the best of "less than wonderful quality" images, too.

With all the slides in sleeves in a binder, temporarily labeled with sticky notes, I'll be able to go through them and decide which ones to have digitized. Since they're already in sleeves, I'll just take them to the scanning shop intact. This will ensure that they're scanned in the right order and placed in labeled folders. 

 

 

So circling back to what started all of this, one might ask: Did I find the school-related slides I knew must be hiding in those boxes? 

Yep, I did! First day of school pictures for several years, band, prom, homecoming, and much more. As soon as I get them digitized, I'll be able to print them and slip them into my school albums.

But all in all, there weren't a ton of school photos in our family's slides. What I did find was a host of precious images of camping trips, fishing adventures, vacations, birthday parties, pets, and so much more. In spending so much time with these images, I'm left with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude.

 

So yes, it's absolutely worth the time to tackle this daunting project. In retrospect, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Now I feel SO MUCH BETTER about my slide situation!

And if my parents could see me STILL organizing slides, I know they'd be smiling! I haven't changed a bit. 😀

 

Feline Friday: Strike a Pose!

 Lily has recently returned to reclining on the back of our loveseat. For some reason, this location had fallen out of favor as a napping spot. Now this week, after many months, it's back in style.

As soon as I went over to take her picture, she struck a pose!

 Those feets!!!

  She has also taken to pressing her back feet against various walls whilst napping, as displayed below:

 

 

 As soon as she knows I see her, she strikes an extra cute pose!

Lily definitely knows how to work her angles!

Feline Friday: Butter Cam!

 Butter Cam ACTIVATED!

 Lily can detect butter, especially butter being slathered on warm toast, from most anywhere in the house. She knows her meowmy will always give her a tiny taste.

But her cat dad? Never.

Here she has her sights fixed on that warm, melty buttered toast. She gazes longingly but knows better than to get any closer than her meowmy's lap.

No worries, Lily. Meowmy won't let you go without!

Feline Friday: Temperature Control!

 Like all kitties, Lily is an expert napper. I've noticed over time that her napping patterns follow the sunlight streaming in the windows. She'll almost always seek out a nice patch of warm sun for her morning naps.

She'll usually start out completely in the sun but shift her position once she starts to get too hot. Here, the bottom half is still in the sun whilst the top half has moved to the shade.😀

After a certain amount of time doing "half and half", Lily is clearly WAY TOO HOT and moves under the shade of this bench where she can cool off for the remainder of her nap.

Just like humans will stick one foot out of the covers at night, Lily has clearly mastered the fine art of Temperature Control!