Feline Friday

 Thank you so much for following my blog through the years. We wish you all the best in the New Year!

Janet & Lily 

Feline Friday

Ever feel like you've had too many holiday treats? 

And it's not even the holiday yet? 😍

 Here's to re-establishing our healthy eating habits...

one of these days!
 

Happy Feline Friday!

Feline Friday

While we were in Texas, Lily's cat sitter made a very fitting observation:

"Lily could be the poster cat for the Kitty Clean Plate Club! She LOVES her food!"

No truer words were ever spoken! 😄

Congratulations (I think?), Lily!

Feline Friday: Rory in Purr-son!

Hello, friends!
 

We've recently returned from a fun trip to Texas during which time we visited our daughter, her longtime boyfriend, and sweet (not-so-little-now) Rory!

 

Rory feels a tad bit heavier than Lily who weighs in at around 11 1/2 pounds. Still, the vet puts them at about the same weight. I think the difference is FLAB. Lily's got a lot of it whereas Rory is all muscle! When you pick her up, she feels SOLID. 

We spent Thanksgiving visiting at our daughter's boyfriend's new house. Rory came to visit for the first time and suffice it to say she loved all the additional space to explore! Remember, Rory is a jumper and climber so it must have felt like heaven to her!

It didn't take long and she was completely adjusted. In fact, we were sitting in the living room and looked up to see a little head popping up onto the half wall along the upstairs landing -- very high above!

 Daughter ran up the stairs to be sure Rory wasn't going to take a dive to the hardwood below. Of course we didn't need to worry. Rory is an expert jumper and soon she was hopping up there with frightening regularity.

 I was on the landing a couple of times to see her do it. I tell you, I broke out in a cold sweat watching her the first time I saw it happen. But it was clear that she'd figured out the "safe" way to jump onto the ledge. Instead of facing it head-on, she jumped up there from an angle so that her body was sort of parallel to the ledge.

Daughter has concluded that Rory jumped on the ledge seeking attention in a sort of "look what I can do!" move. And she did get our attention every single time!

 Here is an aerial view so you can get a feel for how high up this ledge actually is. I kid you not, it made me weak to see her jumping up there!

 The only calamity occurred when Rory decided she'd walk down the very steep banister which is the same width as the ledge. She quickly started slipping and fell onto the carpeted stairs. 

Otherwise she was quite happy to perch on the ledge and survey her surroundings.

Although I may have lost a couple of my nine lives watching Rory jump, all of us had a great Thanksgiving. We hope you did, too!

jp

 

Feline Friday with Rory

 Could Cousin Rory be any cuter? We think not! Look at those tipped-forward ears!

 Can't wait to see her again! 😻

Happy Feline Friday, friends!
jp

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you much love and laughter --
or at least an open lid on the food dispenser! 😸

Janet and Lily

Some Succulent Success

Succulents are SUPPOSED to be easy to grow. But for whatever reason, I've struggled with mine. They shrivel up or get all squishy. Or the leaves fall off. Once someone told me to set them outside in the sun and THIS HAPPENED.

I am truly sorry for all of the succulents who have met their demise under my well-meaning but obviously somewhat incompetent care!

But now I think there's reason to have hope: I've found Laura at Garden Answer.

If you're looking for a wonderful, knowledgeable resource for all things green and growing, Laura is it. Visit her extensive YouTube channel for playlists about landscape gardening, containers, succulents, fairy gardens, and much more. Laura is incredibly talented and I've learned so much watching her!

 Laura's succulent containers are spectacular...way beyond my pitiful attempts, but I've definitely picked up some tips. First, I need to pack my succulent dish much fuller. So I recently replanted it and with the tighter arrangement, everything seems to be doing better. The plants are holding each other up and filling in the space pretty nicely. In fact, I have room for a couple more small ones in this dish.

I also learned to water them with a turkey baster. It lets me squirt water right around the base of each plant, allowing me to be much more precise than just watering under the faucet or with a pitcher. 

I've kept a closer eye on the intervals between watering and have extended it out from two to three weeks. The leaves on some were feeling squishy and that can mean too much water. I think three weeks between watering is good for now but we'll see how things go through the winter.

I'm really hopeful, for the sake of these sweet little succulents, that I'm doing the right things to keep them alive this time. FINGERS CROSSED!

jp

Feline Friday

Well, unfortunately, this week brought a trip back to the vet for Miss Lily. I had observed her scooting right after using the litter box over the course of a couple of days and since it had occurred multiple times, I knew something was not quite right in the "back end". 

I REALLY didn't want to take her to the vet out of concern that the stress of going could cause her to develop cystitis again. But the persisent scooting warranted attention, so off we went.  

Our vet worked us into his busy schedule, so I had to leave her there for a couple of hours. He actually thought that might be a GOOD thing, since they would not be rushing her as much. So they let Lily hang out in the kennel area for awhile before sedating her and by all accounts, she wasn't as frantic and stressed as at her last visit. When I picked her up, she was fully awake and doing fine in her carrier. Last time, she was slow to wake up and growling the entire time.

Sure enough, one of those pesky anal glands was clogged AGAIN after barely one month's time. In addition, the urinalysis showed the very beginning of a UTI, so she was given an antibiotic shot for that uncomfortable problem. 

 She was a little cranky and wound up when we got home, but eventually she fell asleep for most of the evening.

The next day, she was much perkier and no longer scooting. YIPPEE!

SIGH. As much as I wanted the daily pumpkin to fix her clogged anal glands, it seems that pumpkin is not the cure-all I'd hoped it would be. Still, it appears to be helping at least SOME, so we'll continue on with it. The added fiber also bulks up her food and (I think) helps her feel fuller longer, so hopefully it will be good for her weight loss program, too.

I guess this is our "new normal", so we'll do the best we can with it. I'm just glad sweet Lily is back to her normal self!
Happy Feline Friday!
jp

Too Many Sheets!

After last weekend's organization project, I tackled our skinny linen closet. It was absolutely PACKED FULL -- I mean things were actually SHOVED IN THERE, I'm ashamed to say. I have no idea how it got this out of control but it was clearly way past time to deal with it. I consider myself an organized person but this closet was so bad that I have just completely ignored it.

Now seemed like a good time to tackle the linen closet because the new mattress we just ordered is a different size than the one we have now. It makes no sense to keep sheets for mattress sizes we no longer own and probably won't have in the future. 

Well, it turns out the entire closet was full of sheets that no longer fit. For instance...

There were sheets for my daughter's old twin bed which has long ago been replaced with a deeper, more comfy twin bed. So the old sheets no longer fit it.

There were sheets for our old queen-sized mattress which has also been replaced with a pillow-top bed. Because it's much deeper than our old mattress, none of the old sheets fit our newer one.

The new mattress we just ordered is a full size and replaces a very, very old extra long twin bed. As a result, all of the extra long sheets are no longer needed in this house.

By the time I sorted out all the sets we no longer need, I realized we actually have no extra sheets for our daughter's bed or our own bed. That's OK because we just wash them and put them right back on. Right now, we have no sheets at all for the new bed which arrives next week.

BUT we do have plenty of gently used sheets that will hopefully go to families who can use them! I was excited to make a delivery of two full laundry baskets to our local hospice thrift store. I hope that all of these sheets will soon be on their way to new homes!

 In addition to the sheets, one entire shelf was taken up with light bulbs of every possible shape and wattage. After sorting out those we no longer need, I took an entire box to our local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store.

The end result is not glamorous, but now there is a bit of extra space in the closet -- and the door actually closes! Why did I wait so long to tackle this project?

 

On to the next one: Cleaning out all the drawers in each of the bedrooms. YIKES!

Catching Up on Scrapbooking: It's Finally 2012!

 It's been a very long time since I've worked on my chronological scrapbooking. The holiday season is always the busiest time of the year at the store where I teach, and I have been up to my ears in creating classes and making kits. But since all that is done now, I have some time to do a little catching up. YAY!

When I left off on my family scrapbooking, I had just a bit to do to finish up 2011. True confessions: I printed WAY too many pictures for that year. Consequently, I ended up with more pages than I'd anticipated for the year as a whole. Going forward, I will NOT print all of the pictures I took!

So I made a concerted effort to finish out 2011 with just a few traditional pages and lots of pocket pages with journaling or captions. It felt good to finish that year up!

Note: The typo in the above text box has since been corrected! Thanks to Bailey, the world's best proof-reader! :)

 I also printed a fair number of collages for photos I wanted to include but didn't want to take up loads of room in my album. To speed things up, I just added text digitally over the top of the photos. Done!

Say goodbye to 2011!

 On to the next year! When I opened my photo box for 2012, I could see that only a handful of photos had been printed. This is actually a VERY GOOD THING, because now I can be much more discriminating when it comes to printing. I do believe this is the first year I've encountered with almost no photos printed.

 I started by making a tabbed divider for each month of the year. I have a whole stack of these dividers that I use once, then flip over and use the back side. Getting my money's worth from these tabs!

Next I grabbed my 2012 calendar -- SO helpful when it comes to catching up on scrapbooking! I can see at a glance what the major events were for each month. There's no way I can remember everything that far back!

Finally, I opened up Picasa, the place where I have my photos organized on my desktop computer. Picasa is an old Google app which is no longer supported. I'd like to be able to recommend it but since it was replaced by Google Photos, Google no longer provides any updates or support. At some point it will probably quit working but for now, it's doing just fine.

I have my photos organized in Picasa by year-month-subject. A quick glance at 2012 indicated that they look to be in pretty good order. Now to figure out which photos to print!

Starting with January, I looked at my calendar and compared it to the digital photo folders. I found just two events that needed to be scrapbooked, so I wrote them on my tabbed card. When I finish going through the whole year, I'll choose a few photos for each of those events, upload them for printing (probably to Walgreens since it's close by), and I'll have them back in just a few hours.

At the same time, I'm creating collages in Picasa for some events I want to put in the scrapbook but don't want to spend a lot of time (or space) on. I will add text to the collages and print them at home.

My hope is that by the time the weekend is done, I'll have all the photos printed that need to go in the scrapbook and will be on my way to finishing another year. 

Will I ever catch up to the present day? I think that's a real possibility...finally!
jp

Feline Friday

Lily normally eats a half can of prescription food each day (along with her dry food), but I occasionally give her a half can of pate food instead. She loves all food, but she's absolutely CRAZED for any fish-flavored (or chicken-flavored or just about anything-flavored) pate food.

Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake this week: After feeding Lily just one spoonful of her special salmon-flavored breakfast, I briefly left the room. The newly-opened can was unsecured on the counter. I know better than to leave Lily alone in the room with an open can of pate food.

When I returned, Lily was nose-deep into salmon pate, licking it out as fast as she could without taking a breath, I'm quite sure. After snagging a quick picture (I know, I know...), I gently removed her from the scene of the crime.

 In the few minutes I'd been gone, Lily managed to eat her entire day's worth (and then some) of canned food for breakfast.

And of course, she still wanted more. This salmon-flavored pate must be quite delicious. I think I'll just take her word for it!

 

Too Soon!

We got some snow this week and while it was pretty at first, we were not ready for it this early in the season. In fact, I think this was actually the third measurable snowfall we've had. Four inches of snow would be expected in December, but NOT early November!

Unfortunately, we've remained in the deep freeze so the snow is STILL on the ground. Hopefully we'll soon get back to more seasonable temperatures...otherwise I'll be ready to put up the tree and call it Christmas!

Organizing: The Domino Effect

We recently ordered a new mattress for our guest room. Long story short: To better accommodate the new mattress size, I got the idea that we should swap the furniture in our guest room for that which was in our daughter's old bedroom.

So we spent one long day this weekend doing that. The bookcases had to be unloaded to move them so of course that started me thinking: Would it be feasible to move all of the genealogy stuff currently housed on those bookcases into my craft room? That's where I use it, and it would be great to have everything housed in one spot -- especially in case of an emergency.

One thing led to another -- the domino effect! -- and we ended up at Home Depot. Instead of the shorter wire rack I thought I needed, Spouse convinced me to get a taller one which is about the same height as this one that currently holds my 12x12 scrapbooks.

Turns out I had PLENTY of family history/genealogy stuff to completely fill the new shelves! I moved all of the genealogy stuff from the guest room bookcases and onto my new shelves.  In addition, I moved all of the boxes of loose photos and slides which had been on the floor of the guest room to the new shelves as well. That made a huge difference!

After we got the bedrooms put back together, I spent some time organizing the new shelving unit. Now all of my grandma's genealogy binders are in one spot, along with old family photos and completed family history albums. I can see at a glance what still needs to be done. Answer: A lot!

Since this shelving unit sits in my craft space, I wanted everything to be somewhat coordinated with my room. Having things organized this way feels more settled/less chaotic to me. So I moved the photos and memorabilia to containers I had on hand that better match the colors of my craft space. I didn't have to buy any new containers -- I just re-purposed those I had been using elsewhere in the house.

I'm really happy to have all of this family history/genealogy stuff in one place rather than in a mess on the floor and shelves of the guest room. Now I don't have to move all of it when we have a guest, and it will be so much handier to have stored it right where I use it. Everything is freshly labeled so it's easily accessible. 

With all of that done, it makes me feel ready to tackle another spot. Next up: The Linen Closet of Doom!

Feline Friday: It's a No Go

As I shared last week, Lily is doing well following her recent trip to the ER. The emergency vet suggested we do another urinalysis after her 2-week stint of antibiotics and this was the week for me to make that happen.

In talking with our regular vet, we agreed that Lily should not come back to see him unless it was truly necessary -- because we're trying to keep her in the stress-free zone to prevent a re-occurrence of the cystitis. He suggested trying non-absorbent cat litter to collect a urine sample, or even seeing if she would go potty in an empty litter box.

I dutifully ordered No-Sorb, which comes with six small collection cups. I emptied three into the litter box, which didn't amount to much but I figured would be sufficient to get the job done. 😉

 

Turns out Lily will NOT -- under any circumstances -- step on the black plastic pellets! I placed her in the box so she'd get the idea, and the little pellets clung to her feet which created a whole new kind of stress. I could see from the get go that this was going to be a NO GO.

Undaunted, I stayed home one afternoon and limited her litterbox access to this one. After a few hours I heard her howling in the living room -- an ominous sign. I immediately replaced the litterbox with her regular one and -- sure enough -- she went potty in it immediately.

So the vet agrees that we're just going to skip the urinalysis for now. She is doing fine and obviously will not cooperate with my "sample collection" program. I'll keep a close eye on her, as usual, and if anything changes we'll address it right away.

Back to our normal programming! Lily says WHEW!

Happy Feline Friday, y'all!

jp and Lily

Feline Friday: Stress-Free Zone

Lily has fully recovered from her recent bout of feline urinary cystitis which landed us back at the veterinary ER. This condition was brought on by the stress of her PREVIOUS visit to the vet.

So now I'm trying to make sure that Lily is living a stress-free life. (Can't say the same for myself, though...)

I'm pretty sure we're having some success with making this a Stress-Free Zone, at least for Lily. 

Here's the proof:

Just hanging on the back of the couch in Modified Monorail Position, waiting for the 3pm Food Drop from her automatic feeder...

 Waiting for her dinner to be served... Not really, but it doesn't hurt to have goals, right? :)

  Watching a little Bob Ross painting with Meowmy...

And just relaxing while waiting for a brief belly rub.

Yes, I think it's clear that Lily is living in the Stress-Free Zone. Let's hope all this chilling out keeps her away from the vet!

Happy Feline Friday!
jp and Lily

Feline Friday: It's Stress-Related

Well, last week I reported that on Wednesday, Lily had had an excellent trip to the vet.

Unfortunately, by 12:30pm on the following Saturday, just a few days later, we found ourselves at the ER. No worries, Lily is fine now but we both had a stressful day!

Exactly five minutes after our vet closed on Saturday, I found Lily trying to urinate in various places around the house. That's a sure sign of trouble so I immediately scooped her up with the litter box and shut her in the bathroom whilst I went to retrieve the carrier. Regardless of what else I had planned for the day, it was clear that we were headed to the ER.

When I returned a few minutes later with the carrier, I found Lily in the bathtub where she had produced three dime-sized spots of urine which were clearly tinged with blood. I guess in retrospect it was helpful for her to go potty there because I could immediately see the blood. Lily willingly went into the carrier (poor baby) and we left immediately for the veterinary ER.

Since Lily's anal glands had just been expressed a few days prior, my working theory was that perhaps some bacteria from that procedure had caused a urinary tract infection. As it turned out, there was no sign of infection except a trace presence of one type of bacteria. 

The diagnosis: feline urinary tract cystitis. 
Caused by what? Stress.

By all accounts, Lily lives an exceptionally comfortable life so what could have brought on the stress? You guessed it: Wednesday's anal gland appointment. We could tell that she was pretty upset at the time as she growled continuously as she came out of the sedation, but who would have guessed that she'd develop cystitis as a result? Certainly not me. This was a new one. 😟

There's no real treatment for this condition other than pain medication and time. But since Lily's urinary tract had trace amounts of an unusual bacteria, the vet elected to give her a 2-week acting antibiotic shot as a precaution. We left with instructions to give her pain medication every eight hours as needed and follow-up with our regular vet in two weeks.

Lily also left sporting a lovely blue bandage on her leg from where the technicians drew blood. I was told to remove the bandage as soon as we arrived home which seemed like it would be no big deal, but Lily was having none of it. She became an incredibly nasty, snarling ball of teeth and claws every time I approached her to take it off -- which in turn caused her (and me) a great deal more stress.  After a call to the ER, they suggested I take her back so they could remove it. It took multiple technicians to handle her. Poor sweet girl.

Needless to say, the second trip did nothing to help our mutual stress levels! So the rest of the afternoon, Lily slept and recuperated while I fretted.

Lily recovered very quickly from her ordeal and later that day was back to going potty in the litter box. Her appetite never decreased (of course!) and her activity level has improved significantly.

 Because I now know that she's susceptible to stress-related cystitis, I am vowing not to take her back to the vet unless it's absolutely necessary. I've ordered non-absorbent litter so that I can collect a urine sample in two weeks without having to take her to the vet for that uncomfortable procedure.

Hopefully last Saturday is a distant memory for Lily. She's back to living her stress-free life.

I'm not so sure about me, though! 😩

Happy Feline Friday!

jp and Lily