Butterball

Marble the bowling-ball-belly is on a diet. She just had a checkup and has gained another pound, almost two, and finally the vet has said "enough".We can't feed both cats the same food any more, the stuff that's great for the boy is making the girl tubby and a little unhealthy. So now when we feed them we have to stay nearby to supervise, keep them each to their own bowl, and remove any leftovers after 15min or so. Last night Tali was so excited to see a new different-smelling type of food arrive, then he was completely bemused when I kept my hand between him and the dish with the new interesting stuff, and kept redirecting him back to his boring old variety. He didn't give me any dirty looks, which was surprising, just sat and stared dejectedly at his dish, and finally ate some once I held the bowl up for him. Spoiled boy.

This morning I think he'd got the message, he made only a few attempts to get into Marble's bowl before eating his own, he was probably hungry too, which will always help with eating what's in front of you. It's a great shame that we can't find a single food that keeps them both healthy and vital, hopefully Marble will feel better pretty soon and that will make up for the hassle. She's very fun to cuddle with her squishyness, but she has to prop her shoulder against a wall to clean her side!

Please note that this photographs is from February, she's at least 10% bigger now. Also note that my index finger has completely vanished in her chest ruffle, the blue ring is on my middle finger, no pointer in sight, her fluff ate it.

You will awake...

Hypnocat
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

...Feeling perfectly refreshed, and remember nothing of this conversation.

Cat Toy

Dec06 025
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

I got a skirt for our tree to hide the ugly wire base. I'm very happy with the skirt I found: it looks a little retro, like it could conceivably be a decoration one of us has had since childhood. Having all new Christmas decorations still feels strange to me, even with our tradition of giving each other an ornament each year, to create traditions and memories, we've only had 4 Christmases together, that doesn't quite compete with "I can't remember a Christmas whithout this candle holder/tin goose/clothespin angel".

Anyway. The skirt is about 70% wool, which gives it a nice felty appearance, and makes it very attractive for cats to sit on. Right now Tali is curled up taking a nap under the tree. At least he has calmed down and started treating it like a napping spot, instead of as a giant cat toy. As soon as I put the skirt down both beasties were exceedingly interested, they insinuated themselves under the tree and sniffed and patted at the snowflake designs, you can see here what happened when Tali found the buttons around the back, he managed to unbutton one of them with his teeth before I told him off and sent him to the corner to chew on some ribbons and think about what a naughty cat he is. Well, the ribbon chewing is what happened when I banished him from undertreeland. He made a beeline for the bag of gifts waiting to go to my car.

He's getting really good at responding to a stern "Tali...What are you doing?" by sitting up straight in the middle of the room looking super prim and innocent. I think he practices his "who...me?" face in the mirror while we're out.

Tomorrow I'm heading North to the not-so-frozen wastelands of Los Angeles, picking my sister up at the airport on the way to spend Christmas with my parents at granny's house. Matt is following on by train on Friday evening. Hopefully the tree will survive being alone with two bored cats until we return 4 days later. I'm looking forward to presenting Mum, Dad and Eve with their scarves.

Fluffy Medicine

Marble has just made my day by climbing into a newly cleared out cubby on the desk, and chasing her tail. Now she's done with the tail, she is thunking her head noisily against the roof of her formica cave, biffing at a pencil case, and purring at me.

I may have a cold that is developing into a sinus/chest infection, and am still waiting for my cold medicine to help de-clog my head, but I can't be unhappy, because I have a little furry nutcase to love and entertain me.

I tried to get a photo, but she left the desk to follow me when I went to find the camera.

work in progress

work in progress
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

Marble is relishing a rare opportunity to check out the work in progress. When I was winding the wool for this scarf into balls, she got hold of one and ate a fair bit of wool before I caught her. So now I know I can't leave it unattended in between working on it. Real wool seems to have a magnetic attraction for cats. They're not nearly so interested in the synthetic or cotton yarn I've used previously.

This is hand dyed and spun wool that I treated myself to before I even knew what I'd make with it, there's a lot of variegation in the colour that is not showing up in the photo, little streaks of violet and cobalt blue. It's a little strange knitting myself a scarf in the hottest months of summer, but I look forward to chillier weather when I can start to wear it.

Foiled

All afternoon I have been stewing over what might have been a decent post about depression: managing it, reducing it, breaking old bad habits without dropping the ball of day to day life...



Then I sat down to post, and Marble the wondercat leapt into my lap like a bellyflopping kitten-bomb of love and started grooming my arm while purring. She has now settled down to a nap, still purring, with her chin resting on the desk.

I can't channel my angst effectively in this position, so you will have to take my word for it. I was going to be deep and meaningful and full of fabulous metaphor.

But I got distracted by something fluffy.

Stuffed Cat In Front Of Tree

Christmas 018
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

We took our tree down last week. Since we allowed ourselves to be corrupted into buying a PLASTIC tree there was no natural demise involving frequent showers of dry pine needles to indicate the tree had overstayed it's welcome. Instead we had the realization that Christmas was over two weeks gone.

Taking down a plastic tree is a bit strange: squishing the wired twigs back against the metal branches, turning the segment of tree upside-down to make the branches fold back agains the metal (but wrapped in green spikey plastic) trunk, then shoving the whole lot into a big cardboard box for next year. Sure it's handy, but there's definitely a lack of romance in the set-up and striking phases.

The cats managed not to destroy or knock over the tree. There's some suspiciously chewed-looking lower branches since they seemed to think the whole thing was a giant flossing device with sparkly stuff to biff at.

At some point Tali tried to climb INTO the tree from the arm of the chair. That didn't go so well. He ended up splatted on the floor tangled up in both tree lights and the cord for the venetian blind. It took him a little while to regain his composure after that stunt.

Personal Greeter

We had the first meeting of the Homeowner's Association last night. It was really just an info session, the management company's representative explained how many "officers" we needed to elect, and handed out nomination forms. There will be another meeting next month to elect the officers and start tweaking the regulations that are already in place.

Matt and I have been worried about the "one house pet" rule since we found it in the HOA binder, now we're not worried. The rules we were given are just a starting point. The first task of the newly established HOA is to set rules about pets and common space, what people are and are not allowed to have on their little patios, blah blah. We've hung out with some of our neighbors already, and none of them have a problem with us having two pets, a lot of them say they wave to whichever cat is in the window as they go past. One woman said that one of our cats leaps up in the window to watch her walk past every single time she comes home, and that she felt as though the kitty's acting as her personal welcome-home committee. I like that idea, that Marble (we're pretty sure it's Marble) is making someone else in our complex feel more at home. The cats certainly make us feel more homey, I'm glad they're spreading the love out our windows too.

I know it was only this Monday that I last posted, but I feel as though Monday was a lot more than four days ago.

For one thing, I had surgery on Tuesday to remove the margins from around where my mole had been. They took out a narrow oval slice of skin about 1-1/2 inches long and 1/2 an inch wide, all the way down to the subcutaneous fat. It was worse than when I had something similar done to my scalp, probably because it was so close under my eye and I got a lovely black eye with lots of swelling. Both of which are mostly gone now, the black eye has developed through to a nice rich yellow colour, but my glasses hide the discoloured part pretty well.

Wednesday was a fairly busy day at work, not horribly so, but by about 4pm I was beat. My face hurt just from talking, because of the swelling on my cheek and the dressing over the wound pulling on the surrounding skin every time I moved my cheek. I caved and asked Dianne to give me a ride to my car, because I didn't fancy trudging up the hill and then going grocery shopping. When I got home I made banana bread and hung out with the kitties. My giant comfy chair is a great cat snuggling chair, they'll both jump up and sit with me there while I watch tv. Of course, the fact I was stirring a bowl full of butter and brown sugar was probably pretty attractive to them too, Marble tried to ooze towards the bowl a couple of times, but I eventually convinced her she was better off just sitting next to me with her chin on my arm, watching the butter get beaten with a wooden spoon.

By yesterday morning the swelling had decreased greatly, and I made it through the day without getting cramp in my cheek or wanting to curl up and eat a bottle of tylenol.

Work has been pretty hectic, we're doing a lot of new things and we just had our cell culture hood decontaminated and serviced which meant on top of the four of us working in here, we had two technicians working on the hood, which is in the narrowest througfare of the room. A tad stressful, but it's good to know the hood is good as new.

For some reason the insertion of the new filter has led to the lab smelling of grilled-cheese sandwiches. The ones made in the specialized waffle-iron like appliance that adds the smell of hot metal to the greasy cheese aroma. It's not just me, Dianne said it smelled like her granny's house, and her granny apparantly fried everything.

I haven't babbled about the kitties much recently, they're still ridiculously cute, and getting more friendly too. Marble now seeks out lap time, complete with purring and kneeding of the paws, though she only gets snuggly in the bedroom or study, in the living room she sits off to one side and stares at us. This morning she was under the covers down by my feet, and I was petting her with my toes, mostly on her tummy. Every other cat I've owned would have responded to this by fighting with my feet, both because of tummy contact and the whole feisty under-the blankets thing. Marble stretched and started to purr, then used my ankle as a pillow. She also does this adorable flirty thing where she'll reach her tufty little paws up onto the arm of the futon or comfy chair while looking at you, and then squeak a little comedy meow for emphasis.

Talli has developed an addiction to greek yoghurt, so have Matt and I, but we don't end up with a face covered in yoghurt after cleaning out a bowl. We should probably train him to use a spoon, but it's far too amusing to see him with yoghurt all over his eyebrows. He's also an utter love bug, just like his sister. He's not the only cat I've known who likes to be carried about so that he can get a good view of the world without exerting himself, but he is the only cat I've known who actively likes to be hugged. If he's sitting in my lap he won't settle down until he has an arm draped accross him. He'll keep trampling in a circle and leaning up against my stomach until I give him a hug and leave my arm wrapped around him. He's got me well trained. He's also trained Matt to pick him up and carry him about the apartment tucked under one arm.

Yes I did say he's trained Matt. Cats are good at that sort of thing.

I'm looking forward to see what zooming pattern they adopt in our condo, they won't have such a long hallway to bound along, but they will have full carpet for better traction. They were getting pretty good at leaping from rug to rug to avoid the hardwood floor scrabbling, or launching themselves off the sides of walls and furniture when there wasn't a rug nearby.

Now I must stop extolling the virtues of the fabulous furballs and go learn a new fluorescent staining protocol.

So much to mention, very few things of vast importance, but then that's how my life has been going recently. There's very little big huge news, low drama levels, so I feel that anything I think of to write about here is terribly trivial and not essential to be mentioned...and end up writing nothing. While I still go to read the trivial details of other people on their blogs, so clearly trivia is what makes things interesting, details and minutiae. Hell, I even wrote a poem once about how life (and love) are made up of the seemingly trivial details.

Perhaps what I need to do is to pick my favorite detail and write about that, rather than listing off everything and watching it flatten like toothpaste as it's translated into text.

Marble has developed a false idol. Instead of dutifully worshipping us two humans as the givers of catnip toys, crunchy nutritionally balanced food, the occasional treat of a scrap of cheese, and a warm place to sleep, she spends her days gazing lovingly at one arm of the futon sofa. The arm that contains her One True Love: the feather wand. If I sit at that end of the sofa she will start pacing back and forth, stretching up to paw at the hinges, sitting up on her haunches like a meerkat so she can stare at me and make a little squeak that I can only assume is supposed to be a meow. I can be there for an hour or more, watching a movie, and every time I look at her she's still wide-eyed with anticipation and lets out a little peep to tell me to get a move on and give her some fun. She must have a built in sensor that can tell if the arm has been opened while she's of of sight, because if I open it to retrieve a remote control, or a lighter, Marble materializes right next to me, pulling herself up onto the seat of the sofa, ready to chomp on some feather and plastic. She's a crack addict with fuzzy paws and a round belly.

Which brings me conveniently to her newly acquired pot belly. That cat has gotten decidedly rotund since we adopted her. I'd worry, but she can still leap 3 feet in the air, flipping over sideways as she flies in pursuit of the elusive feather wand. When she's stretched out full length her tummy is clearly globular, accented by dainty little paws. When Talli stretches out he's just all leg and spine and a whole lot of hair. He is legs-and-fur, she is belly-and-fur. She can still out-leap him though, bouncing from floor to couch to chair and back again like a miniature hornless mountain goat, even without a feather to chase.

This time I shall attempt to post more than a sparse paragraph about the sleep deprivation torture the cats are trying to inflict upon us. Which is still periodically in effect, Talli brought me his toy carrot at some point last night, and then meowed from the bedroom windowsill to announce the arrival of dawn. It was a pretty spectacular view, so I don't blame him for wanting to share, a very bright scarlet morning sky to my sleepy eyes. I'm almost sorry our patio doesn't have an Eastern view too, every once in a while it's nice to watch the dawn.

*warning* Christmas Shopping Linkfest Approaching.

I spent $100 on my face last month. In true Californian me-me-me fashion I started my Christmas shopping by buying something for myself from Clinique [>]. It seems rather silly since I rarely wear makeup, but I got a different foundation, a fancy oil-control cream that is working wonders (no more daily oil slick on my forehead), and two gift sets: one containing a collection of eyeshadows, the other a set of makeup brushes with a travel case. I always love the little compact makeup palettes you can get, but I only really use eyeshadow, not blush or lip stuff, so they're not something I can justify getting, this one is practically custom-made for me, shades of brown: cream through golden brown ending in a coffee-ish almost black. And brushes! Soft brushes! In a bright red patent leather vanity case just big enough to hold a basic essentials kit of makeup. Hooray. It's shiny, and it makes me happy.

After breaking the seal on the Christmas spending thing, I proceeded to check off a few singificant people from the list on the day before Thanksgiving. Online shopping is a wonderful thing, I found onyx pillar holders for Mum at Illuminations [>] for 30% off the store price, and free shipping (yay for free shipping). A custom-made boutonniere that looks like a little sprig of flowers from Tradewind Tiaras [>] for Granny, and pewter candle cups (again from Illuminations) for Evie. Yesterday Matt and I went up to the Witch Creek Winery [>] in Julian and stocked up on port, and some wine. Dad's getting port again for Christmas, since it was a big hit last year. I hope nobody points out the slight illogic of presenting my Mother with chunky onyx Christmas presents when she's got to lug them home again, I did skip the decorative onyx fruit-bowl because of potential impracticality of transport.

The cats are still...cats. Marble is getting more noodlesome, spending most of the time scampering about the apartment looking like she just got a static shock on her rear. She seems a little less affectionate these days, more concerned with being off on her own little feline missions. But that could be due to her figuring out that the feather wand lives in the arm of the futon, she spends all her non-scampering time trying to figure out how to open the lid and get to her favourite toy. Well, when she's not sleeping curled up with her brother in the large cat bed I bought them, they've still got that bookend image to maintain after all. Gah! They're so cute and fuzzy, so silly and crafty at the same time, and so FUZZY...I can't keep from waffling about them. Be warned: I bet it's going to be even worse when I get around to having children.

Day five of cat-ownership. They've learned they don't need to wake me up to ask permission to jump onto the bed, so we all four sleep peacefully together. Maybe we need to upgrade to a king-sized, just so there's room for me, Matt and two cats.

We've figured out that Talli just pretends to be standoffish, all you need to do is pick him up and put him in someone's lap and he turns into an interactive teddy bear, complete with purr and the happy trample dance. We've also figured out that Marble is the bubble-head of the pair: she lives entirely in the moment, easily distracted by shiny things and her own tail. They both love milk (my morning cereal was eaten in a besieged state this morning), and butter, and one of them even decided they wanted to sample the Parmesan garlic bread I'd foolishly failed to put away immediately.

Other items of note are: Talli's developed a sniffle, he's been sneezing comic little squeak sneezes; Marble gave us a little present of a hairpellet the size of my little finger, and she may have *ahem* worms. So they're going to the vet tomorrow, I'm glad I've already signed up for a healthcare plan for them that covers vet visits, so I know exactly where to take them and don't have to pay just to be told what's wrong with them.

Parenting...It's a blast. I love having them around, the sniffles and hairballs are just minor hiccups. Pardon the pun.

Speaking of parenting, my parents will be in LA on Wednesday, then down here for the night on Friday. Before then I have to try to make more inroads into organizing our things for the move, with the side effect of the apartment looking tidier for their visit.

Later on Wednesday I got a call from a woman at the Friends Of County Animal Shelters (FOCAS) office, asking me when we were moving, and if I could give her the number for our current manager too, just to make sure it's all legitimate. Other than that we could collect the "little buggers" as soon as we were ready. She also said she'd knock the adoption fee down to $75 a cat so it was $150 total. Needless to say I was very excited, apart from having to sort out permission for them to be in our current apartment, that could have put the kibosh on the whole thing.

I couldn't give her the number right away, as it was saved in my cell phone, and we were speaking on my cell. This fortunately gave me time to call Matt, get him to ask Red if he'd say it was ok, even though the previous owner didn't allow pets and the current owner seems only concerned with getting all of the tenants out asap...Red said ok, so I called and gave FOCAS his info.

Much calling back and forth on Wednesday. I gave the FOCAS volunteer at Pet Smart the number for Red, then Deborah from the FOCAS office called me a while later only to realize the number was sitting on her desk already. THEN the afternoon volunteer at the Pet Smart called to ask if I'd given anyone the number for my current landlord. They may not share information too well, but they're certainly thorough about following up on adoption prospects.

By the time I left work I was hoping to be able to pick up our beasties on my way home, but I was also wondering if anyone had been able to get through to Red, and if so, had they told the people at the Pet Smart so that they'd give me the cats?

On the way there I got a call from Deborah, the woman in the main office, just to let me know everything was a-ok, she gave me her cell phone number in case the people at the store weren't sure if I'd been cleared or not.

Many forms to fill out, in duplicate (one for each cat), a great long string of coupons from Pet Smart to get started with kitty supplies, a 30 minute shopping spree involving much internal debate over brands of kitty litter, which food dish is cuter, and if they really need a climbing scratching post...and I was ready to claim my two meowing cardboard boxes. The cardboard boxes which contuinued to meow most pathetically all the way home. Especially when I turned a corner.

I called Matt when I was nearly home so he could hear the complaining for himself. With all the whining going on I fully expected both of them to bolt under the futon and stay there for a few hours as soon as we opened their boxes. As it turned out, both of them started for the shelter of the futon, but after a foot or so got distracted by checking out their new surroundings. Then they proceeded to wander about with their tails in the air examining everything. Especially Marble, she very soon was sidling on everything, which is a way of claming things as her own. Inside a couple of hours their body language changed from inquisitive and a little suspicious to inquisitive and feeling well at home. About 3 hours after we opened the boxes Talli had jumped up into Matt's lap and done the circular trample dance, complete with loud purr and face-nuzzling. It was like he was saying thanks for bringing us home, I like it here.

They're both enjoying having room to zoom about and chase each other in, and they both like coming into the bedroom at night to meow pathetically until invited onto the bed. They need to learn to just jump up without being asked, I don't want to have to wake up to give permission every time one of them feels like sleeping on me! Funny beasties.

Marble is still very kitteny, when I left for work this morning she was busy attacking the edge of the random spare square of carpet we have in our hallway, she wasn't having much luck in getting under the carpet, but she was giving it hell nontheless. I'd almost forgotten about cats' fascination with rugs and edges of almost anything.

The ginger cats were huge and standoffish as it turns out. Not unfriendly, just not really caring if they're getting petted or not. They're the big living teddy-bear variety of cat, and the lack of curiousness was the main putoff for both Matt and myself. There was, however, another pair up for adoption who checked us out pretty well. A brother and sister pair, the boy cat kept giving Matt the eye, and the girl came by for attention in between her frequent naps. They're both friendly and playful, and seemed unfazed by being in a small room with strange people and a bunch of other cats. So we applied to adopt them. All they need is to get in touch with the manager for our new building and confirm that they allow pets. The one potential barrier is that it looks like the adoption fee may be $100 per cat, not $100 for the pair, which is what I was told on the phone. $200 is...just too much, even though they're very sweet.

It's odd that there isn't a slightly lower fee for adopting a bonded pair, they're harder to place. Fingers crossed we'll be able to bring home Scout and Radley soon, though they'll get new names if we end up adopting them!