6/9/08

This is kinda neat:

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We left Crooked Acres for just over two hours on Saturday, and SOMEHOW the place was still standing when we arrived back home. Before we left, Fred brought Kara down to the guest bedroom and set her up, and then we both visited with her, and with the kittens, and Kara seemed mostly puzzled and uncertain whether she was being punished or rewarded.

So we left the house at 10:00, stopped by the post office, the recycling center, and then the movie store to return some movies. Then we headed out to the shelter I volunteer for to pick some things up for the kittens. We tried to determine the quickest way out there, and Fred decided to try a new route that got us there fairly quickly and, on the up side, avoided the worst of the traffic between here and there. We stayed at the shelter for a few minutes (one day last week the shelter accepted and processed (tested and vaccinated) FOURTEEN kittens. In one day!) and then headed into Huntsville. We stopped a shitty little grocery store to pick up a few things (when I say “a shitty little grocery store”, what I mean is Pigg ly Wigg ly, which is all over the place around here, but never fails to make me shake my head when I’m leaving the store.) and then we swung by the pet store to drop off a few things from the shelter and I found to my utter delight that HG had FINALLY been adopted.

HG went to the pet store a few days before we got Kara, which means he’d been there for about seven weeks. I kept checking the shelter web site to see if he’d been adopted, and I was starting to try to convince Fred that if he hadn’t been adopted, we should bring him home for a few months to give him a break from the pet store until after the busiest part of kitten season had passed. Luckily I didn’t have to go for the hard press on Saturday, since HG had been adopted on Tuesday. He is SUCH a good boy, I’m so glad the right people finally came along and fell in love with him!

We bought a few things at the pet store and then headed home. We stopped at our favorite grocery store, bought what we needed, and finally a little more than two hours after we’d left the house we were home again, and Fred could stop complaining.

Since it was the first time we’d separated Kara and the kittens, we decided that four hours apart was long enough for the first time, so Fred took her back upstairs to the foster kitten room, and when she was reunited with her baby, I expected her babies to look at her with relief and love. I expected slow-motion runs across the room to their Momma and Kara to nuzzle and groom them and maybe tell them all about those mean humans who would separate them. Instead, the babies looked at Kara and were like “Oh. Her. Whatevs.” and went about their business kicking each others’ asses. Kara was all “Oh, shit. Babies. Bleh.” and went over to the food bowl to eat.

I suppose I appreciate the lack of drama, but damn. DON’T YOU CATS LOVE EACH OTHER AT ALL?!

Since I spent so much time sitting on my ass in the car, I was wiped out and took a nice hour-long nap while Fred was outside busting his ass mowing the lawn. DID I MENTION I JUST HAD MAJOR SURGERY, DAMNIT?

Speaking of my major surgery, since I’m only having drainage in the little spot where the drain was removed, I taped some gauze over that spot, then I put on a tank top I bought at Wal-Mart last week, and then I had Fred pull the binder tight around me (and that man can pull a binder SERIOUSLY tight. My eyes about popped out of my head.) and it was more comfortable than having the binder directly against my skin.

Um. What else? Oh, right. While we were at the pet store, I remembered that I needed to buy a new block of corn for the squirrel bungee cord feeder I’d bought a few weeks ago. The idea is that the squirrels will eat off the block of corn while bouncing around at the end of a bungee cord and leave your bird feeders the hell alone. What actually happens is that the squirrels decimate the block of corn and then go back to monopolizing your bird feeders.

It works well for them.

So I looked around, and I found a block of corn that would screw onto the end of the bungee cord feeder, and so I bought it.

It’s not just any block of corn, though. No, not for OUR squirrels. What we got here, y’all, is a Kob. But not just ANY Kob.

It’s a Big Ol’ Kob. Of course.

Thus far, the squirrels seem unimpressed, but the Blue Jays like it. I have no doubt that the squirrels will find it one night, and the next morning it’ll be completely gone.

Sunday morning, when I asked Fred if he was ready to move Kara into the guest bedroom, he said he’d been thinking about it, and why not just put her in my room? My room’s much closer and wouldn’t require him to carry a carrier and a litter box down the stairs, and because he’s A MAN he won’t bring her in the carrier downstairs and then go back up to get the litter box, instead he prefers to carry her in the carrier and the litter box balanced on top, and that’s just asking for trouble.

So anyway, we put Kara in my room for the better part of the day, and she was again confused, but I went in and laid down and petted her and read and she paced and talked and paced some more, then sat and looked out the window, then paced, etc. It was easier spending time with her when I could lay down on the bed rather than sit on the floor. We moved her back in with her kittens after about eight hours, and she was all talkative and they were “Hey, hi, it’s the Momma!”, and Inara and Zoe followed her around and tried to nurse from her while she was standing in front of the food bowl, and Kara was all “I AM NOT A COW, get away from me, chilluns!” and then eventually they started fighting with each other and left her alone.

Fred finished his farm chores (ie, mowing the lawn and back forty) early Sunday afternoon, and to my utter shock, decided he was NOT going to do any more work for the day, since it was so hot outside he couldn’t stand the thought of being outside all afternoon long. I opened my mouth to spout off the list of things that need doing around the house, but he beat me to the punch and allowed that he thought he wanted to spend the afternoon watching a movie. So I sat in the living room with him as he watched the first Indiana Jones movie (we’re possibly going to the theater to see the latest one later this week) and flipped through magazines.

Sunday evening Fred harvested our first summer squash and eggplant, and we had vegetable medley, which consisted of sauteed onion, sliced summer squash, sliced eggplant, dehydrated cherry tomatoes from last summer, and a sprinkle of crushed red pepper. That, along with ears of corn from last summer (we have exactly four ears of corn left from last summer – good thing we’re growing four times as much corn this year, eh?) and chuck roast direct from a day on the smoker made Sunday supper pretty damn good.

It was a pretty damn good weekend, all in all.

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So, all the bebbes are doing well. The kittens have had their first vaccination and will be having their next in another three weeks, at which point they’ll be ready to be spayed and neutered and soon after that, go to the pet store.

WAHHHHH!

After two days of keeping Kara and the babies apart, I decided to stop separating them, not because it’s too hard on them but because no one seems to notice, one way or the other. I still have yet to see Zoe eat any solid food, but she certainly eats the hell out of baby food if I offer it to her, so I imagine that she could eat solid food if she wanted to, she’s just not particularly interested. She seems to be a little behind her siblings, development-wise, so I’m not going to worry too much about it. She’s gaining weight, she’s healthy and curious and bright-eyed and a bitey little brat, so I think all is well with her.

The look on River’s face (the gray tabby on the right) is cracking me up, because he’s clearly thisclose to yawning (which, naturally, I didn’t catch with the camera!)

Truly, how can you resist that goofy little face?

More kitten pics over at Flickr.

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“You rang?”

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: Who else would put up with this sort of bullshit?
2005: Teen labor: I highly recommend it.
2004: The quarry.
2003: You can’t tell I’m PMS-ing with a vengeance, can you, with all this talk of food?
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: So, have I mentioned that I’m an idiot?