So yeah, as some of you pointed out yesterday, despite the fact that I’d written about them over on Love & Hisses, I hadn’t mentioned anything here about no foster kittens.
We have foster kittens!
You can read more about them at Love & Hisses, starting here and I’ll update the sidebar here at some point today. Despite their scaredy-cat nature when we first got them, they have chilled out a little, and we’ve gotten all four of them to purr. They don’t particularly care for being held – YET – but they also don’t freak out too much if we pick them up, as long as we don’t go too far from the cat tree.
Speaking of Love & Hisses, I got my entries from our very first set of fosters back in May – July 2005 pasted over there. You can read a little about Mia and her babies, and follow the link on that page to see the entries about them.
We’ve had a LOT of foster kittens in the past three and a half years; I couldn’t even begin to guess what the number is.
It’ll take me a while to balance writing here about the fosters and writing there about them and what goes where and how. Be patient, I’ll get it figured out!
Christy in KS mentioned in my comments last week that they like to take their bacon, dredge it through brown sugar and put it under the broiler for 7 minutes. Yesterday, I got out a package of 4 slices of bacon (I thawed and repackaged one of the big packages of bacon a few weeks ago, because there are only two of us, after all) and told Fred I was going to make bacon and eggs for breakfast. He requested just salt and pepper on his bacon – unadventurous bastard – so I salt and peppered his two pieces and rubbed brown sugar, salt, and pepper on my two pieces.
Ho. Ly. GOD. That is some FABULOUS stuff right there. Not only is it fabulous, but making it in the oven on a foil-lined cookie sheet was so much easier and less messy than frying it in the pan that that’s how I’m making my bacon from here on out!
Thank you, Christy – you rock!
And speaking of food, for dinner on Sunday (and Monday!) I took a pork shoulder from the freezer, rubbed spices all over it, let it cook all day in the crock pot, took it out of the crock pot, drained the fat off (into the pig bucket, actually, shaddup), shredded the meat and put it back in the crock pot with barbecue sauce for a couple more hours.
It was SO good. It would have been better if I’d used our standby barbecue sauce – Gibson’s – but I tried something new that I ended up not liking as much. Still good, just not AS good. I also roasted a butternut squash (not one we grew ourselves, one I picked up at a local farm stand, but I think we need to keep butternut squash in mind for next year!) and mashed it, and we had green beans too.
I also made a big bunch of egg salad Sunday afternoon, and Fred and I had egg salad sandwiches Sunday and Monday.
I think it’s safe to say that growing our own food is working out pretty well for us.
Speaking of hard-boiling eggs (which I used for egg salad), I tried hard-boiling fresh eggs rather than older ones to see if slow-boiling them for 12 minutes then soaking them in ice water plus baking soda would make peeling fresh eggs easier, the way it worked for the older eggs I made deviled eggs with a few weeks ago.
Not so much.
I mean, probably less egg stuck to the shell than would have done so if I hadn’t added the baking soda to the water, but still far too much egg came off with the shell. We probably could have gotten three meals of egg salad sandwiches from a dozen hard-boiled eggs if so much egg hadn’t stuck to the shell instead of the two (plus a little more) we did get.
In case you were curious.
Last night (though I got no pictures of the momentous occasion), we got the kittens down off the cat tree. The boys stayed down on the floor with us for the longest time, rubbing back and forth and purring like crazy. In what I considered a giant step forward, Delmar got back up on the cat tree, saw Lem purring and rubbing on Fred, and then jumped down off the cat tree and came over for some more love.
Marion had no desire to be off the cat tree. Fred picked her up and walked across the room to hand her to me, and she ran back to the cat tree and shot him dirty looks. Claudette, on the other hand, stayed in my arms for several minutes, purring and watching her brothers ask to be petted.
Both Lem and Delmar have meowed at us, Delmar the most. You know how you pet a kitten and then you stop and the kitten meows at you like “Why’d you STOP?!”? That’s how he was meowing.
These kittens are adorable. Now I’d like to see them come down off the cat tree of their own accord, and then I’d like to see them play!
Look at Delmar over there on the right, giving me the sass as if he doesn’t fling himself onto his back at the slightest touch.
Such a good boy, our Spanky. (He’s not usually pink, for the record.)
Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: “M-O-O-N!” Fred said. “That spells Tom Cullen!”
2004: No entry.
2003: I’m pretty certain “Never going to fucking go hiking with him EVER A-FUCKING-GAIN” crossed my mind at least once.
2002: Hotel room so big/ roomy, spacious, perfect. Butt/ is what it smells like.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.
1999: Don’t get your bippies in an uproar, though; we’re not trying to get pregnant.