Garden of Thought

I recently realized from the way my cat responds that while her name is Pi, she believes her name is Beautiful Kitty.  It has made me suddenly self-aware of how often I greet her as "Hello, beautiful" and "Come up here, beautiful kitty!"  Now that would be a nice sort of nickname to acquire, no wonder she has such confidence in our servitude to her.

Spent a couple afternoons poking intermittantly at imovie in my ongoing attempts to comprehend the usefulness of my new macbook thing. Made Baby's First Movie by using random footage of my cat on my lap gleaned from the "oh, I found the camera!" moments, adding sound effects, music, credits, etc. Kind of like it, in an odd sense of the word. The whole thing definitely has promise (imovie, not my er..."movie"...) I can see why so many people like to mess around with making vids of stuff in their life now that we have tools like this readily available.

Still feel like an old dog struggling to learn that new trick, but getting there.

An update: Our Pi-Cat has thankfully continued to improve and is pretty much back to her former petite weight (she's only a 7 lb. kitty at her fattest), still no idea what caused her illness so I just hope whatever it was doesn't come back as she's now our Gold Plated Kitty from vet bills. We are grateful that she is with us even when she sits on the keyboard now.

Also, looks like my eldest is headed for the beach! She's been applying for work, etc. along the coast and is making plans to move over there. Ironically the rents around here have spiked so badly with all the out of state people moving here that the beach is no longer the expensive place, it's cheaper for her to live there than anywhere near Portland once you get out of the easy day-trip range of that city. Sounds good to me!

Our dear little Pi stopped eating or drinking last week - we've now put sufficient funds into that cat we are calling her our "gold plated kitty." So far all they know is she's healthy as a horse except for unknown reasons her digestive system is moving in slow motion. I've had to take to squirting a syringe of warm water into the corner of her mouth when I can get away with it to try to keep her hydrated. She goes back in for another expensive vet round on Monday, but darnit...she's OUR cat, a part of the family, our little fur-person. You know how it is.

A lady I swim with in the mornings is a vet tech, she said she would come to our house and show me how to do sub-q injections if needed. :-(

A lady in my church has a pet-sitting business and has agreed to have me be her backup person when she gets overbooked (yay) - I was trying to think of something I can do that doesn't involve being on my feet 8 hours a day or doing data entry stuff so this could fit the bill. I mean, a dog doesn't really care if you stop to rub your sore feet a few minutes unlike a human manager. ;-)

So I'm getting ready to head out to a day seminar on pet first aid today as part of prepping for that, I figure it will be useful info to have even if the sitting thing doesn't go anywhere, after all, I have pets! And it's free, which is always nice.

Quite a bit of snow yesterday and last night, and more coming tonight, so I went out and swept a bunch of snow away in a circle around my birdfeeder out back and sprinkled seed for the ground-feeders, then added an extra suet block, some old pistachios we needed to get rid of and a chunked up peanut butter sandwich my daughter forgot about a couple days ago.  It's been nonstop out there, I'm seeing varieties of bird we almost never have come through, which is kind of cool.

I think this cold caught more than just us humans by surprise. My cat is unimpressed with getting her paws in the snow, though I also swept around her catflap she set a new record for the time between when she went out the front door and reappeared through the back catflap leaving "kitty rapidly bounding" marks around the edge of the house.

Well, my two formerly homeless budgies are still settling in - the little yellow girl was fluffed, stressed and otherwise miserable enough over this past week I was pretty worried about her, but every day she got less stressed and less fluffed - now she's slimming down to normal parakeet appearance.  Her blue laddie was quite concerned, always sitting right by her and moving to be between her and me if I reached in to fix their food.  She didn't like to move except to get food and water, so I kept her half-covered and added extra vitamins and molting food to her diet.

Last night she finally began to move around a little and slowly stretched her wings - which let me see she's been injured on the one!  It looks like it's healing up nicely, but.no wonder the poor little thing was miserable!

Very pleased that they are starting to take interest in their surroundings and sing a little now, they aren't aggressive at all.  The man from the church who brought them in said he doubted they'd ever had a normal or healthy home-life, which is sad for anyone, person or critter, definitely time for Better Birdie Days Ahead.

Merry Christmas to everyone - hope all is well in your assorted households, palaces, balloons, hovels and floating shrimp boats...or wherever is currently 'home'.

Y'know, when we got this house I was blown away at the thought of having an extra room (think about it - EXTRA room. An extra one. Like, a whole room that is extra!) It quickly became half storage, half guest room and has seen pretty constant use. Friends, travelers, relatives, strangers, all kinds of people have been in there. More than one has lived there for an extended time.

So speaking of extended times - My folks sold their house and therefore had to move into their 5th-wheel. Technically. Actually, my mom would completely lose her mind living in a tiny 5th-wheel, so they're in our 'extra' guest room. How long? Who can say? Until they find a property they like well enough to buy. And they have a weiner-dog (our cat has mixed feelings on this part). Good thing we get along pretty well. Full house!

Time to go watch a Christmas show - maybe 'Shop Around the Corner,' I love Jimmy Stewart.

So, over at Death by Aspirin there's been a small challenge to 'time-ify' our cats.

Pi loves being a Time Cat.  She is very patient about how long it takes me to sometimes open the TARDIS door for her, in spite of the pompous reputation. 

I dearly love going by the field at the end of our road each day where Cow peacefully grazes or stands beneath the big fir tree, watching the cars putt by.  Cow holds court over a middling sized field with a tiny brook running through a bit of it, she and Baby-Cow (who is now nearly Teenager-Cow) amiably stand in the winter sun, swishing tails and nosing at bits of hay.

Almost invariably ranged around Cow is an irregular circle of little goats, cinnamon-sugar and taffy and licorice colored friendly nannies who follow their leader wherever she goes.  If Cow stands under the tree, they graze near the tree or play among its roots.  If Cow stands over by the hay, there they faithfully go also.  It makes a delightful picture on a cold morning to see Cow up to her knees in hay with Baby-Cow by her side and a little circle of cheerful goat-heads all sticking up out of the hay around her.

A white turkey was added this past summer and a little turkey-house which promptly filled up with curious goats.  The turkey house was retired and the turkey began settling in.  "Someone's Thanksgiving dinner," we thought - but no, there it still is.  And turkeys being very social, it has taken to following everyone else around too, as an honorary goat.  Now when I drive by, there stands Cow, holding court amid the green and gold winter grasses with a circle ranged all around her, the soft brown little goats and one white turkey, all drifting along in perfect harmony.