resting – Page 28

Love Comes Tumbling

Ellie continues to confound with her dietary adventures, somehow opening a tupperware tub of freshly baked chocolate raisin cookies and devouring every last crumb, maintaining her perfect attendance in the clean plate club. But dear Ellie, not freshly baked cookies! Not freshly baked! If you must eat cookies, stick to the store-bought kind!

A day or two later she broke open a bag of cat treats and finished those off, followed later by the supplements she takes for joint health. If only the cats were so eager to take their medicine!

While walking her at night earlier in the week, she had so much energy I ran with her a bit. We ran past the houses in one section of the neighborhood where the tall trees block the streetlights, where the roots of the tall trees broke up the sidewalk, where I tripped on the broken sidewalk and faceplanted into the concrete.

I landed hard but was able to get my hands out in front of me, the ground knocking out the doggie treat I was holding. I wasn’t surprised that Ellie sniffed out the treat in the darkness and gobbled it down before checking to see if I was OK. My palms took the brunt of the damage and got skinned up pretty badly, as well as the top of my right hand. My left knee and right elbow were badly bruised but not bleeding.

After the first night the swelling went down and it was clear there was no permanent damage. The wounds are healing rapidly and the pain subdued with ibuprofen. It was a lovely weekend but I didn’t do any yardwork apart from mowing as I can’t put any hard pressure on my palms yet, but that left extra time to play catch with the tennis ball in the backyard with Ellie, a fair trade.

This picture of Ellie is from earlier in the year, you can see a bit of white paint on her neck. All of the paint spots are gone now, apart from a bit on her tail, the fur there must shed more slowly.

Lady Em

I’m thankful for many things in my life and one of those things is our dear Emma. She’s a quiet cat like Scout but she chirps rather than meows. She plays frequently with Sam but also plays on her own, her favorite game is shoving her furry mice under the closet door. I empty it out several times a day but after only a few minutes the mice are mysteriously once again behind the door. We are looking to hire someone full time to empty the closet but the job pays only in purrs. Emma doesn’t give up her purrs easily and they are so soft as to be nearly inaudible, so when you hear them you know you’ve earned them.

She’s not a lap cat like the others — although to be fair Scout wasn’t a lap cat at her age either — but she is affectionate. She discovered the magic of the heated beds a couple of months ago and has been a regular visitor to their electric warmth ever since. I’ve photographed all of the cats in the beds at one time or another so I was happy to finally get a shot of Emma as she poked her head out of the bed.

A King, A King, My Bedroom For A King

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!
King Richard in Shakespeare’s Richard III

Ellie had an upset stomach this past week which led to a rather unfortunate if prodigious emptying of her bowels in the living room. The vet suggested we switch her to a bland diet of rice and cooked meat (no bernaise sauce) for a few days and thankfully there have been no more incidents. Erring on the safe side, we isolated her to the easily-cleanable part of the basement while we were at work and at night while we slept. She didn’t mind the imposition while we were gone but our champion snuggler was not pleased about the loss of bed privileges at night.

The morning after she had to be encouraged to eat (a surer sign of the apocalypse than any four horsemen) but otherwise her appetite has been fine. Her energy level and spirits have also been high the whole time and today we started slowly working her regular food back into her diet. So far so good!

She was allowed to rejoin us in bed at night after a few days of no accidents and I’m happy to report that she now moves over when I come to bed at night. I can’t say if her banishment to solitary affected the change but regardless I’m no longer wishing for a king-sized bed.

Say Hello to Ellie

“Let it be said that I am right rather than consistent.” Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan explaining his transformation from a vigorous defender of slavery to the lone supporter on the Court for the rights of former slaves

We reduced the candidates of names for Unnamed Dog (aka the dog formerly known as Sidka) from sixteen to two, Darcy and Zira, staying consistent with our scheme of choosing names from our favorite books. Today we settled on her name: Ellie.

When I first came up with a list of possible names for the dog, all sixteen names were from our favorite books or shows save two, Ellie and Libby, which made the cut simply because I liked them. Libby seemed like a good name for a lab but I ruled it out myself the very next day when on the train I couldn’t get the “Libby Libby Libby on the label label label” song out of my head and realized the horror the next seven years could bring.

My wife further whittled the list to a half dozen but even after a week none of the literary names felt right and we realized we were trying to force the wrong name onto our sweet-hearted girl. She feels like an Ellie, not a Darcy or Zira, so we’re breaking with tradition. We could cheat and say that she’s named for Elinor from Sense & Sensibility or Elessar, one of the 187 names for Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, but she’s not.

She’s Ellie because she’s Ellie.

Passing Grades

One of the good things about adopting Sam and Emma during Christmas break last year was not only being able to spend a lot of time with them to get them properly introduced to the household, but also having lots of free time to take pictures. This isn’t the case with Sidka, I worked from home today to see how she would do when left alone and that didn’t leave time for pictures. This one is another from yesterday, for some reason she looks like a young puppy to me in this picture but she’s definitely not so little.

Sidka had a lot of passing grades today, she had her vet exam bright and early and was not only friendly to the staff but so far seems in good health. She also did quite well being left alone during the day, technically I was here but I worked in my office and only checked on her a few times during the day. She slept peacefully downstairs when no one was there to keep her company and didn’t have any accidents. Scout was whispering words of encouragement down through the heating vents so I’m sure that helped.

There are a few things we’ll need to work with her on, such as obeying commands when she’s excited, tugging a bit on the leash, and thinking that every dog and person will want to meet her. But I am amazed at both how readily she has adapted to life here and how sweet she is, her previous family obviously took good care of her. She was kind of nervous at the shelter but at home we haven’t experienced the adjustment problems we expected. Knock on wood of course, the acid test is the introduction of the cats. Given how well she’s doing I think we may try that this weekend with some limited exposure before then. I don’t know what we’re going to do with feeding the cats, we used to just leave food out for them so we’ll either have to feed them in high places or start feeding them on a schedule too (somewhere little Sam is making a face of sheer horror at the thought).

She’s also warming up to me more although she obviously is still infatuated with my wife. When we were playing ball she started bringing it to me most of the time instead of always taking it to my wife, so she’s a quick study. She also showed a funny little trick today in that instead of always walking the tennis ball back to me and dropping it, she would stop a ways away and toss it to me with her mouth.

Her aim isn’t perfect but I dare say she could play for the Mariners 😉

Outside Looking In

As the snow falls, Sam watches me shovel the sidewalk from the comfort of his window seat. He didn’t offer to help.

Best Friends Forever

After Templeton died a year ago we were trying to decide if it was too soon for Scout to add more cats to the household. We felt she would be happier with other cats around, as would we, so we adopted Sam and Emma and hoped for the best. Fast forward to today and here is Scout with her new best friend curled up on the window seat, watching the snowy scene before them. They are often curled up together on my legs when I wake up in the morning but this is the first time I’ve seen them together on the window seat.

Scout is seven years older than Sam, half a lifetime, so I’m thrilled to see them get along so. Emma willingly bears the brunt of most of Sam’s kitten energy and he’s learned that at this stage of her life Scout usually prefers snuggling to horseplay. Sometimes their little lovefests wake me up in the morning as they rub their faces all over me and each other but there are worse ways to wake.

Little Mr. Ironsides

This morning didn’t get started off on the right foot. I didn’t see Sam underfoot and accidentally kicked him as I was getting ready for work. I felt a sharp pain in my left foot and dropped to the floor, then hobbled up to find him to check him for injuries. He seemed fine but I pulled him close and gave him a thorough exam, he wasn’t too keen on being poked and prodded so I petted him enough to keep him happy. He didn’t show any signs of tenderness and seemed none the worse for wear, making one mad dash up the Christmas tree and then curling up with Scout on the window seat to watch the comings and goings on the street.

I decided to stay at home an extra hour just to make sure he didn’t have any unusual behavior due to an internal injury, with the final test being the filling of his food bowl. He came ripping down the stairs and began eating before I had even finished filling the bowls, leaving no doubts as to his mobility or his appetite. I didn’t fare quite so well, after my foot continued to hurt into the afternoon I took off my shoes for a closer look. One toe was blackened on the top although by the end of the day it has lightened a bit to a deep purple. I still don’t know exactly what happened, either my toe got bent back at just the right (and wrong) angle or my little cat has ironsides.

Or a mithril coat hidden under his fur. Perhaps we named him after the wrong hobbit.

Queen of Halloween

Templeton was never fond of visitors, especially childen, so Halloween was not one of his favorite days. Scout likes kids even less than he did — once when we had nieces visiting, she spent all of their waking hours in the rafters of the basement — so she likes Halloween even less.

This was our first Halloween with Emma and Sam. My wife said Emma (our black cat pictured here in her first week with us) was sitting in the window and some trick-or-treaters mistook her for a Halloween prop until they saw her move. She likes people and stayed with me when I took over door duty when I got home from work. Sam and Scout would play with me when no one came to the door, but took to the hills at the sound of small feet climbing the steps. Sam did stay for some visitors when he got so wrapped up in play that he didn’t have time to run away.

All of the kids commented on how much they liked the cats, with Emma being the Queen of Halloween. And I have to say, without exception the kids were all polite and wearing elaborate costumes, even the teenagers, so I really enjoyed Halloween this year even if I got home a little late.

The Two S’s

I’ve been slow getting pictures from my Washington trip online, partially because I’ve been really tied up at work, partially because I got sick for a bit, partially because I’ve been doing more editing than writing. And partially because a number of nights the Two S’s — Scout and Sam — have been sleeping on me when I sit down in my office. It’s hard enough to type when one of the cats is zonked out on me (Sam is sprawled over my lap right now) but it’s impossible with both of them aboard.

Sometimes they stretch out nose to tail, sometimes they curl up beside each other. It amuses me to see Scout assert her dominance after being submissive to Templeton all of her life. If Sam is sitting where she wants to be, she doesn’t swat him to get him to move, she just sits on him. If he’s OK with that, she doesn’t force him to move. Usually she’s more just nestled up against him, but one time she literally did sit on the little guy’s face.

I gave Templeton the nickname Little One when I first met him since he was smaller than the few cats I had known at the time. When we brought Scout home, the nickname worked for both of them since Scout turned out to be even smaller than Templeton. When we brought Emma and Sam home, we already knew Emma would be of average size, but Sam is now fully grown and he’s going to be a little thing like Scout.

Not quite as little as in this picture from January when he was still a kitten.