pretty little companion

this little beauty went home with one of my colleagues today. when he came to pick her up, he sat with her for awhile on the couch, to get to know her. and she took to him right away, settling in with him and purring and relaxing and even closing her eyes in contentment. hollister is wandering around looking for her, but he'll be ok. i'm looking forward to hearing how they do together. having a lively little kitten, even if she is a bit shy, just might be a life-changing experience. she's a special one. 

five things friday :: august 23

thing 1: experiences. i recommend them over things. though things can be nice too (hello there sparkly gold #uggs slippers). third #tattoo this year, all three with the best daughter. all three awesome experiences. can’t wait for the next one.

thing 2: old friends. returning to exactly where you left off. cat love, it’s called. at least in my world. and it makes me happy.

thing 3: grief comes in its own time and in ways you hadn’t imagined. it’s best to just try to BE in it. but that’s hard. and i’m not sure i know how. just scratching at it a little bit is difficult and scary. and sometimes people should just get out of the way.

thing 4: stay hydrated. when it’s 115F/46C and 9% humidity, you dry out faster than you think.

thing 5: take an extra week.


with thanks to @lolovevetattoos for the photo. 😘

a kitten story in 7 pictures

100 happy days :: day 84

teeny tiny kitten.
eyes almost open.
so much happy.

100 happy days :: day 83

two years ago today, frieda badida was born

she was molly's last kitten.

poor little molly was so tired by then that i had to gently wipe away the membrane so she could breathe.

i'm so glad i did.

she's quirky, sweet and wonderful.

and only occasionally expects to be let in the window at 4 a.m.

happy birthday frieda.

* * *

so many things tumbling in my mind to write about...ghosts, communing with the dead, what makes a good marriage (can you tell i'm listening to podcasts?), getting older, fears, plants, asparagus, peonies, gardening in general, memory, foxes, chickens, feathers all over the yard, buffy the vampire slayer, magic, painting, children becoming who they are, schools, whether it's ok to be the smart one, boarding school, summer holiday, content management systems, kittens...i could go on, but right now, it's all jumbled up. 

* * *

elvendale, not just where the LEGO elves hang out. 

precious molly

my beloved molly dolly. she had her kittens on may 22 - four perfect little girls. she took to motherhood immediately. but motherhood didn't take to her and last week, she developed mastitis. it came on really quickly - she was fine at midnight the night before and when we woke up on monday morning, she was clearly very unwell. i took her immediately to the vet, where they diagnosed the mastitis and gave her both a shot of painkillers and antibiotics. she's been on a course of both since - and i'm getting downright good at popping those pills down her throat. i was worried about her for the first couple of days - she wasn't eating or drinking anything, but by the end of the week, she was eating again. the whole time, she has cared for her kittens, tho' i have been supplementing them with special kitten milk replacer from a bottle, as her milk production was down.

now their eyes are open and they are strong and feisty (this one's hissing at me, which isn't very nice in light of the fact that i'm feeding her milk). on sunday, i noticed that the teat with the worst infection had burst and she had hole in her belly. i called the weekend vet immediately and he asked me how she was doing. other than the alarming hole in her belly, she was actually good - she chased a frog across the lawn as i was speaking to him and she was both eating and drinking and acting much more like herself. so he advised me to wait 'til today and take her in to be seen (kindly saving me the extra charge). when i took her in today, the vet was rather alarmed and said she wanted to put her under and see what could be done. it turned out not to be possible to sew it up, so she's still got an alarming gaping hole, but now it's clean and all of the dead tissue has been taken away. she's back home, a bit woozy, but eating and drinking and caring for her babies. i protect the wound with a clean washcloth while they're nursing, but they're actually pretty good about avoiding it. it's quite astonishing how nature works.

while i was waiting to hear from the vet that she could be picked up, i found this 4-leaf clover. i just looked down and saw it, i didn't even have to search for it. surely it's a sign that molly will be just fine - luck just must be on her side. this evening, she's seeking me out, sitting on my lap as i type this, even tho' it's me who put the collar of shame on her (we've got to keep her from licking that wound). she's got an appointment with the vet every day this week and the vet ordered some salve that contains honey that we'll put on it, to help it heal more quickly. i like that idea.

this little cat has become very important to me, ever since the first time i saw her and i realized today at one point that i had some of the feeling that i had when sabin was born 10 weeks early and we had to feed her by putting a tube down her nose into her stomach. a helplessness and a panicky feeling that i wasn't up to the task. but i was then and i will be now. we're going to get our molly dolly through this one. even the vet says so. but sending some good vibes her way wouldn't hurt.

i am a cat person

no explanation. just a simple fact.

the theory of cat love

lila

lila showed up at our house about this time last winter.

she was wild and her fur was matted. we couldn't get near her.

i started putting out food for her and talking to her nicely.

she warmed up and now she's the perfect housecat.

but she refuses to come into the writing house. i'm not sure why.

so this is a shot of her through the glass of the door, waiting patiently outside for us.

we think she's a norwegian forest cat.

i have a number of friends with whom i have a relationship that i call "cat love." these are friends who i don't see often, but exchange sporadic flurries of emails with maybe once every year or so. they're friends with whom, despite the long periods of time where i don't talk to them, as soon as i do, we're right back at a very comfortable level of closeness, as if months or years hadn't gone by.

i recently had a couple of gmail video chats with one of these friends. we met in macedonia and now she's living in the US. we had only emailed a couple of times in the past few years and hadn't seen one another since she and her husband (he is that fulbrighter who had to flee albania when it collapsed in a pyramid scheme) came through to visit us on their honeymoon trip in 2003(?). but we arranged to do video chats and jumped right back in to our skins as old friends--joking and laughing, even though our lives have moved on and the topics are different than the ones we joked and laughed about in the good old days in macedonia.

i call it "cat love" because it's how cats are. if you're not there, they're totally cool and go about their cat lives just fine, sleeping comfortably and not thinking of you or pining away for you. but when you come back, they're totally there for you and it's as if you were never gone.

now if there's "cat love," there also has to be "dog love," right? "dog love" is the fawning kind. the drooling, overly excited kind. the kind where the more you are rejected, the more you love. i have "dog love" for P at what possessed me. she doesn't even know i exist, but i still eagerly go back for more, like a slobbering dog. and feel totally validated when we post on the same thing (tho' i didn't see her post 'til after my post). i was just so proud that i found and shared the same cool thing she found and shared. i was, in my own head at least, validated in my level of cool hipness. just like a slobbering dog who finally gets a dog biscuit after making those eyes and begging ('cause those kinda dogs are way cool and hip).

and because i don't want to be an idea thief, i will give co-credit for the creation of this idea to my old college friend jill, with whom i struggled through russian class, once drove in my little gold fiero to an audition for into the woods in chicago and formulated this theory. she is my first "cat love" friend.