Knitiot Savant

Friends

It's taken some time, though not as long as I'd thought it might, but Jack and Zoe are friends.  Jack likes to jump over Zoe, trying to tease her into fighting him.  Zoe likes to pin Jack to the ground and pretend to beat him up.  When she thinks nobody is looking, she holds him as though he were her very own kitten and grooms him silly.  I'm so glad Jack came into our lives.

Blue Monday

This is my Karma cat.  She adopted us years ago in Texas.  She walked  up to me as I stood on our deck waiting for the dogs to come in and sat down.  I gave her some kitty treats and she decided to stay.

Karma never liked being indoors.  Once she realized she could trust us, though, it was easy to coax her in when the weather was bad or we just wanted to pet her.

I was very worried about how she would do on the move but she was amazing.  Karma sat in her carrier as we drove away from the only home she'd known.  She was calm and collected when I had to board her for a week and, even through all the crap with the flooding and the giant fans, she never left us.  Karma stayed in the house exploring boxes and loving the breeze an industrial fan can create. 

For the first few weeks she didn't want to leave us.  She watched the dogs go out and do their thing but never seemed interested in checking out her new yard.  When she finally did get up the nerve to go out, she sat on the back porch.  Eventually she worked up the courage to head into the tree line to take care of business.  She disappeared for 24 hours twice.  The second time Karma came back with a scratch on her nose and refused to go outside at all.  But my Karma has wander lust and, eventually, she went back to the great outdoors.

Last Tuesday night, as I let the dogs out one last time, Karma ran out of the house.  I stayed up awhile and called for her a couple of times and eventually went to bed figuring I'd catch her in the morning.  I haven't seen Karma since.

I stand on the porch a couple of times a day and call for her.  My voice echoes through the trees and down to the pond.  I hear rustling in the woods and think it's her but it's usually only an ornery squirrel.   I think Karma is gone for good and I miss her very, very much.

Critter Love

With all the spinning that went on here Wednesday it led to a lot of other things...like more spinning...then plying...possible more spinning.  Seems Wednesdays at my house are a lot longer than 24 hours.  I wanted to take a picture of my yarn but the light is really crappy right now and, since it's spinning related, I figured I'd save it until Wednesday.  Instead I offer gratuitous animal pictures.

Emma loves Zoe.  More importantly, Zoe likes her ears to be nibbled by Emma.  Emma is the most neurotic and shyest of all the critters that live here.  She's not big on having her picture taken at all so catching this action was just dumb luck.

Y'all have a great weekend!  Hope you get your ears nibbled by someone who loves you, too!

Our Tree

For our first Christmas as a married couple, Big B and I decided that our tree would have a theme.  The ornaments would be toys, red and white balls, red hearts, and red, green and white lights.  The ornaments have changed over the 20+ years we've been together.  We each buy a new one every year and, now that we have a Boogie in our lives, she gets one too.  We have delicate angels from East Germany, icicles from West Germany and a host of fairies I picked up for Boogie's first Christmas.  Even the lights are different now.  Multiple colors with a few strands of white thrown in just 'cause we wanted more lights. Most of the original glass balls are gone; broken or thrown out because they looked too worn.  Half of the original 2 dozen hearts we had are gone as well.  No, they weren't lost or thrown out.  They were devoured.  Devoured by this guy:

This is Cecil and Cecil has a penchant for cheap, red, styrofoam hearts.  Cecil has been with us for six Christmases and every stinkin' year he manages to snatch a heart or two off the tree and gobble it up like it's a piece of raw meat.  The dye leaves his white beard a nasty red color for a couple of days and don't even talk about the red stain on the carpet.  Take a closer look at the tree.  See the beautiful and festive fence?  It's to keep my man Cecil here from eating the remaining dozen hearts.  He doesn't go for presents, lights or even the tree itself.  Just those damn hearts.  Way to go, Cecil.

Don't get me started on the cats.

Zoe has issues

This is my cat Zoe.  She is a mellow, low-maintenance little creature.  We adopted her about 3 years ago after the kitten we were fostering found a home.  My dog Emma had fallen in love with the little foundling and moped a bit once he'd left.  We thought that adopting a kitty just for Emma would cheer her up and give a sweet kitty a much needed home.  Zoe fit right in.  She became one of the dogs.  She growls at strangers approaching the house, comes when called and is pretty content to just hang out.  At night, when Boogie is in bed, she'll insist on some attention but she's no lap cat.  She's happy with some understated scratching and the toy you see in this picture.  The toy is the crux of this post.

Zoe loves that toy.  She loves it so much that we hid it from her for a few months.  Boogie was just beginning to walk and the idea of a toddler carrying around a stick was a little unnerving.  The other reason we hid it?  Zoe can carry that sucker around.  Not only does she enjoy moving it from room to room but she'll meow incessantly until someone picks it up and wiggles it for her.  She has no sense of propriety.  Zoe engages in this behavior regardless of the time of day (or night) and, if she isn't satisfied with the human's pathetic attempts at play, she takes her woobie to another room and starts all over again until someone gets it right.  So much for my mellow you'll-hardly-know-I'm-here kitty. Clearly she found my attempts at play unsatisfying and sad.  Wonder who her next victim will be?