Cat Tales

Reuters ran a story this week about a 4 year old cat in Germany who survived being walled in beneath a bathtub for seven weeks. It had dropped from 13 to 4 pounds and the vet recommended it be put down. Fortunately for that cat, the owner disagreed and nursed her back to health with watered down cat food.

After reading that story I confess to feeling more than a little justified in declining to spend the money take our then-four-year-old kitty to the vet after a similar experience. One day she simply vanished. Poof. Gone. No cat to be found.

About six weeks later, in the midst of a driving November rainstorm, I thought I heard a meow--her meow. I looked out the window, didn't see anything, opened the door to listen again and there she was, huddled under the car. Until she dashed inside, that is.

She was so, so very thin. And cold. And wet. And hungry! Fortunately, I had procrastinated on donating her left-over cat food so quickly opened a can and gave her a dishfull. She scarfed it down--and promptly vomited it back up! Oops. After that, we gave her just a little food at a time until her stomach learned to handle food again. Poor thing was so very thin that when she was curled up, she looked the size of a kitten! She couldn't stay in one position for long, though, because she didn't have any padding left on her bones so every posititon was uncomfortable.

Interestingly, early every fall, she starts eating and eating and eating; she eats more often and more food every time. It's almost like she's storing up an emergency supply of fat "just in case". Hey, by the time you get to be an old lady of 18, you've learned to be prepared!


Thinking back, we realized that she'd disappeared about the time a neighbor across the street moved out and reappeared about the time the new neighbor was moving in. We suspect that she was trapped in their garage during the intervening weeks--a suspicion reinforced by the fact that, once our garage was built and in the eight years since, she has absolutely, positively refused to set even one royal paw inside it!

more animals

I Need to Learn Korean!

I have this wonderful new Cuckoo brand pressure rice cooker (serously--that's its name!). It's from Korea, well, it's from a Korean store, at least. Fortunately for me, the buttons on mine are labeled in English, as well as Korean.

It automatically produces lovely and delectible brown rice, but while it's doing that, it keeps talking to me...in Korean. And I'm bursting with curiosity to learn what in the world it's saying to me. Hopefully it's not saying, "Hey, dummy, you used the wrong setting for that kind of rice"!

This house is SO quiet!

My empty nest is back.

After a very full six weeks, I'm back in an empty nest. Okay, it's not completely empty but the OC is at work and B (who works a late shift so we see little of her) is still sound asleep.

But this house surely feels quiet and empty: C and her five lively little ones were here from the west coast for virtually all of July. Then, after a 9-day visit, D and her dh left yesterday morning for their two day drive home.

I've still got plenty of laundry, cleaning, cooking and errands to do but this morning I happily crawled back into bed and had myself lovely nap!