I always say how fast the days and months are flying by, but let me tell you it seems as though July lasted an entire year.
First of all the heat was crazy hot, the humidity felt like you were walking through water, my hubby and I had to do another overnight to Nashville at Vanderbilt hospital, I had blood work and a doctor appointment, also a trip for me to the dermatologist to have some places taken off of my face that were pre skin cancer, another vet appointment for Bunnie and then Izzy going missing for three days, and the worst is that hubby has been sick for two weeks. It started out as a sinus infection and seems to have gotten worse. He is on immunosuppressants, because of the kidney transplant, and everything hits his system harder and takes twice as long for him to recover. And work, July was the busiest month of the year for us. With all of that, you would think the month would have absolutely flown by, but it didn’t. I guess with my husband being sick and not himself it has been a long month. Hopefully he will soon be on the mend.
Now, with all of that said, I have to put a spin on this long month. I have also loved this month. I loved Celebrating America on the Fourth of July, the long sunny days, the beautiful blooming flowers, the lightning bugs or fireflies you might call them, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, time spent with family and friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, Fresh fruits and vegetables at the farm market, green luscious fields, reading, knitting and enjoying some time at home with my husband and the fur babies, air conditioning.
Hello and happy Tuesday. Wow what a heat wave we are having here in the south. Temps will be in the triple digits this week with the heat index being hotter than satan’s arm pits. We know the heat will be this way, we expect it this time of the year, we prepare by planning all indoor activities, but dang it is so miserable when it happens. And of course we all have to whine and talk about it like it’s never happened before. This too shall pass in a few months. Often we have summer weather well into October. Gulp!!!! You’ve heard of the Dog Days of Summer. Well I think we are in the Cat Days of Summer.
I’m not sure if it is the heat or the moon or because Mercury is in retrograde or what, but my kitty cats have been wild. We have three feral cats that we have had for over three years. We originally had five including mama cat and her four kittens. We took all of them in. About eight months after we took them in two of the kittens were gotten by coyotes. Because of that we now bring all of the feral cats into the garage at night. Well, let me say we lure them into the garage. Believe me when they say you can’t herd cats, you really can’t. Sometimes the cats come in easily enough. They are usually hungry and come in and get on their beds. It looks like kitty nirvana in our garage. We have numerous beds, toys and even an air conditioner for the summer time. They also have a heated kitty house for winter. But still there have been times that I have been up at all hours of the night trying everything I know to coax those babies into the garage.
Last week we could not corral them and get them in. After two sleepless nights I told my husband that we could not continue to lose sleep over the cats. It was getting ridiculous. We would give them until a certain time at night and then the garage door would go down. They are cats and yes we would worry sick about them but they are still a bit feral. We have never even been able to pet them. But does that stop us from loving them more than anything in the world? NO.
As soon as we pulled this kitty operation, Izzy disappeared. She is the smallest of all the cats and a bit on the goofy side. She is not smart enough to be scared like Allie, the mama cat, or her sister Sadie. She disappeared Friday morning or sometime late Thursday. We were sure a coyote had gotten her too. We have security cameras and we have not seen a coyote in a long time but still they are very sneaky.
Izzy
I cried and blamed myself and thought there surely was something I could have done. Hubs assured me that there was not. It was not our fault. We wandered through the woods all weekend trying to find Izzy or a trace of her. Mama cat mourned her baby and was so sad I couldn’t stand it. We mourned our Izzy girl and told stories about her. Mama cat dutifully came into the garage every night but her other daughter, the vixen black cat Sadie, stayed outside near the neighbors house. I took her some food and water. Sadie is very smart and will run up a tree or something tall as soon as the first sign of danger. I don’t worry quite as much about her being out all night.
Izzy
The really strange thing to all of this is that my friend Sherry’s cat, Grey, went missing at almost the same time Izzy did. We live miles apart, maybe thirty minutes or so from each other. They disappeared at almost the same time.
Sadie
On Monday morning I went outside to check on Sadie and see if I could find her. I let Mama cat out of the garage. We were walking along the driveway and all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw a gray streak. At first I thought it was mama cat but then to my surprise I saw it was Izzy!!!! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I think I screamed and I started yelling to Sadie and mama cat that Izzy was home!!!! I ran into the house and told my husband. We were so excited and relieved.
Allie ( The Mama Cat)
Another funny thing is that my friend Sherry’s cat Grey also returned that same day. Maybe they were out living it up together.
Please don’t think we haven’t tried to tame these babies. We have. Once a year we capture them and take them to the vet for their annual check ups. It is not easy. We want to love on them so bad. Mama cat is a little better and will allow some loving, but not much.
I am so hoping for a break in the weather and maybe the cats will calm down a bit. Mercury will soon be out of retrograde, fall is on the way. We are a little worried that the cats are out of sync because of Bunnie, our new girl. She is a very large but sweet dog. She’s loud and boisterous and loves the kitties and just wants to be friends with them. I did a post about Bunnie and if you missed it you can read ithere.
Hello my name is Lisa and yes, I am the crazy cat lady.
Last week was a quiet yet busy week for me. I was off work all week. We decided not to go on a trip and just hang out at the house. I loved every minute of it. I think it was a great preview for retirement.
We are so enjoying our new girl, Bunnie, if you missed my post about our newest family member you can check it out here. The kitties are adjusting. So far Gus has been the least friendly and he has been so territorial. We are trying to introduce Bunnie to them slowly. it is taking some time.
I finally finished the afghan I was working on for my niece. I couldn’t show it before I finished because it was a surprise for her for her Birthday which was last week.
Not the best picture but you can get an idea of what it looks like. She loved it.
My hubby and I decided to take a little road trip last Thursday. We went into the mountains to look at a local waterfall, Bald River Falls. The road leading to the falls has been closed for over a year so that a viewing bridge could be built. The road opened back up last month and the new bridge was opened. We went to check it out. It was just beautiful. Because of all the rain we have had, the waterfall was flowing fast and hard.
We decided to get a Frappuccino to start the trip into the mountains. It wasdelicious.
We stopped and had lunch in Tellico Plains at Ironworks Grill, and then stopped at the local Mennonite Market.
Beautiful vegetables. We will go back on Saturday and stock up for the week.
This was our haul from the Market. Mark wanted some local honey. I love the oatmeal raisin cookies.
I had to take my sister in law and her daughter and granddaughter to the airport on Friday and then we helped another niece move into a new apartment on Saturday. So a busy and fun filled week. It’s back to work for me today and the usual summer crowds.
I leave you with a picture of Bunnie enjoying a walk with us and a picture of Gus who has claimed Bunnie’s new bed.
Sweet Bunnie
This is the bed I bought for Bunnie but both Gus and Kitty Kitty have claimed it.
Hi friends. I hope you are having a great start to this new week and fairly new month. A lot has been going on around here. Grab a coffee or a glass of wine and I will introduce you to the newest member of our family.
The biggest piece of news that I have to share with you is about our new baby, Bunnie. No, she’s not a rabbit she is a dog. She appears to be a Golden Retriever or something along those lines. We first noticed her in the yard a couple of weeks ago. We actually saw her coming around at night on the security camera.
During the day we would catch a glimpse of her now and then but she would not come near us. She tried to follow my car a few times when I left for work. It was almost like she was looking to see who was in the car. This makes me think she may have been dumped out by someone. Because we live in such a rural wooded area people do that all the time. It makes me sick to think people do that but they do. We have gotten most of our babies this way.
She’s always smiling!!!
After a week or so she finally came to the edge of the yard. We put a bowl of food out for her and she ran over and ate it ravenously. The next day we did that a few times and she came closer and closer. Finally after standing, for what felt like an hour, but was more like ten minutes, with my back to her in a half squatted position and my hand extended behind me, I made contact. She crawled on her tummy over to me. I finally started petting her. I could see her hair was matted and she had so many ticks on her. I could see she was a female.
She was afraid of Mark for a little while. She jumps at every little noise. We made her a bed under the deck. I bought her a nice large dog bed and she refused to sleep on it. She felt more comfortable on the stones under the deck.
She is just the sweetest goofball and she looks like she is grinning constantly. Once we were able to brush her and get some of those nasty ticks, about forty so far, off her she felt a lot better. I bought her a flea and tick collar and we haven’t seen a single tick on her since. We did notice that her left eye had a white place on it. We thought it was a cataract.
I called the vet to get an appointment to bring her in for a checkup. They didn’t have an opening for almost two weeks. However, when I mentioned the eye they wanted us to bring her in immediately to get that checked out. They said if it were an ulcer the quicker they could treat it the better they would have of saving it.
She loves being where we are. She listens to us and peers through the window.We can’t wait to bring her inside with us.
Because she had gotten so familiar with us, although she is still shy around us, I thought she would be fine with the vet. The day we took her to the ver, she jumped right into the back of my car. Mark got in the back with her. But once we got to the vet clinic she freaked out. She went berserk and it was all Mark and I could do to hold onto the leash. The vet tech had to bring out an extra leash to put around her. Getting her inside the building was not an option. The vet had us come to the back of the building away from cars and noises and she came out to look at her eye. They also handed me the wand to scan her to see if she had been chipped. She had.
The vet said the place on her eyeball was a scar that had resulted from some type of injury a while back. She would never get her eyesight back but at least she still had one good eye. Through the identification number from the chip we discovered the owners name and phone number and email address. The Vet Clinic tried to locate the owner. But after many attempts to locate her they, nor we, had any luck. Let me just say, this girl has been through a lot.
So we are planning to keep her unless an owner turns up that truly wants her back. We did discover through this information bank that she had been adopted through our local animal shelter two years ago. She was estimated to be about six years old at that time. That would make her eight years old now and I’m just not sure about that. She acts like a big puppy. That means we are unsure of her exact age.
Our sweet Bunnie girl.
We will slowly start introducing her to the inside cats. So far she has been great with the outside cats. I have done a lot of reading about Golden Retrievers. They want to be near their family. They are great with cats. We are hoping that very soon she will be an inside girl with Gus and Kitty Kitty. That is our goal.
Why did I name her Bunnie? I’m not sure. We didn’t even know if she was a male or female for a long time. When I went outside to call for her I just called out Bunnie, and she came. It stuck and that is her name. We love her so much!!
Southern Patches 