Tracie is Adopted

My previously-adopted cat, Tracie, that was dumped at the Maryland Heights branch of the Humane Society last Saturday (and I picked up Sunday) was adopted this Sunday afternoon.  A couple, Barb and Mark, called and wanted to see Ebony, my sweet, precious smaller black cat.  I allow prospective adopters to come to my house and see the cats in a home setting, just walking around and being themselves.  I know Ebony thinks this is her permanent home and there's absolutely no reason she needs to be friendly or nice to anyone else.  She was being a little devil and didn't want anything to do with them or me, scratched my neck and ran away.  Barb asked if I had anyone else.  My "she really is a sweet, loving cat" speech didn't work, even though she really is the sweetest cat I have.  I took her downstairs to Tracie's room and they fell in love with her.  Tracie just layed in their arms and let them pet her.  They have a cocker spaniel and wanted a dog-friendly cat.  I hadn't introduced her to Lucy, yet, so when I brought Lucy in the room, there was one little hiss and then nothing.  They also have a 24 lb. male Maine Coon cat, but in just a week, Tracie had only met one other cat.  One night I went in her room and was shocked to find Trish, a large brown tabby, in Tracie's room.  I was last in there that morning, and she must have slipped in when I went out, so they'd been together all day and I didn't hear a thing and there was no blood or tufts of hair in the room.  

Barb called me at 8:30 this morning to say Tracie was fitting into their family perfectly.  She and the male cat are licking each other and the dog is just fine, too.  The two sons also love her.  I think Tracie has finally found her forever home.  Barb and Mark seemed like the perfect couple.  Don't you love happy endings?  

This is the same picture as her earlier post, but I went back and found the picture of her with four of her five litter mates back in Aug or Sept of '09, when they were about 3 months old.  One kitten, Tori, had already been adopted.

From left to right they are Taylor, Trevor, Thomas, Trina, and Tracie, on the end.  The whole litter had the softest, silkiest fur I've ever felt.  And I have no idea how I got five kittens to sit all in a row like this. 

Fun Flower 9-Patch Quilts

I saw this in McCall's Quilting magazine, Jan-Feb '11 issue, HAD to have it and ordered the kit that day.  The fabric is the Fun Flower collection by Lakehouse Dry Goods.  The 57" sq. quilt was designed by Holly Holderman.   I love it!  It's like the fabric and quilt were designed just for me.  It's not quilted yet. I recently got a stitch regulator put on my Handiquilter longarm and will now be able to do some custom quilting on it instead of my usual all-over free motion. 

 Here's a close up of a corner so you can see the blocks.  The 9-patches were pieced, but the flowers are printed and cut from yardage.  The stripes and dots weren't printed straight at all, and I really had to work to cut the pieces crooked enough so the stripes and dots were straight.

With the beautiful leftover fabric, I designed and made a table runner.  I only had three of the large-printed flowers. I love how this turned out and wish I could use it on the table, but it would only be a cat bed. It just has basic stitch-in-the-ditch quilting done on my Bernina.  The thin pink border and the last black border were my own fabrics.   16"x37"

I still had fabric left over.  

The kit came with yardage for the borders, large flowers, and binding, but with 10" squares of the nine-patch fabrics.  I cut all the 10"squares into 2" squares and had lots of little squares left over.  I was tired of making 9-patches, so I made 4-patches and framed them in black. I found a multi-colored fabric that went very well as the alternate block, and a stripe that rocked.  I set it off with a half inch black border and 6 inches of hot pink.  It's an optical illusion that the black-framed blocks don't appear to be touching at the corners and are smaller than the solid alternate blocks.  Trust me, they're all the same 5" finished size.


This will be a little girl's baby quilt for the next one born into the family.  I've never had a baby quilt done ahead of time, before.  I like it.   47" x 57"  I'd like to get a little boy quilt made up next for my nephew.

This quilt took 32 black-framed blocks. I still have 22 black-framed blocks left, and am planning to use a white with multi-colored dots in it for the alternate block for a very graphic look.  Just to change it up a little.  It'll have a smaller center and will need an extra border or two.

Tracie, the Returned Cat

What a weekend I had.  Friday I took Mom to a doctor's appointment and cleaned and cooked for a quilt group meeting at my house Saturday morning, and for a family birthday party for my mom at 2pm on Sunday.

Saturday evening I got a call that one of the cats that I raised from 5 weeks of age and adopted out 1.5 years ago was dumped at a humane society branch in the next county.  The idiot adopters think we won't find out when they do that, but don't remember that all of our cats are microchipped, registered to Heartland, and we get notified.  Duh!  This is my third return, and all were dumped in the next county by people living in this county. 

Tracie was returned for supposedly peeing outside the box, eating furniture, and destroying the house.  I called the adopter.  Her mom said her daughter gave Tracie to a coworker last fall to rehabilitate.  It was the coworker that dumped her 4 months later.  The only room I had available was one vacated a couple weeks ago by 6 cats I'd kept for 4 months for a friend who was told by animal control she had 24 hours to get rid of all but 2 of her animals in the apartment.  She had 7 cats, a rabbit and a dog. I spent two hours cleaning the room Sunday morning since it was such a mess, I just couldn't deal with it before I had to.  More hair in a month than you could imagine, stuffing pulled out of the recliner, and they somehow figured out how to open the cabinet doors from the top platform of the cat tree, shred two rolls of paper towels and then close the door behind them.  All the cats were so good, though, it was fun to have them.  They're now in their mom and dad's new house.

I left the house at noon.  When I got to the humane society and told the lady why I was there, there were whispers and strange looks exchanged among the employees.  The lady even came around and sat by me in the waiting area.  Now, I was really worried.  Seems "Diamond," as Tracie was renamed, was not a happy camper and was letting everyone know.  Nobody wanted to get her out of the cage and into my carrier!  I went back with the lady to the cages.  The girls couldn't find a net, but they did bring elbow-length leather gloves and a fake hand on a stick.  I had put my finger up to the cage while they were getting their props and Tracie seemed fine and sniffed and licked me.  She was okay when they touched her with the fake hand, so glove girl reached in, grabbed her and put her in the carrier without any problems.  Not quite the banshee I was expecting.  She was fine all the way home.  When I opened the carrier door to her pristine and quiet room, I didn't know if she'd attack me or what, but she just stayed in the carrier.  I opened a can of food, and heard my company arrive for Mom's 82nd birthday party.  I'd picked her up on my way home.  Never did get my shower or hair washed, but, hey, it was just my family.  Got down there once mid-party to check on her and she gave me a little sassy meow and went behind the chair. After everybody left, I went down and Tracie was laying on the recliner (which I had covered with a sheet).  I gave her the other half can of food and scooped a pee ball out of the litter box.  No smell of urine anywhere else.  She seemed perfectly fine, but I didn't try to pet her, just talked to her.  At 10pm I took my Kindle in and read in the recliner for 45 minutes while she layed on the cat tree. 

She's just beautiful.  A medium-haired, mostly white, diluted calico.  It's possible she was just stressed out from the dogs at both houses, and who-knows-what-else. She goes in for a vet checkup tomorrow.  Monday I picked her up and held her when she came over and rubbed on my hand, and she was perfectly fine when I clipped four matted balls of fur from her neck.  She's only gone in the litter box and hasn't eaten a single piece of furniture.  Here is my "wild, destructive, misbehaving" cat.

Isn't she gorgeous?  Beautifully marked and a full plume of a tail.  And so sweet, too.  She layed on the recliner with me last night while I read.  I don't think I'll have her very long at all. She's had all four paws declawed, is spayed AND MICROCHIPPED.  Added Thurs:  Tracie tested negative for feline leukemia and aids today.  Ears, heart, lungs are good.  Not enough urine to test for an infection, so I've been squirting water in her mouth tonight and will continue in the morning before her test.

Brooke, Cooper, and Kittens

Sunday my sister, Karen, and extended family came over for Mom's birthday.  Brooke, her daughter, and Cooper, her grandson, couldn't get enough of the kittens.  Her son's wife has already picked one out, but only in her dreams.  Their life is full with jobs and two kids.  Maybe one day, Emma.

Sprinkles' Babies at 3 Weeks

I cut the door in the birthing box all the way to the floor yesterday so everybody can get out, walk around and build their muscles.  Litter box training also started.  That's their little box on the right.  I found them at Walmart for a few dollars and bought four.  They're perfect for the babies.

The babies are getting bigger and drinking more milk, and Sprinkles has been spending more and more time outside the birthing box lately.  She'll go in the box to nurse, then come out and lay on the floor.  She's been a very quiet cat, but I swear that when I was cutting the door open yesterday she was squawking at me.  I really think she was wondering what the hell I was doing.  Why was I letting her babies out and how was she going to have any peace and quiet, now?!  Her expression was something like this one.  In order to give her some breathing space, I used a box to block off the doorway so she can easily jump over it and be in the bedroom.  She likes to lay on the bed and look out the window.

 This is a pile of gray kittens.  Five are in the bed.  All have different colored Velcro collars so I can tell them apart when I weight them every morning.  It's also good to know who's the friendly one, who's using the litter box, who's more playful, stuff like that.  That's hard to do with 6 gray kittens.  Sprinkles has been the best mom.  Her babies are all at or above average weight for their age, and all have nice, full bellies.

There is now officially more kitten weight than mama weight.  The kittens are all a pound or slightly more, and mama weighs about 5.5 pounds.  She's so small, but she obviously is producing enough milk for all six babies.  I do give her at least 4 small cans of Fancy Feast a day, plus 1/3 c of formula and as much dry food as she wants.  And she's not getting fat. 


 
Mom was laying on the bed, so I got two kittens and tried to get some good photo ops.  Not everyone cooperated, but little Orange got a hug, and Blue managed to not fall off the bed.

The Kitten Nursery

Last December I knew it was time for a designated kitten nursery.  I needed to take up the carpet in one of the bedroom closets, and put down vinyl for obvious reasons.  The first picture is after the carpet was taken up exposing the plywood flooring.  When I laid the vinyl over the plywood, I could see the grain and depressions of the wood showing in the vinyl.  Not acceptable, even in a kitten closet.  I needed just a little something to fill in the depressions.  Something like batting.  I ran downstairs and cut a length of thin Hobbs 80/20 batting (only quilters will know what this is), laid it down, smoothed and trimmed to size, then laid the vinyl over that.  No glue for the babies, but it worked perfectly.  Just a little cushion and probably a little warmth.

The second picture is with the vinyl down and quarter round along the baseboard.  It was the lightest and smoothest that Lowes had.  The closet looks much narrower in the picture than it really is.

 This is the current room.  Two sets of shelves hold almost all of my foster supplies like towels, sheets, food, dishes, meds, collars, cleaning supplies and paperwork.  The shelves are blocked off at the bottom with cardboard so the babies can't get stuck anywhere.  The cardboard box and green towel on the right is the birthing box.  Sprinkles and babies are in the green cat bed on the left.  Food and litter boxes round out the necessities.  I love it.  Messes can be cleaned up easily.  There's a broom and dustpan just inside the door so litter can be swept up quickly.

Sprinkles' Babies

A week ago last Saturday I took a pregnant cat that was found on a lady's porch.  She took the cat in and kept it for a few days until she could bring it in to us at Petsmart.  Her little girl named the cat Sprinkles.  I had agreed to take it, go through the birth, and keep mom and kittens until they were older and could go to another foster mom's house.  An x-ray last Wednesday showed six kittens would probably be born in a week or so.  Sprinkles had her six kittens Saturday night.  The first one was born at 8:30, the last one at 12:30.  Everything went like clockwork.  The only problem was sitting hunched over the birthing box holding a flashlight on Sprinkles.  I saw each kitten being born.  

The only time I had to step in was when Sprinkles was licking and cleaning #2, pictured below, and ignoring #3 who had come out a very long 30 seconds before.  I gently took #2 away to a separate box and guided Sprinkle's head back to see #3.  She then began to lick the new arrival.  The red mass is the placenta that's attached to #2 by the umbilical cord.  I couldn't take #2 away until mom bit through the cord.  As gross as it sounds, mom eats the placenta and other little blobs of things of each birth.  In the wild, they're getting rid of all traces of their young to protect them from other animals, and it's also a good source of protein that the moms need during and after birth.   

 

Here Sprinkles is cleaning #3.  Not with 10 years of yoga could I, or anyone I know, get into that position, but Sprinkles was like this a good part of the evening.

 

After #6 was born and cleaned, I put all the kittens in the other box, lifted Sprinkles out in the top towel, took all the towels out of the birthing box and replaced them with clean ones.  As soon as I put the first kitten back in the clean box, Sprinkles jumped back in and layed down.  All the kittens immediately began searching for just the right nipple.  There are three darker solid gray and three lighter gray tabbies.  Today, they're three days old and all doing well.  Mom was very thin after all the babies were out and wasn't producing much milk.  I helped Sprinkles out by bottle feeding them a few times a day, but the thing that helped most was giving her about 8 of the small cans of kitten food every day, as well as a bowl of grain-free dry food.  She's now feeding all her kittens on her own and still inhaling food.  Isn't she beautiful?  She's very small - only 5.5 pounds - the size of a normal 6 month old kitten, but the vet said she was about a year and a half.  All will be available for adoption in a couple of months.

The Salt and Pepper Shaker Tote Bag

My foster-mom friend, Lisa, asked me if I'd make her mom a tote bag for Christmas.  Mom collects salt and pepper shakers, so she and Lisa go to all the local antique shops on a regular basis.  Lisa ends up holding all the shakers while they shop, so could I make a tote bag with lots of inside pockets.  I questioned her about the legalities of putting unpaid-for merchandise in a bag while they shopped.  She said it wasn't a problem at all.  All the shop owners know them very well.  

I drafted out a design with two rows of pockets on each side of the bag.  It's 14" wide, 15" tall, and 6" deep.  The bag lining and all the pockets have iron-on fleece to cushion the fragile shakers. I also included four simple bags made from fleece leftovers in case Mom needs to protect something not in the pockets.  An open sleeve holds a piece of cardboard for the bottom and can be changed if it gets bent.  I haven't heard yet how Mom likes her bag, but it's probably the only one like it she got this Christmas.

Christmas Day Party

We had a smaller gathering than usual for Christmas.  With the uncertain weather, the out-of-town people elected to stay closer to home. 

 This is Adelyn, my great-niece.  She's my youngest sister, Karen's, son's daughter.  She had a great time playing in the kitten room and we all had a great time watching her play.

Cane is the gray and white kitten in front, then Evan, the tabby, then Reed in the back.

 Here's Adelyn with her uncle Zach, my nephew.  We didn't get that poker game in, so I didn't get to show Zach who's the poker queen.

I found these rocking horses at Target and couldn't resist getting one for Adelyn.  It was a big hit.

Isn't she beautiful?  And so good, too.  The family didn't play games like we usually do, we just all watched Adelyn play.  She was so entertaining.

Ice is Gone, Pain is Not

It's been a week and a half since I fell.  X-rays showed my tail bone wasn't broken, but I understand from people who've been there, that I might have been better off if I HAD broken something.  Bruising can be worse than a break.  Advil wasn't doing it, so my doctor gave me a stronger anti-inflammatory pill that didn't do much either.  I couldn't sit, bend over, stoop, do stairs, etc. without pain.  Made scooping litter boxes, feeding, and watering the cats almost impossible.  John was a lifesaver.  He did all seven rooms and stations twice a day for me. Christmas day my family that was in town came over.  John gave me the best present - he rooted around in the medicine cabinet and found some Vicodin from two years ago.  It still worked. I felt REALLY good.  I know, we're not suppose to mix meds, blah, blah, but if that's what I have to do to be able to sit and sleep, I have no problem.  Taking a nap in the afternoon and falling asleep while watching TV in the evening are small prices to pay for my butt not to ache all the time.  My mom only needs to breath in pill dust most of the time,  but it takes a little more medication for me than for other people.   I'm not driving, so no danger there.  I do have to take Mom for her Coumadin check at the hospital tomorrow morning, so I won't get to take my meds until I get back.  It's going to be a long morning.  I understand I should be feeling better in 6 to 8 weeks.  Great.

Ice Really Is Slick

There's thankfully no pictures for today's blog.  John and I got back from buying my Christmas present at Walmart.  I got a new TV for my sewing room to replace the really old one that's bigger than the legal-size file cabinet that it's sitting on, behind my sewing machine, quilting machine, and cutting table.  We'd unloaded it and other misc things.  John went in the house and I was loading up three crates (black wire cages) to get ready for taking the cats up to Petsmart tomorrow for adoptions.  I always load the crates on Friday to make loading cats easier on Saturday morning.  The St. Louis area got a small ice storm Tuesday.  I threw down what ice-melt we had from last year, but it obviously wasn't enough.  I was putting the first crate, a small one, in the front seat and my feet went out from under me and I went down on my tailbone and smacked the back of my head on the concrete.  I laid there for about 15 seconds till I could breathe again, fished my cell phone out of my pocket and called John in the house.  The conversation went like this:

"I'm laying on the driveway.  Come and help me up."
"Be right there."

So, I'm laying on my back, on the driveway, with a cat crate on top of me, in a subdivision, on the main street, at 2:45 on a Friday afternoon.  Not a car drove by.  Not one neighbor came out to see if I was dead. Where was John! He'd only been in the house for 20 seconds and the door to the laundry room is 25' away! I laid there, and laid there, and laid there, and finally, he came out. 

"Where the hell have you been!!!"  
"I had to put my pants and shoes on!"
"Why didn't you have any pants on!"  (He had them on when we got back from Walmart!)
"I was changing my clothes."
"Why the hell were you changing your clothes?!"

By this time he'd come around the back of the car and started laughing. I think to men, yelling and screaming is a sign we're okay.  I couldn't get the crate off me, and I couldn't get my feet under me because of the ice.  After he lifted the crate off, he had to spin me around so my feet and legs were over the snowy grass so I could roll over, get on my knees, and be helped up.  That's when I saw the spider-web cracks in the ice where my head bounced a couple times.  I inched my way into the house, took four Advil and a half cup of chocolates I'd just bought.  Went one step at a time down to the family room, but couldn't sit back in my recliner till the meds started to work.  John brought my Kindle down, and I had my laptop on the end table.  I was set, almost.  John thought I was kidding about bringing me a martini - for medicinal purposes only.  I got water.  I'm still here, 2.5 hours later, but my butt doesn't hurt if I don't move.  I definitely have a flatter place on the back of my head, but no headache or anything.  I'm probably not going to adoptions tomorrow morning.  I'll be happy if I can get out of bed and make it to the bathroom.

Disappearing Kittens

I went in my studio last night to finish up a project and check on Cane and Reed, who were in there visiting Trish and TJ.  The kittens were gone.  Nowhere to be found.  After searching and calling, I assumed they were napping in a pile of bags of batting scraps.  I had made a very large sewing machine cover to keep cats out of thread, pins, and anything else I didn't want them to get into along with my machine when I'm not using it.  I was proud that I could do something to keep one step ahead of the cats.  When I tried to take the cover off my machine, it wouldn't budge.  This was very strange.  Upon investigation, I found the culprits.

 It's hard to be smarter than a cat - or sometimes, even a kitten.