December

           It’s here!

          December is here!

          I think I told you at the beginning of the year that Christmas would be here before you know it, then it would be 2022. I think I’m always reminding you of the passage of time. Mostly because I’m so acutely aware of it. I’m hurtling headfirst to the finish line at a hundred miles an hour. My days pass in a blur but I try not to take them for granted. And I hope you don’t either.

          We had snow! That’s an exclamation of joy. I like snow — but I don’t have to go anywhere in it. That makes a big difference in how you feel about it. That, and I’m warm and cozy in my house.

          Bondi got to experience snow for the first time. She was cautious at first. I tossed her a snowball and she chased it, like I knew she would. When she picked it up, it crumbled in her mouth and she ate it.

I made her another, smaller one and gave it to her. She crunched that one too.

You might think Bondi’s a Chiweenie but she’s not. She’s a turkey. She makes me go outside with her and she doesn’t make Mike.

          “What happens if you don’t go out with her?” you wanna know.

          Bondi always stops just outside the door and turns her head enough to see if I’m following. If I’m not she’ll just turn around and jump up on the door to come back in. After several failed attempts to get her to go out on her own (and I know she has to go) I’ll take pity on her, go out and stand there while she does her business. There have been times when she gets too snoopy and I get too cold and go back inside. (I should wear a coat.) She always sees me and comes running to the door, whether she went or not!

          Bondi plays with Blacky a lot, which is one of the reasons I wanted to get her a kitten. Blacky doesn’t always appreciate being drug around the floor by the nape of his neck and he’ll cry. Mike gets so mad at Bondi. Me? I figure Blacky needs to stand up for himself. Kittens have needle-sharp teeth and claws. He needs to use them when he’s had enough.

          Mike doesn’t pay much attention to Bondi and Blacky until Blacky cries. He doesn’t see when Bondi’s minding her own business and Blacky picks on her.

          Those two chase each other around the house. Sometimes Bondi’s the chaser and sometimes she’s the chasee. On one recent game of tag, Blacky jumped up on the table and slid right into Mike’s pill planner knocking an almost-full two-week planner to the floor scattering pills all over the place!

          I didn’t think Bondi would eat them but I kept her away anyway. There I was, on my hands and knees under the table and I hear, crunch, crunch. I turn and see Bondi eating something. I grabbed her, stuck my finger in her mouth to open her jaws and shook her head. I didn’t see anything fall out but she wasn’t crunching anymore.

          “I hope whatever she ate doesn’t kill her.”

          “If it was one of my blood pressure ones, it might.”

          I set my jaw, determined to accept whatever happens and as I’m crawling out I spot a little blue pill. “I don’t think she ate it,” I said and held up a pill with spit and dirt stuck to it.

          Now, days later, she’s fine. I’m guessing it was bitter and she didn’t want it because I couldn’t have stopped her from swallowing it.

          I helped sort the pills out then Mike put ‘em back in their little pockets. Needless to say, the planner now lives in my kitchen towel drawer.

          Bondi likes to cuddle with Blacky and Blacky seems to tolerate her well enough, sometimes sharing my chair with her. Last night they were cuddling together on my lap in the recliner. Those are the most heart-warming moments.  

          Tiger is still pretty growly with Blacky and that’s another reason I wanted a kitten. Blacky doesn’t give up and leave Tiger alone. He’ll try to share the food dish at the same time as Tiger and will get in the chair next to him and nap.

          And I wanted to tell you how Blacky got his name.

          “How did he get his name?” you ask.

          Blacky is named after Mike’s grandfather who was nicknamed Blacky.

          “How did he get that nickname?” you wanna know.

          He worked for the phone company and spent a lot of time outdoors. He tanned really dark. Now, I don’t want any hate-mail over this. In today’s age of political correctness, there would be outrage over this but it was a different world back then and no matter how hard we try, we can’t change the past.

I haven’t seen Blacky interact with Spitfire very much.

          Speaking of Spitfire…

          Meals are served pretty regular around here. Maybe not at the exact same time every day but I feed them in the morning and again in the late afternoon. The rest of the time they can help themselves to a dish of dry food if they’re hungry.

          Spitfire has his internal clock set and almost always shows up for those feedings. In the morning I soak a little dry food in hot water, then mix in a small can of food. In the evening I divide a small can between the five cats, which amounts to about a spoonful each.

“Five?” you say. “I thought you only had three.”

We do only have three — in the house. Callie and Sugar still live in the cat room and they get their share of the canned food.

Sometimes Spitfire’s a little late (or maybe I’m a little early) and he’ll have a cold breakfast or an empty food dish at supper because one of the other cats ate it, but he usually always shows up.

          A couple of days ago, he didn’t come in for supper. He missed breakfast too. I can’t tell you how much my big, rugged mountain man agonizes over the thought of losing one of our tribe. He didn’t worry too much the first night, but he was worried all the next day.

          “I bet he got hit on the road,” Mike said.

          I shrugged. “If he did, worrying about it won’t change it.”

          Then it’s, “Poor Spitfire,” that I hear moaned over and over.

          I had letters to go to the mailbox. “I’m gonna take my letters to the box. I’ll walk the ditch and see if I can see him.”

          I steeled myself for the sight of seeing him lying in the ditch but he wasn’t.

          Eventually Mike resigned himself and said, “It’s one less cat to feed.”

Late in the afternoon, long about feeding time, Spitfire appeared on the other side of the door. Relief washed over Mike and sounded in his voice when he announced his arrival and let him in.

“Maybe we shouldn’t let them out anymore,” I suggest.

We’ve had this discussion before and I’m usually the one that gives in to their cries to go out but I’m really gonna try not to let them out anymore.

I know Tiger will be the most upset about it. He’s an avid hunter and brings his prey in. He likes to torture them on the patio before he eats them.

“You’re a good boy,” I tell him and leave him to his thing. I can’t change him but it doesn’t stop me from admonishing him. “Just kill it already, would ya!”

          I took a picture, mainly so’s I could remember to tell you what a great and mighty hunter he is and didn’t realize I caught the poor little guy in his final scream.

          Later in the week he brought in another one.

          “Tiger just jumped over the fence and he’s got something in his mouth,” Mike told me. “I can’t tell what it is.”

          Since I’d already taken one picture, I grabbed my camera and went out for another. Now I can tell you he’s gotten two mice this week!

          This little guy was a fighter. When he couldn’t get away, he turned and attacked. He launched himself through the air right at Tiger.           

            Tiger didn’t flinch. Over and over again he jumped, trying to nip a nose.

It surprised me when he ran right under Tiger.

Despite all his courage and feistiness, it didn’t change the outcome. This little David lost to his Goliath.

          I told Tiger he could still hunt mice, he just had to do it in the house from now on.

          We had another day of snow and I had more stuff to go to the mailbox. I decided to take Bondi with me. I didn’t want her little feet to get cold, so I put her booties on. I was so surprised at how well she accepted them. When I put them on Ginger, she’d shake her feet trying to get them off, then she’d give up and run through the snow. Bondi barely noticed them at all.

           Tiger followed us to the mailbox but stopped at the big rock. When we got back to the rock, Bondi tried to climb it to get to him. The booties aren’t that great for rock climbing and she slid back to the ground.

          Since Bondi seemed to be having a good time, I decided to walk up on the hill and check out the Bittersweet.

          All the way along the path, Bondi and Tiger played tag. He’d hide and when Bondi got close, he’d jump out and tag her. She tried to go after him but her leash didn’t allow her to go far. Here I caught Tiger lying in wait.

          When I went back for the day’s mail, I found my very first Christmas card of the season. Thank you, beautiful cousin, Rosemary.

          Speaking of beautiful…

          Look at this beautiful family!

          “Aren’t those the Kipps?” you say.

          Yes, they are. My Miss Rosie in the front with their daughters behind her. Marla’s on the left and Jenn’s on the right. Lamar’s bringing up the rear.

          Not only are they beautiful but they can sing too! They graced us with a gospel hymn at church Sunday a week ago.

          How about a sunrise picture?

           I got established with a new doctor this week. Michelle is a PA and Mike’s doctor. We both really like her.

          The only health concern I had was a nagging morning cough. Michelle thinks it’s probably GERD and prescribed generic Nexium for me. And to be on the safe side, she’s ordered an endoscopy for the same time I have my colonoscopy. Fun.

          “You have to take it in the morning a half hour before you eat or have coffee,” Michelle told me.

          “You’re killin’ me!” I cried. I do love my coffee — especially in the morning. Often times I’ll start a cup cookin’ even before I put my duds on so it would be ready when I was ready to sit down and tap out my morning love note.

          “Keep it by the bed with a little water and take it before you get up,” she suggested.

          Generic Nexium is not cheap! At Walmart a three-month supply would be six hundred dollars — ninety-two after insurance. They called me. Mike got on the computer and discovered that if we use the GoodRX card sent to us in the mail, we could get it for about forty-five dollars at Weis. Without that, it would nine hundred sixty-six dollars at Weis. Is that not crazy!

          Mid-week we went to Tunkhannock to pick up my prescription. I only took two road pictures worth sharing.

           We get in the car and I’m reading the information that came with the pills. “It says to take it an hour before food or drink,” I tell Mike.

          Michelle said a half hour but I’m not taking any chances. I set my alarm for five because the earliest I’ll get out of bed is six.

         Oh my gosh! I almost forgot to tell you! It’s a good thing I have pictures to remind me.

          Our new little kitten is just like any other kitten. He gets into EVERYTHING! He likes to pick at my dried flower arrangements. All of my Silver Dollars end up on the floor and Bondi tears them up. OY! I pick ‘em up and toss them in the scrap bucket. Maybe the seeds’ll sprout out in the weeds where I toss ‘em.

          Everything on my craft table is knocked over or knocked to the floor. When a piece of stained glass falls onto the cat dish, it breaks. He’s such a turkey. My pens end up on the floor because someone batted them off the desk and Bondi carries them around. “That’s mine,” I tell her and take it away. All I need is ink all over the place because she chewed the barrel. I worry he’ll knock my camera off the counter, too.

          But, and there’s always a but, I came out one morning and found my long-lost tweezers on the desk, sitting right there, out in the open, just like that!

          Do you remember when I lost them? I don’t but it must’ve been more than a year ago. I know I wrote about it because they were my favorite tweezers. I looked everywhere for them — several times and couldn’t find ‘em. Now, thanks to a curious kitten, they appear, like magic, on my desk.

          How about a beautiful cloud-filled blue-sky picture?

           “Peg, did you make anything this week?” you wanna know.

          Did I make anything this week! You bet I did! This week, I made a box out of cardboard that looks like a book.

          I lined the inside with felt.

          This project was not a hit with everyone. We’ll just call it a learning experience and try again. It was fun to make.

           Until next time, we’ll call this one done!

Headliner

           This week, in the Luby household, we have adventures in tryin’ to adopt a cat.

          “It’ll likely be the headliner in this weekend's letter blog,” I told my peeps in my morning love note. And so, it shall be. Then somebody got the bright idea just to name this week’s letter blog Headliner since it’s such a ‘star’ of a word.

          We lost two cats in a short period of time and now have only two left in the house (and two outside), and since I have six litter boxes, we definitely had room in our house and in our hearts to adopt a kitten.

          The Bradford County Humane Society is a page I like on Facebook. When they post pictures, it comes up in my newsfeed. I saw they had kittens and begged for one.

          “Bondi needs a kitten to play with,” I reasoned. “Our cats are too old to play with her much.”

          We had to be in Towanda on Tuesday to meet with our insurance man. I was up early and took a sunrise picture.

          It was one lane going down Welles Mountain. They’re replacing the power poles. On a whim I took a picture of our flagman. I know. I’m weird. Even Mike says so.

“He saw you take his picture,” Mike said.

“Yeah?”

 

We get to the other end and the flagman there is on his radio.

          “The other guy’s probably telling him to watch out for that weird lady with a camera taking pictures.”

          He looked right at me when I took his picture.

          “He’s got a big beard,” I said.

          Geese on Claverack’s Pond.

          We took Bondi with us. We take her with us as much as we can. She rides really well and if we leave her home, she’s frantic when we come back. Jumping all over us and piddlin’ a little bit.

          We spent about an hour with our agent and when we came out there was flow snurries — er snow flurries.

           “You want to go to the shelter?” Mike asked. We were halfway there.

          “Yeah. Let’s go look. We don’t have to get one.”

Most of the kittens were a few months old and already fixed and I liked that. It was one less thing I’d have to fool with. And adopting wasn’t that expensive either. Fifty bucks. I couldn’t get a kitten, have it fixed, dewormed, and up-to-date on shots cheaper than that.

Some of the kittens were roaming around, others were in cages. This little girl claimed us as hers as soon as we walked in the cat room. We took our time and looked at all the other cats but eventually decided she was about as good as any of them.

We had Bondi with us. They had named her Joy when she lived there. One of the gals took our picture and posted it on Facebook.

Joy came to visit us today! She was one of the first pups to come up from North Carolina with Rusty’s Legacy, and she is beyond adorable! Her folks were here so Joy could help pick out a kitten friend today, it reads.

We hadn’t really planned on going to the shelter, it was a decision made after we left the house, so we didn’t have a carrier with us.

          “We have these cardboard ones you can purchase for six dollars,” Bobbi said.

          I didn’t want to buy one. “We’ll just carry her and I’ll hold her in the car.”

          “Okay, but the dogs barking tends to freak ‘em out,” she told us.

          “We’ll just buy one, Peg,” Mike said.

          I shrugged. “Okay with me.”

          “People have tried to carry them out before and have lost their cats. We found one but the other one got hit up on the road,” Bobbi said.

          Ayla, a shelter helper, came in. “They want Layla,” Bobbi told her and handed her a cardboard carrier. “Would you get her?”

          “Sure.” Ayla took the carrier and left.

          We did all the paperwork and Ayla came back with the carrier. We get out to the car and I’m putting the carrier in the back when a thought occurs to me. “Maybe we should check to see if we got the right one.” I opened the carrier and it wasn’t the one we’d picked. This was a littermate and looked similar. I took her back in.

          “That’s Layla,” Ayla said.

          “The one we wanted had white across the shoulders,” I told her.

          “That’s Pansy.”

          Ayla went to get the right kitten and Bobbi apologized. “I don’t spend as much time in the cat room as Ayla does.

          “No worries. I’m just glad I didn’t get the whole way home before I found out.”

          On the way home, this little girl had a cricky sorta meow. “We could call her Cricket,” I suggested.

          Mike didn’t care.

          The sun broke through the clouds.

          The site of our new Aldi’s store.

Cricket’s very loving. She wants constant attention. Eventually, though, she’d settle down and sleep on you. I was really starting to like her.

“What happened?” you ask.

          It became apparent that she had medical issues. First and foremost, she stunk. She smelled like poo.

          “Give her a bath,” Kevin, our handsome son, suggested when we told him.

          The next day I did just that. I stripped down to my underduds and got in the shower with her. She freaked out at first but never scratched me. I let her jump up on the glass doors until she tired herself out then I shampooed her from the tip of one end to the tail of the other.

          She dried and she still smelled bad.

          I Googled it. We’ve already ruled out dirty fur and dirty litter box. Change in food can cause it but by day three of being on our food she wasn’t any better.

          There are other, more serious health issues that can cause a bad smell. Dental and skin problems are two that I recall from reading and neither one of those would be a cheap fix.

          You can top a bad smell off with a respiratory something-or-another going on with her as she wheezed when she breathed, sneezed, and one eye was a little matted. Then there’s something wrong with one of her ears too. She’d shake her head a lot and had scratched at it so much her ear was red and swollen.

          “I think we should take her back and get a different one,” I told Mike.

          “It’s not fair to take her back just because she’s sick. You didn’t get rid of me because I got sick.”

          “Fine. We can keep her. I like her well enough. If you don’t mind paying the vet bills.”

          “We can take her back and not get another one. She’s disrupting the whole house and you can donate the fifty bucks,” Mike said.

          He’s right. She did disrupt the house. Tiger and Spitfire both reacted badly towards her, giving her a wide berth and hissing at her if she got too close. “They’ll get used to her and that’s why I wanted a kitten. They tend to integrate into the clowder better than adult cats do.”

          Then it was Thanksgiving and we agonized over our decision all day. Should we? Shouldn’t we? We both felt really bad about trading her in but we don’t need to adopt a huge vet bill and they only give you three days to decide. We took Cricket back on Friday.

          “They’ve got our money, I’m getting another cat,” I told Mike even though I did consider his idea.

“You pick out the next one,” he said. “I’ll wait in the car with Bondi.”

          When I took Cricket in, I lied to Bobbi. A lie of omission. I even told Mike ahead of time that I wasn’t going to mention the health concerns I had about this cat. “I don’t want to diminish her chances of being adopted. Maybe the next people will love her enough to get her fixed up.”

          “They should make sure they’re healthy before they put them up for adoption,” one of my peeps said and I just assumed they did.

          “What’s wrong her?” Bobbi asked.

          “She’s too needy. Once you start petting her, she won’t leave you alone.” It’s the truth but not the whole truth.

          Back in the kitten room, Bobbi let Cricket out of the carrier.

“I brought my carrier so you can keep that cardboard one.”

“Alright,” Bobbi said and left the room with it.

I checked out the kittens roaming free. Looking at eyes, I saw others like Cricket’s. In a cage I found a small male. He was one of the few males they had and he was the youngest of them. Some of our favorite cats were males, I thought. The tag on the cage said six weeks and neutered. There was another smaller black one in the cage above. The tag said female and not fixed. Ruling that one out, I opened the bottom cage and took the male out. His eyes looked clear and he didn’t smell like poo but he did smell like he’d had a bath recently. He purred when I stroked his fur then he gave me a little love nip.

“What’s a love nip?” you wanna know.

It’s a nip that lets you know they’ve had enough but not so hard it draws blood or even hurts.

Good, I thought, he needs a little fire in him to put up with Bondi.

Bobbi came back in the cat room. “So, you didn’t want the other one because it was too affectionate?”

She knows, I thought. “I’m a blogger. When I’m working on the computer, she just won’t leave me alone.” I’m stickin’ to my story. “It’s a good one to recommend if someone wants that. She’s really a good kitty. She didn’t scratch the furniture and she used the litter box.” We were quiet for moment. “I think I’ll take this one,” indicating the little black male.

I went out to the car to get the carrier while Bobbi swapped out the paperwork then we headed for home.

Looking the paperwork over, I see his age listed at five months and he’d be due for a shot in early December.

“You’d better call and get him an appointment then,” Mike suggested.

On the phone with the vet tech, I gave her what information I could about the new cat, including the conflicting age.

“He can’t be six weeks and neutered. They have to be eight weeks and two pounds before they can be fixed.”

“He must be five months then.”

Brenda went on. “Dr. K see’s kittens on Mondays but this Monday is full. I’ll have to get with Dr. K’s scheduler and see when they can get you in but she won’t be in until Monday.”

I thanked her and hung up.

“Mmmeooow,” came a throaty call from the backseat cat carrier.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “The last time I heard a meow like that was just before Macchiato puked.”

Jet, as he was labeled at the shelter, meowed another mournful meow.

Then the smell hit.

“Yep. He’s not a good traveler.”

Just like Macchiato, on the first day of every trip in the RV, he’d empty from both ends.

When we got home, I put the carrier in the shower, stripped down to my underduds, and opened the carrier. Two little black eyes blinked up at me. “Meow.”

“I hear ya, buddy.”

I got busy, got the dirty box out of the shower and up out of Bondi’s reach, then turned the shower on. Jet freaked and tried to climb the glass. It didn’t help that Bondi was on the other side scratching to get in. Then he turned and looked at my bare leg. “Don’t even think about it,” I told him and felt the water, adjusted the temp and shampooed his dirty little bottom.

Speaking of his bottom, and I know this is TMI, but do you really expect any less from me?

I was shampooing his bottom and felt two little hard nuggies where there should be no testicles. Having never been so familiar with a neutered male cat before in my life, I wondered if this was normal. Then, on his belly I feel a scar where a spay scar would normally be. See it? Cricket had one of those.

Now the story-maker in me is making up a story. Whomever prepped him for surgery thought he was female and the vet doing the procedure never checked the sex before she opened him up. I’m probably way off base, but why else would he have a vertical scar on his belly?

All I can say is he’d better be fixed.

The rest of the day he spent exploring the house.

“What do you want to call him?” I asked Mike. “Jet like the shelter called him?” Then I remembered where I’d head that name before. “Joe Snedeker has a Jack Russell named Jet.” He’s the weatherman on our local TV station.

“I don’t care. You pick the name.”

“Kevin had an all-black cat named Eclipse. Or how about Midnight, or Ebony. Yeah! If we had a white cat, they could be Ebony and Ivory!”

“I don’t care,” Mike iterated. “Just pick one and stick with it.”

I kept throwing names out hoping something would stick. “He’s black like a cricket, so we could keep the name Cricket.”

“That sounds like a girl’s name,” Mike said.

“So? He’s not really a boy anymore. Neutered male cats are called gibs.” For the next few hours, I tried out more names.

Last week my beautiful cousin Stacey sent me a short video of Tiger’s brother. “He fetches, too!” she told me. “He’s very sleek like a panther and so much bigger than their mom!”

Curious as to what they named their black cat, I asked.

“He’s Ean's. They call him Geralt from the Witcher series,” Stacey said.

That didn’t help me much but I kept thinking up names. “Mike, he’s black like coal, how about Coal?” I could tell by the silence that that one wasn’t a winner. “Black Beauty. Black Knight — or just Knight — or just Black — Blacky!” Simple and maybe a little obvious but I was running out of names to suggest.

          More silence. I puttered around in the kitchen.

          “Here Blacky,” I hear Mike call. “Blacky…”

          I grinned. Okay then, Blacky it is.

          I spent Saturday working on pictures for my letter blog and it looks like Blacky is going to be a big help, just like Tiger was when he was a baby.

          Blacky sees my mouse pointer moving around the screen and tries to catch it. His little paws activate the touch screen and he makes changes to my pictures. 

“You little rascal,” I fake scold. “Take a nap with Bondi.” I put him on the seat behind me.

And this, my dears, is how I sit in my computer chair 90% of the time. Behind me’s been Bondi’s spot since the first day we brought her home and now, even if she’s not in the chair with me, I always sit on the front third of the chair. It’s a habit at this point and hard to sit any other way. Even if I sit the whole way back in my chair, I’ll scootch around and eventually end like this anyway.

I feel like I have to explain my attire to you. These clothes are not for public consumption. They’re my comfy around-the-house clothes. A 4X men’s shirt and leggings are the way to go when your goal is comfort. 

You know something?

I know you know lots of somethings, but did you notice Cricket’s leg in the first picture? You can see where they’d had a bandage around her leg. That’s where they’d taken blood to do a feline leukemia test. I saw it on the paperwork and didn’t think anything about it. It’s the first time we’ve ever adopted a cat from the shelter and I just assumed it was SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.

Blacky didn’t have the test. There’s no marks on his leg. Does that mean they knew something was wrong with Cricket? I just have to wonder.

 I don’t know about Spitfire but Tiger is more accepting of this cat, even sharing his food dish that sits on my desk. Whether it’s because he’s male or not sick, I don’t know.

And Bondi is having a great time playing with him whereas she wasn’t interested in playing with Cricket.

When it came time to settle down and watch TV, they laid together beside Mike in the recliner. I think Blacky is going to be a good addition to our family.

 We put the brush hog on Mike’s new tractor this week. It’s been way too wet to mow but once the ground is frozen, Mike can cut the field that we let grow all summer.

And we laid stones for a walkway through the dog run. I try to keep the poo cleaned up but invariably I’ll step in one as I haul stuff out to the burn barrel. It’s a lot of fun cleaning poo out of the treads of my sneaker.

Mike bought wood a few weeks ago to build me shelves with. There was just enough nice weather for me to be on the patio and sand the boards.

Then the weather turned and I couldn’t get them stained.

“Bring them in and stain ‘em in the living room,” Mike suggested. “We can put an old sheet down.”

I took a break and went for the mail. Flurries.

 I’ve got these beautiful baker’s racks but they don’t use the space efficiently. Here’s the before picture — and the after.

We woke to snow! I made a snowball and tossed it. Bondi brought it back to me.

Most of this snow melted but Saturday night into Sunday we got more. This time Bondi took off running through the snow, making figure eights around the flower bed and tree stump. I laughed.

Okay, my loves. All that’s left in my folder for this week is road pictures and a couple of sunrises. We never get tired of either of those things, right?

Let’s call this one done!