Life Goes On

Today was easier to get through than yesterday was, but on several occasions I found myself fighting back the tears while I was at work. At home I didn’t bother to fight them back. Early this morning when I came out with the can of food and knew that Baby Tiger wouldn’t come running to have breakfast was the first such occasion of the day. But Baby Boy and Baby Girl did come to by to share the can of food with the yellow cat (whom Hannah has taken to calling Garfield), and seeing them all cheered me up. This afternoon after I came back from work and then later this evening I got to spend some time with all the cats.

Hairy was as whiny and needy for attention as always. The big Tiger came to me meowing as if I never fed him. Mama Cat came by and ate her fill in order to be able to continue nursing her babies. Garfield hung out with me and when I held him he clung to me the way baby primates cling to their mothers. In the evening the kittens came by. Splotchy Junior was playful and while we played in the grass she scratched me accidentally, and I didn’t mind because I knew she hadn’t meant to hurt me. Baby Girl approached shyly and I was able to get her to play with the string for quite a while, getting her closer and closer to me – she even batted at my fingers a couple of times. Baby Boy arrived later and demanded attention in that way he has of butting in and making sure that he gets a good belly rub or two. The white cat with the dark tail came and went, sat on several cars, had some food, played with the string for a while, hissed at the kittens when they almost sat on him. And my little Lena purred while I held her in my arms.

So life does go on. While I miss Baby Tiger terribly, I am so glad that the other cats and kittens are fine. And I think some part of her lives on in her littermates since during their first couple of months of life all they knew was each other and their Mama Cat. They share not only genes, but also their birth and upbringing and all the time they have spent together.

My mother summed it up well when she wrote to me that the more love you have (whether it is for people or animals), the more you will suffer when you lose someone, but that a life without love would be poor indeed. I can’t imagine not caring. Life would be simpler, but I would not be the person I am.

Baby Tiger

Today has been a sad day in my little world full of cats because Baby Tiger was struck and killed by a car overnight. I was surprised she didn’t come running at the sound of the can of wet food being opened this morning, but thought she might be off somewhere nearby, busy with whatever she was doing. It was only when I was pulling out of the parking lot to go to work that I saw her lying on the road that circles our apartment complex. Immediately I knew it was her and that she was dead. I parked my car and went to pick her up and called Tim to come and help me. I carried her little body to our backyard and set her down. She looked so peaceful, as if she were merely sleeping. Tim told me to go to work and that he would bury her, so I went. It was hard for me to accept that just last night she was sprawled by my front door, enjoying an after-dinner nap, and that this morning she was being buried.

Baby Tiger was just five months old, and during her short life she really touched me. While she only began to trust me exactly a month ago, during that time we interacted a lot. She was the first of her siblings to let me pet her, and I think because she let me pet her, her brother and one of her sisters decided to come and meet me too since they saw that I was nice to her. Baby Tiger craved physical contact, and loved being petted and held. When I stood next to her, she would lean toward me and curl her little tail around my leg. She often sat on my foot or tugged on my shorts. When it rained so heavily nearly two weeks ago and she was drenched, she waited for me outside my door and when I picked her up she didn’t want to leave my arms. Even after she was dry and warm, she wanted to cuddle. I put her down on my kitchen windowsill a few times, and she stretched out a paw toward me each time, as if asking me to pick her up again. She was irresistible, so of course I picked her up again and that day we spent a lot of time cuddling. Baby Tiger loved eating and was a plump, healthy kitten who often took naps while her siblings ran around. That’s not to say she wasn’t active – she also enjoyed playing, whether it was with a piece of string, with an insect, or with her littermates. But she was mellower than her siblings and often just took it easy. She was so affectionate that I will miss her a great deal, my sweet little Baby Tiger.

Her death makes the need for finding the other ones proper homes an urgent matter. I don’t want the same to happen to them. As much as I will miss them, I don’t want to endanger them. I’d been waiting until I could socialize the shy female, whom I’ve come to call Baby Girl, but now realize that I just need to work on finding them homes as soon as possible. The other two, Baby Boy and Splotchy Junior, I think will be easily adoptable because they aren’t so shy and enjoy being petted. And even the shy one has been coming closer and closer to me lately. I’ve managed to pet her a little but every time she jumps away when she realizes that I’m petting her. I think I will finally succeed, though. I want these three kittens to lead good, long, healthy lives where they are loved and properly cared for. I simply cannot have so many cats inside my house, so if I care about these kittens I will have to find them homes. I just wish I’d done this before today because Baby Tiger would still be alive, but on the other hand I know I can’t blame myself for what happened.

It is tragic that Baby Tiger’s little life was cut so short, but I hope that while she was alive she was happy. I think she was. She had her Mama Cat to care for her when she was a helpless baby, her siblings to play with, a steady food supply, and in the last month of her life plenty of belly rubs and cuddling with me. I know she also got love and attention from Debbie and Hannah, and probably from other people too. And I know I’m not the only one who is going to miss her. I left Debbie a note since I didn’t see her, and dropped by Hannah’s place to tell her what had happened. She was saddened by the news since, like me, she had fallen in love with our Baby Tiger.

So now it is time to move on in the sense that I need to take care of the cats who are still with us, but I know I will never forget Baby Tiger. Today was a hard day for me to get through, but Tim was a great help in getting me through it. While he’s not particularly a cat person, he understands that I love the cats dearly and that losing one so tragically was difficult for me. I am grateful for him, for Lena, and for all the other cats. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have animals to dote on.

A Clean Bill of Health

Mama Cat and the kittens’ visit to the vet yesterday went very well and it reassured me. They found all of them to be in good shape and told me that the babies looked fat and happy. I had been worried about one of their eyes being stuck shut, but they told me it wasn’t a big deal. The kitten has conjunctivitis in that eye so they cleaned it with saline and gave me an antibiotic ointment. There has been a marked improvement since yesterday and now I can barely tell the kittens apart. They also gave me a de-wormer for them and their mom, as well as flea medication. The last thing I need is fleas in my house, and fleas can be very harmful to such young kittens if they get out of control.

I have continued to let Mama Cat in and out of the house, and it seems to be working all right. It’s far from ideal but even the vet agreed that the kittens were better off indoors than outside where their mom couldn’t seem to find a safe spot for a nest due to the excessive rain. He also told me I shouldn’t worry so much about them not spending lots of extra time with her. He pointed out that when they were outside Mama Cat surely left them for periods of time to go do her own thing, and so this isn’t such a big change. I still feel some guilt about having them inside because she doesn’t have full access to them whenever she wants, but I have been unable to keep her indoors, and this is the first day so far that it hasn’t rained. The kittens seem to be handling it pretty well. They seem satisfied when they finish eating and curl up with each other to go back to sleep. They don’t squeal much – only to complain when Mama Cat gets up after not feeding them enough, or in anticipation when they notice that Mama Cat is approaching to feed them.

Lena has mostly been staying upstairs, though she did come down this morning, and looked into the bathroom. When she noticed that the little furry lumps in the box were moving, she decided she had no business there and left. Smart cat. Actually she doesn’t seem too disturbed by the presence of the kittens and Mama Cat’s comings and goings. I’m relieved because I’d feel terrible if Lena suffered as a result. She has already had bad experiences with other cats, and I don’t want to be the cause of more such experiences.

Mama Cat just had a very productive feeding and cleaning session with her babies, so I’ve let her go outside for a while longer. This is the second time she has fed them since I got back from work. I’ve recently learned how mother cats keep their nests clean. When they curl up with their babies, in addition to licking them all over, they stimulate the anal region so the babies will defecate. It may sound gross, but it’s a great solution to keeping the nest clean and predators away. Keeping feces out of the nest isn’t unique to cats. After all, humans are the only animals that have invented diapers (though diapers have been invented by humans for a wide range of animals, including poultry). Among certain birds, the chicks learn early on to expel their feces from the edges of the nest. I’d love to see footage of that actually happening! Other animals must have their own solutions to this problem, but I don’t know what they are. I have to say it’s pretty amusing to see the kittens drinking milk while at the same time their mom is stimulating them to go to the bathroom. In one end, out the other.

Tim has earned himself some extra credit points from my mother. She already thinks very highly of him and they get along famously, but when she found out that he let me bring the kittens into the house to keep them safe from floods and cars, she told me that she realized she has an angel for a son-in-law. Go Tim! And thank you for being so understanding of the situation.

When It Rains, It Pours – Literally This Time

The monkey grass nest only lasted until the next rain. On Saturday I found Mama Cat under the truck near her previous nest. Her babies were there with her, on the parking lot ground. It looked far from a good nest but I couldn’t come up with a better place, so I left them there. The following day, Chris, the truck’s owner, was sitting next to his truck, working on his motorcycle. I went over to him and checked on the kittens, both of whom were still there. I sat down and talked with him while he worked on his bike, and noticed Mama Cat sitting under a car nearby, watching. She seemed nervous, and eventually came over and picked up one of the kittens, which she carried under a car. I expected she was going to carry it elsewhere from there, but instead she lay down and started nursing it. It seemed like a terrible place to have her babies. Later she went and picked up her other kitten and brought it there as well. That’s what made me think that this could only end badly. Every nest she’d had up till now had flooded due to rain so now she was resorting to the space under cars. It’s one thing when the vehicle is never driven, like the truck, but quite another when the vehicles she chooses are cars that I know my neighbors use on a regular basis. And with both kittens under the car if the owner got in the car and started it, she would probably only be able to save one of her babies. Mama Cat was clearly having very bad luck with her nests this time around.

I did the only thing I could think of: I asked Tim if there was any chance I could have the kittens and Mama Cat in here until they were weaned and ready to be adopted. That way they would be safe from drowning and from moving vehicles, and they could be socialized early on. I was sure Tim was going to say no, but actually he said yes. I wasted no time and set up a nest in our downstairs bathroom, and went outside to get Mama Cat and the babies. Getting the babies out from under the car was hard and I really had to reach for them. I was glad that the car belonged to a neighbor I talk to regularly, but I’m sure if he’d appeared at that moment, he would have wondered why I was almost crawling under his car. Mama Cat didn’t resist me moving the babies and once I had them safely in my bathroom I came back for Mama Cat. She’d never been inside my apartment so she was a bit nervous about coming in. I carried her in and brought her to her babies and she immediately sat down with them and started nursing them. That had to be a good sign.

With Mama Cat there, I set out to make a slightly better nest for them. I found a shallow box and cut the flaps off, and then moved the bedding materials from the ground into the box. Being in the box would prevent the kittens from wandering away from their nest and getting stranded somewhere on the tile floor. I also set up food and water bowls for Mama Cat as well as a litter box. For a while everything was calm and after feeding her babies, she explored a bit. She went up the stairs partially and met up with Lena, but the encounter was much mellower than I would have expected. They sniffed each other’s noses and hissed at each other, but it didn’t go beyond that.

After some time, Mama Cat started meowing and pawing at the door so I let her out for a while. I didn’t expect that she would automatically adjust to indoor life. Later I brought her back in and she nursed her babies some more. I thought she might spend the night inside so that she could nurse her babies when she needed to, but a while after we went to bed she started meowing loudly downstairs. We tried to ignore her and she stopped. But then she started up again and came upstairs and I realized I needed to let her outside. So yesterday I got up early and let her in to nurse her babies. I then let her in once more before I left for work. Then again when I came home for lunch, and several more times in the afternoon and evening.

This morning I once again got up early and let her in to feed her babies. I will let her in again before I take off for work, and then today during my lunch break I’m taking them all to the vet. I want to get them checked out and make sure the babies are gaining enough weight. I sometimes wonder if she feeds them long enough each time since she always seems a bit anxious to go outside again. But when I consider how it has rained since I brought them into the house two days ago, I feel justified in doing what I did. After all, it rained very hard on Sunday night, throughout part of Monday morning, and also this morning. I just hope that ultimately I’m doing the right thing. At least Mama Cat still seems comfortable around me and is getting to feed her babies regularly. I wish she could stay with them throughout most of the day, but she really doesn’t want to be inside all the time.

So between work, feeding the cats, spending time with Lena and Tim, and letting Mama Cat in and out of the house, I seem not to have too much time for sleep, and even less time for blogging.

And the Kittens Move Again

For the first couple of days that the kittens were in the doghouse, everything was great. It was raining outside and so they were protected. Mama Cat would leave them periodically to come to my front door to eat or to go and do whatever she does when she’s not nursing her babies. Then she would come back and curl up with her them.

Then yesterday it rained again. It was the fourth straight day of rain, and the soil was saturated. As it continued to rain through the morning my backyard started to flood. With that, the doghouse eventually started to flood too. When I arrived home for lunch Tim told me that the kittens were gone because Mama Cat had had to evacuate them. I looked outside and the whole backyard had at least a couple of inches of water.

Needless to say, I felt horrible. I had endangered the kittens without knowing it. I wondered whether they might have been better off in my neighbor’s yard after all, under the slide, but realized that her backyard must have flooded too. I only had about 40 minutes at home, so I panicked for a while and then started to think that perhaps the kittens were fine. Mama Cat seems to be a very good mother so she must have known where to take them. I didn’t have the time to find out where the babies were so I continued my search in the evening after work. Although I looked and looked I couldn’t find them. I began to wonder whether the babies had made it through the flood after all. But I did notice that Mama Cat was taking me toward an old pickup truck that one of my neighbors always keeps parked in the same spot. Debbie’s daughter had also noticed her going in that direction so I figured if the kittens were still around, they were somewhere around there.

My search continued this morning before work and also this evening. Finally I discovered where they were. I found the two kittens huddling behind some monkey grass, near the pickup truck. They both seemed fine and were more active than I’d seen them in the previous days. I took that as a good sign and was enormously relieved. A weight was lifted off me because I had seriously considered that they might have drowned during yesterday’s downpour.

I decided to give the doghouse one last try. I brought out the bedding I had placed in the doghouse the other day (which I had washed and dried yesterday) and put it down in the house. I then placed the doghouse on a platform high enough to keep the doghouse dry, but not high enough for the kittens to hurt themselves if they fell out. Finally I went to the nest and got the kittens. I then brought Mama Cat to see them. It took her no time to decide that they weren’t staying in the doghouse. I felt bad interfering, but thought it had been worth a try. After all, in the monkey grass dogs could get to them very easily. Mama Cat picked up one of her babies by the scruff of its neck and started carrying it back. So I followed her with the other one, and the small family was reunited in the monkey grass nest.

It is unfortunate that Mama Cat had such a bad experience in that doghouse. It’s highly unusual to have 4 straight days of rain in August in Oklahoma, and of course it had to happen when I least needed a flood in my backyard. On the one hand I feel I shouldn’t have interfered with Mama Cat’s nest choice, but on the other hand if it hadn’t been for that flood, the doghouse would have been ideal. The babies would have been safe from dogs and unfriendly humans, and they could have gotten used to positive human contact from a very early age, making it easier to get them adopted. The good thing is that throughout all the things that have happened over the past couple of days, Mama Cat seems to continue to trust me. She still likes getting belly rubs and acts friendly toward me. I hope this will continue so I can keep visiting her babies as they grow up.

In other news (though also cat related), this morning I petted the shy kitten for the first time. She’s the Siamese-looking one with the dark nose. She came with the other kittens when I brought out the can of food that I feed to the hungry yellow cat. While she was eating some of that wet food facing away from me, I managed to pet her several times. She apparently enjoyed it, but then jumped away when she realized that I was touching her. That’s the way her siblings came to be so friendly toward me, so I still have hope for “taming” her.

The Kittens’ New Home

I did find Mama Cat’s kittens. That was on Friday afternoon, after I came home from work. I knew in which direction Mama Cat had gone, so I headed off in that direction and sure enough, I found Mama Cat hissing at me next to the ventilation system of one of the buildings. She only hissed at me once and then let me come closer. Behind the ventilation system I found her litter. It was a small litter but I didn’t stick around long enough to count kittens since I didn’t want to make her too nervous, hovering over her newborn babies. Unlike her March litter, this litter seemed to be gray or black.

Then yesterday it rained all day, but I wasn’t too worried because Mama Cat had found a particularly sheltered place to have her babies. Besides, she’s an experienced mother and she seems to know how to take care of her babies. I did ask Debbie, however, if she would let me borrow her doghouse. The plan was to move them to my backyard when it wasn’t raining. This morning when I went to look for her and the babies, I found that she had moved them. While I had hoped she wouldn’t move them, I wasn’t too surprised. There are two reasons why she might have done this. First, it had rained all day yesterday and perhaps she had found a better, drier place to keep her babies. Second, it’s not unusual for mother cats to move their litters a few days after giving birth. That makes it harder for potential predators to find them. Whatever her reason might have been, she led me to the new nest. The problem was that it was in one of my neighbors’ backyard. She and her daughter love the strays, too, so I wasn’t worried about the kittens being there. And Mama Cat wouldn’t have taken her babies there if she had felt the place was unsafe. My concern was that she had put her babies under the slide in the yard, where they didn’t have sufficient protection from the rain, especially if it started raining very hard again. So I left them a note letting them know about the babies being there and asking them if it was all right for me to come and move the babies over to my backyard, explaining that I had a doghouse I could put them in where they would be safe from the rain.

A while later I talked to them and they let me into their backyard, where I found the babies under the slide. There are only two of them this time, and they are both black, just like their mother. I don’t know if there might have been more kittens originally and they didn’t all survive, or if this was simply a small litter. The babies were tiny and huddled together. I picked them up (both of them fit in one hand!) and started walking toward my own backyard, with Mama Cat in tow. I took them straight into the doghouse, where I had put down an old sheet and an old towel to provide them with a comfortable, warm bed. Then I picked up Mama Cat and put her in there. To my relief she didn’t try to run away and instead settled herself down next to her kittens and allowed them to start nursing. I took that as a good sign that the new nest was acceptable to her.

A couple of hours later she was still in there with her kittens, and then she came around to my front door to eat with the other cats at dinnertime. After spending some time with the other cats in the parking lot, she made her way back into my backyard. I really hope that she will continue to feel comfortable with this nest and that she will keep her kittens there without moving them again. This way they will have a great shelter from the rain and they won’t run the risk of being harmed by people. I hope to be able to socialize these kittens early on, so that I won’t have to wait so long to be able to find them homes. The other kittens are nearly 5 months old and I have yet to make contact with one of them. My hope for this new litter is that they will grow up knowing me and trusting me so that I can find them homes much sooner.

I will find out tomorrow whether Mama Cat likes her new nest. I hope that when I get up in the morning I will find the babies still in the doghouse and that their mother will not have moved them again.

Kitten Update

I was right about Mama Cat. This morning when I came out to feed the felines she came to eat and no longer had her huge belly. I don’t know where she had the babies this time. She started leading me across the parking lot, and every few feet would flop onto the ground so I could pet her. I think she was enjoying getting pampered a bit after all the hard work of giving birth to several kittens, cleaning them and feeding them. I had to get ready for work so I wasn’t able to spend enough time outside to see if she would actually take me to her nest. I had hoped to be able to find the nest this evening, but once again she led me across the parking lot and then stopped. I’m not the only one who thinks that her nest is in that direction. I talked to my neighbor Debbie, in whose storage closet Mama Cat had her babies in March, and she said she’d also seen Mama Cat walking across the parking lot in that direction. Maybe in a few days she’ll actually take me to the nest. I would love to see the kittens. I hope she had a relatively small litter because that will mean fewer kittens that need homes.

It surprises me that mother cats have taken me to their nests in the past. I would have thought that they would be much more protective of their newborns. Mama Cat clearly knows that I’m not going to hurt her since I’ve been feeding her for many months and petting her and, most recently, feeding and playing with her previous litter of kittens. That said, I’m still surprised that she would lead me to her babies. She did it when she had her kittens in March. She took me to the back of Debbie’s apartment, and I found out a few days later from Debbie that indeed the kittens were in her storage closet. Mama Cat isn’t the only cat that has led me to her newborns. There was a stray cat in Boston (also a small all-black female) whom I had befriended. She didn’t trust me nearly as much as Mama Cat does and we didn’t have much physical contact. I just fed her every day and spent some time around her while she ate. Despite the fact that I didn’t have as much contact with her as I do with Mama Cat, when she gave birth to her kittens she led to me to her nest. I’m not sure why she and Mama Cat led me to their newborns, but I will take it as a compliment. It’s flattering that these cats trust me enough to show me their young.

Mama Cat’s Kittens

Mama Cat is about to give birth any day now, if she hasn’t already. I haven’t seen her in a couple of days and I suspect it’s because she’s hiding somewhere with her newborns. But who knows, maybe I’ll see her tomorrow morning, still very pregnant. The plan is that after she weans this new litter, I’m going to get her fixed in order to break the cycle of pregnancy after pregnancy. She’s a tiny little cat. I’m sure she started breeding too early in life and never got a chance to finish growing up. She has rather large ears for her body size—perhaps she never quite grew into them.

In the meantime, however, I need to finish “taming” the litter that she had back in March, who are almost 5 months old. I have only one more to make contact with, and after that I can try to give them away. I’m a little afraid of giving the others away before I make contact with that fourth kitten. I feel that if she sees that I’m taking away her siblings, she might never trust me. I need her to trust me as much as the others do. Her siblings let me not only pet them, but also pick them up and play with them. They also enjoy pouncing on my fingers and toes, and often rub against me. The shy kitten has been coming a lot closer to me in the past couple of days, but I have yet to touch her. I think I’m making progress, though.

The kittens are very cute and they are especially adorable when they wrestle with each other. They are so close to one another that I really wish I didn’t have to separate them. It would be ideal if I could find two people both interested in taking two kittens, so at least they would have one of their siblings to continue to grow up with. That would also ensure that they always had a playmate, even when their owners were out of the house. But I don’t know what the likelihood is of finding people who want two new cats. I can always try.

I finally took some pictures of the kittens the other day and wanted to share them. It was hard to get good shots of them because, being kittens, they couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds here and there. But I did somehow manage to get a few good ones, and I've spread them out throughout this post. I'm going to miss these kittens when I find homes for them, but I will also be relieved to know that they will have better homes than I can provide for them out in the parking lot.

Lots of New Stuff

I’ve been slacking off and haven’t posted anything since last Wednesday, but it hasn’t been because I haven’t had anything to write about, nor because I didn’t feel like writing. Between the new job and our weekend in Texas I’ve been very busy and also tired. Work has been moving at a very fast pace since we are trying to get the yearbook completed. Supposedly it will be done by this evening, but I don’t see how that will be possible. Today I will be adding new pieces to it, which I will have to edit and paste into the document. Once all the pieces are in, I will have to format everything so it will look as it’s supposed to once it’s printed. And Microsoft Word isn’t a great program for formatting these types of documents, so I’ll have to improvise as I go along. I hope I will have enough time to make it look as good as possible.

This past weekend, Tim and I took off early on Saturday and drove to Texas, where we picked up a moving truck and took it to his mom’s. That’s when the furniture moving started. His mom had offered us her dining set since she never uses it and we’d been looking for a proper table and chairs. Renting a one-way truck is much cheaper than buying a dining set—even buying a couple of nice chairs would exceed the cost of the truck rental! The first step was to back the truck into the driveway outside the porch. Tim did a very good job of backing the truck in, and I was glad he did it because I think Tim’s mom would have lost some of her plants in the process if I’d been at the wheel. We then somehow got the table out of the dining room, onto the porch (which is narrow and doesn’t have a railing, making it very easy to fall off when carrying large furniture), and down toward the truck. That was probably the hardest thing to move, because of its weight and because of the maneuvering we had to do on the porch while trying to avoid falling off it. Of course it being August in Texas, it was very hot outside and even hotter in the house. We were sweating profusely as soon as we started.

That wasn’t the only furniture we moved. In place of the dining table and chairs, we set a smaller table and chairs. That table, because of its assembled weight and also its shape, had to be disassembled so we could get it from one room into the other. Because of the temperature in the house by this point we were soaked. Then where that table and chairs used to be, Tim and I put a couple of recliners stacked on top of each other. Those came from the den, where we were making room for a futon. A bit earlier the three of us had gone to a house where Tim’s mom had seen a futon for sale. Tim and a guy who lived there loaded it onto his mom’s truck and we brought it to her house. When there was enough room for the futon, we carried it inside. This was easy enough to do since the mattress wasn’t too heavy and the frame was light and easy to maneuver. Finally everything was in place, and we beat the rain, which had been threatening to come down but never did.

In addition to the dining set we had loaded onto the truck, we also loaded a yard table that Tim’s mom had gotten for us from some neighbors who were moving, as well as some more chairs that she found at a yard sale. At this yard sale she also got lots of glassware and other things for the house. We now have some additional wine glasses and champagne flutes which are beautiful. We also have some nice placemats and napkins, as well as several tablecloths. There are also some things that the lady gave her which we aren’t too sure what they are or what we will do with them, but we’ll figure something out. Overall, this lady had very good quality things and most of them I really like.

As if all the furniture and all the stuff for the house wasn’t enough, we now have a number of new plants and pots of various sizes. The pots come from that lady’s yard sale, and many of them are in various shades of purple. For those of you who know me, you’ll understand how excited I am about them. There are also some large black ones that will be good for larger plants as I work on creating a mini jungle for us in our backyard. Actually I don’t know how ambitious I will get, but I do want to grow some more plants and then next spring put some of them in the ground and keep others in pots.

The plants themselves come from Tim’s mom’s garden. Her plants have been growing nicely and I love the way her front yard looks. Since the last time we were there some sunflowers have been growing wild, but she doesn’t like the huge sunflower plants as much as I do. She gave me cuttings from several of her plants and I now have them in water, hoping that they will grow roots so I can put them in pots. They are beautiful plants and would be a great addition to the ones we have already. Aside from flowering plants and plants with interesting leaves, she gave me a pot with several “useful” plants, including catnip (to feed Lena’s addiction), chives, rosemary, lemon basil, and a few others. Next time she will give me a cutting of a plant that originally came from her great-grandmother’s farm. I thought it would be neat to have a plant descended from a plant grown by Tim’s great-great-grandmother. He wasn’t nearly as excited by the idea as I was. In any case, I will have to ask what all the plant names are when Tim’s mom comes to see us since I’ve already forgotten. I hope most of them will still be alive by then! I’ve gotten better at keeping plants alive, but I still have much to learn.

So now our place is full of new stuff, most of which hasn’t been put away because we aren’t sure where we will put it or because it hasn’t been washed yet. It feels a bit like Christmas, except that we never end up with so many new things at Christmas. Lena was very confused yesterday and walked around among the new furniture and the bags and boxes that we brought in, and squawked with a confused tone in her voice. I’m sure she will get used to all the new stuff too.

First Day

Today was my first day at my new job. I’d been out of work for 10 months, since I left my job in Boston to move to Oklahoma, so it felt very weird to spend a whole day in an office. But I did get to come home for lunch since we get an hour off and I live so close by. That broke up the day nicely. Tomorrow it looks like Tim will come by the office and we’ll get some lunch nearby.

I’d say I had a good first day. Of course, learning how an office runs isn’t easy, especially since every workplace does things a little differently. At this office they seem to love floppy disks, and for some reason we’re not supposed to save files to the server. It seems odd to me, but I’ll just use floppies and also archive files to CDs with some regularity since floppies don’t last as long and can more easily be ruined than CDs. I’d love to see a database of contacts on the server instead of using a Rolodex that is located in someone’s office. But these are the things that I’m sure I’ll get used to and that won’t seem quite as strange once I spend more time there. Everyone I met was very nice, and also helpful in explaining how things work, who does what, and where to find various things.

I got to see some pictures of call ducks, and they really are cute. I’m not surprised people like raising them. In the next few days I’ll get really involved with putting out this year’s edition of the club’s yearbook, which is due out as soon as we can finish it. It’s nice to jump right into things, but also daunting. After all, I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. I’m sure I will have to learn very quickly.

Success at Last!

Today was the day I got my job. After nearly 3 months of searching, it has finally happened. I should be grateful that my job search took only 3 months – I know many people search a lot longer.

I sort of interviewed for the job on Thursday, but funny enough the job I got isn't the one I interviewed for. Actually the job I interviewed for sounded a bit boring, but the salary was attractive. Well, they gave the dull-sounding job to someone else, and called me earlier this evening to offer me a different job, at the same salary, and I start on Wednesday!

It turns out that the real estate company that I interviewed with owns a farm where they raise purebred poultry (the ones that end up at the chicken version of dog shows) as well as llamas and sheep. They need someone to do administrative work at the office, as well as write newsletters and talk to people from around the country and around the world who call with questions about the animals.

So basically I get to think and talk and write about chickens, llamas and sheep, which sounds really fun. And considering my love of wooly and feathered creatures this is a good fit for me. Oh, and did I mention my commute will only be about 10 minutes? I am so excited!

It’s funny how things work out in such unexpected ways sometimes. And so today is a doubly special day – it is Pedro’s birthday and also the day I was offered my new job.