Ghosts from the past

Well I have pretty much fallen off the end of the earth as far as blogging goes. As I look at my computer, I see that many of you are the same way. So try not to faint from the shock that I posted. It seems that lazy days of summer don't provide for much blogging fodder. Also children who are not at school do tend to hog up computer time. Just saying.

I have been consumed with a project involving booksmart.com. It is a web site that will take your blog and turn it into a book. My first book should be here in two days and I will have to post more about it then. But I am very excited and I have spent hours looking through boxes of pictures. Too bad I am not more organized.


I came across this picture. I had not even remembered that it was taken. Even though the date on it says 1998, it was really from 2002 because the date on my camera was messed up and so all the pictures that say 98 are really from 2002. Hopefully someone in my posterity will read this and that will unlock a key to deciphering the masses of unorganized pictures in various sizes of boxes and envelopes. If not, it might not really be all that important.

Anyway, moving on to the picture at hand. How adorable is this picture? I love it. Especially because our days of cat ownership are in the past, this brings back fond memories. Memories of cats are better than dealing with the mess in the present. So we will stick with that for now. But seriously have you ever seen two cuter nappers? And there is something about black cats with white tummies that I find irresistible. I am sure that shortly after this picture was taken, we sold this cat to someone, because that was what we did. Have kittens, play with them for 8 weeks, find new homes for them. This cycle was repeated over and over for 7 years, until the cycle of abuse was broken by my taking the mama to the pound. This of course broke my heart, but it needed to be done. But looking at this picture makes me wonder how I ever let this kitten leave.

So here's to finding hidden treasures that remind you of times you forgot to remember.

A New Addition to our Family

I am so excited. Look at our darling new kitten. Isn't she just scrumptious? One of our friends in the ward had kittens and was looking for a home for them. I know I said that I would never go back to the state of cat ownership, but how do you say NO to such a cute, fluffy little face? I couldn't do it. And surely one cat will not be that bad, right. Diana is so excited, she can hardly stand it. She has always wanted to have another cat. I think we will name her Emmy, which just seems like a cute name for a fluffy little fur ball. Now we will have to get all set up for a little kitten again. Oh, and just one more thing about this kitten: April Fools!

CATS

Ok, the title of this post is not a reference to the musical with cute cats dancing and singing around the stage. Instead, think of this like the Alfred Hitchcock movie birds, only with cats instead of birds. That would give an accurate description of my backyard last week. So I think I have heard it said that seven is a lucky number, but I seriously doubt that it is lucky to have seven cats trying to reproduce in your backyard. That is what was took place for several days last week at my house. One day I looked out my window and saw not just two but seven cats prowling and sitting in my backyard. This was strange to me as it had not happened before. So do I get sticks and stones to throw at them? Or maybe a cage to catch some and take them away from here? No that would be the sensible thing to do, I instead get my camera and take some pictures for my blog. I could never get them to all be together in one picture, but here are several different pictures and I think you can get the idea. The picture to the right actually has five cats, but you can't quite see the orange one that is under the table. All this activity was really inspiring me to actually take some cats away, but now it has died down and I am not feeling as pressured to do something now. Dang.

On the Third Day of Christmas....

life's blessings/cursings brought to me THREE FRENCH CATS A VISITING. Ok well they might not be french, but yesterday I wished that I had said two turtle gloves so I am making up for it today. Oh well. The three cats seemed to have taken up residence in my back yard due to the fact that I don't have a dog. No I don't think I will get a dog just to get rid of the cats, that seems silly to me. Here is a picture of two of the cats playing with Diana's jump rope. I happened to look out in my back yard and notice that each one had a hold of one end of the rope. They were pulling it back and forth. The picture does not really depict how funny this looked. Last night there was a terrible howling noise in my back yard. When I checked it out, I scared two cats away. Some of my friends were talking about scheduling a cat catching activity for Young Women's. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Catapalooza!

After all this talk about cats and kittens, I thought I would make a montage to all the cats that have graced my life. Of course it all started with Hercules and Zena. They are the patriarch and matriarch of the great cat dynasty the reigned at my house for 7 years. Kittens really are such fun, but they are a lot of bother as well. We had the most fun naming them. At first we stuck with the Greek theme: Zeus, Apollo, Thor (my favorite), and Aphrodite. Then we moved on to Star Wars with Luke, Leia, and Vader. One of my favorites was the Phantom of the Opera theme, Phantom and his two sisters Carlotta and Christine. We had Phantom for a long time, he was a good cat. Then as Diana got older she helped in the naming and we had the princess kittens. One of the last batches had one named Piggy. As I looked through the pictures, I was surprised at how similar the kittens look through the years. We could always count on at least one grey stripey one that looked like Zena. Even though they looked similar, let me assure you these are not pictures of the same kittens, over and over. Zena had from 2 to 3 litters a year for seven years. I figure the it must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 kittens. Good Grief, Charlie Brown! Yes we had some fun times with them, but really it is quite a lot of trouble, ie: peeing on the carpet, cats spraying, and males cats stalking the house when Zena was in heat. Not to mention the disruption to ones sleep. The kittens would often start off in my closet and I remember one time when they had gotten to the stage of pouncing. Let me tell you, it is not fun to be sound asleep and have a kitten pounce on your face. I did have a linen closet that was the kitten birthing room. Zena would insist that I sit next to her box when she was in labor. She would tell me in no uncertain terms that if she had to go through this, so did I. And who can forget the many breech deliveries I had to help her with. Thank heavens, her first few deliveries were normal, so I was only there for moral support. When the next one did not go like usual I could tell that something was wrong. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending of your point of view, I had read the books All Creatures Great and Small. The vet in that book, talks about many breech cow deliveries. And so I knew that I would need to help her get the kitten out. Somehow I managed to help her and with much complaint on her part, we got the job done. She probably had about 4 breech deliveries in all. One time I pulled too hard on the poor kitten's tail and actually pulled it off. Yikes! But he turned out to be such a cute little kitty and somebody took him willingly when we sold them. And so while there are some great memories from the "cat years" of my life, I am not ready to go back. So at first I picked the song "Bye, Bye, Bye" for the song to this slide show. But in order to have the song playing, I had to have an annoying little small video box at the bottom of my slide show. After further deliberation, I decided to just have no music, since I couldn't find the right thing. So listening to the message in "Bye, Bye, Bye," I will try to stay strong in my decision to be catless.

Denial Delima

I always say the denial is my favorite part of grief. This is because it is the painless part. So I am in denial about many things right now. One of them would be that Christmas is really going to come. As long as I am in denial, I don't have to stress out that I am not ready yet. Like getting my ornery family together for a picture. I don't know why any of them should be surprised that this will happen, since it has happened every year for the past 16 years. But when I brought the subject up a few weeks ago, you'd have thought I just informed them that they would be getting dental work done without Novocaine.
Of course the other thing I am in denial about is my cats. No, I mean to say the cats that are choosing to live in my back yard. Judging from the activity going on out there, in about 12 weeks there are going to be the cutest little kittens running around. There should be some orange, some black, some white with black spots, and some grey ones. Perhaps my denial stage can last until the kittens are old enough to go to new homes. Yes, my friends this is a not so silent cry for help. Where do I sign up for the 12 step program to get over a cat addiction?

Queen of Denial!

Ok, so I don't think that we own any cats, but these pictures seem to prove me wrong. Yesterday I was sitting out on my patio, and the cat kept coming around. I told it in no uncertain terms "You DON'T live here" It just looked down its nose at me like cats do. The look on the cat's face seemed to say "You go ahead and think that lady, if it makes you feel any better, but I know differently." I guess if I really don't want to have a cat, I am going to have to be more proactive about it. Not wanting to expend any effort to de-catify myself, I have been hoping that they would just go away. You see how well that is working for me? We still are not feeding it, but it must be finding food somewhere. And it does get a fair amount of attention, ie holding, petting, and rides on the slide, so maybe that is enough to keep it coming around. Not to mention it has taken to napping on my patio furniture. Aye carumba!

Like Mother, Like Daughter

I was going through some pictures to scrapbook and found these two. The picture on the left is of me. It was taken in my Grandma's kitchen. This house has since been remodeled, and this kitchen is completely different. I love that this picture reminds me of the way things used to be. So many great memories took place in that kitchen. You could always find my Grandma in the kitchen creating the yummiest food. Often she would have us grand kids help out. I don't imagine this was really helpful to her, but I am grateful for her patience and teaching at these times. From this picture, I wonder if I have been a closet cat lover my whole life.

Now the picture to the right is Diana, of course. When she was this age, she would always hold the kittens by the neck this way. Before the kittens could walk, I would always try to protect and rescue them. But once they learned to walk, I figured they were on their own. It is not like they didn't know what would happen if they let Diana get a hold of them. I wonder how many cats, Diana will have when she has her own place? Isn't interesting how similar these pictures are? I always knew we were kindred spirits. What a blessing that child has been in my life!