A bed for Acme

Acme is my husband's god-kitten.  An online friend found her, abandoned and sick, and he took her in and got her medical attention.  Six hundred dollars of medical attention.  Acme had a tumor which was blocking her windpipe and making it hard for her to breathe, and she required surgery.  If not for Bruce, she might have died.  As it is, he'll have to watch and see how she develops.  We contributed to her medical costs and as a result my hubby was designated her god-father.  He considers himself honored.

Bruce already has a cat, Alice, who is an older lady kitty and probably not crazy about a kitten taking up residence.  But he can't keep Acme anyway because his landlord only allows one pet, so he's trying to find her a home.  If I were kitty-less at the moment, I would jump in the car and drive to Virginia to claim her.    But we wouldn't do that to Molly, who is timid, retiring and easily dominated.  Any other cat we brought in would only bully her, and she wouldn't take up for herself.  I couldn't do that to her.

One thing I could do is make Acme a little cat bed of her very own.  I have small quilts on the backs of furniture all over the house for Molly, and know that's one of the best ways to direct where a cat wants to sleep, in addition to making a cozy warm spot for her.  So I dug out some scraps and whipped up a little cat quilt.  It's not much, and it's only quilted in the ditch, but I hope she likes it.

Morning visitor

At 9 o'clock this morning I measured out a cup of dry cat food and went outside to fill hobo kitty's dish.  The food has been disappearing at a regular rate but we haven't seen the little black cat for almost a week.  I had to assume that it was visiting the food dish so stealthily that we never saw it eat.  Usually, I only caught a glimpse of it by accident, entering or leaving the back yard, crossing the street or lounging on the front porch of my neighbor's empty house.  Sometimes I would glance out the back door on the way through the den and find her speedily having a meal.  As soon as she had finished eating she was off again.  But it had been a week since either my husband or myself had seen her.  We are a bit concerned but in the end know that we can't control the stray cat's fate.  Hobo kitty belongs only to itself. 

Anyway, as I cleaned and filled the food and water dishes I heard "MEOW!", loud and quite near.  Startled, I looked around.  Hobo kitty had never meowed at me.  It had had lengthy conversations with my cat at the sliding door, but had never to my knowledge made a noise to a human. 

"MEOW!"  There it was again.  I scanned the yard, and stepped over to look behind the azalea border around the patio.  There, in the grass behind the nandina bush, was the tuxedo cat I had seen several days before.  He (and I verified that it was a he) saw me and plunged into a meow-fest, snaking through the yard and across the patio in a sinuous path that never got quite up to my location.  "Hey!" he was saying, "I notice you have cat food there.  I could use a little cat food!"

At one point he got himself so wound up he worked his way over to me and gave me a head butt and rub on my leg.  Just as quickly, he skittered away as if he had scared himself with his temerity.  He continued to beg but wouldn't approach the food dish so I scooped up a palm full of kibble and laid it on the sidewalk by my feet.  Tuxedo was on it in a flash and wolfed it down.  Then he flew away again to the middle of the back yard to meow at me plaintively.  I retrieved another handful of food and put it on the sidewalk again.  Again Tuxedo came right up to me and ate it all.  I repeated the action another time, but afterward he turned down a fourth handful and headed across the backyard.  He meowed at me a few more times and then jumped the back fence and was gone.

This seemed like a cat that had been around people in his life.  Had to have been around people, in fact, because cats only meow at humans, not at other cats.  (That's an interesting fact my husband came across in his reading.  Cats have a vocabulary of many sounds they use among their own kind, but the classic meow only happens to humans, like a special dialect they have devised to communicate with us.)  He's terribly skittish, probably from living a tough life outside, but could definitely be tamed. 

So now I may have two cats to help.  I'm not sure if Tuxedo is the one that's been eating Hobo kitty's food for the last week or so.  I'm not sure if Hobo is still around, or in fact if it's still alive.  I have to admit that I went across the street to the empty house and searched under all the bushes, half afraid I would find a little black kitty's body.  But there wasn't any sign of it.  It may have left or may just be eating at night when we can't see its visits.  In any case, I will continue to put out cat food, now that I may have two mouths to feed through the winter.  And maybe Tuxedo will like the kitty house I made.  Nothing has set foot in it yet, not even an opossum.

Who are YOU? (and other miscellany)

Someone new strolled through my back garden this morning.  And who are you, tuxedo cat?  There must be a cat network, and I'm on it!

Also, I wanted to show the inspiration for my color selections for the Quiltville mystery coming up this month.  I have had this fabric for a while and didn't find a use until now.  It will be in the reds in the quilt and probably the backing:

See the greens and golds in the print?  I just love it.  That became this fabric collection:

I ordered a few more dark golds from Thousands of Bolts this morning so I can pull some of the more yellow pieces.  I'm still wavering about making the greens light or dark.  I will wait until they first show up in the instructions to decide.

Finally, a photo to show why I'm having a hard time with an accurate 1/4" using my dressmaking Juki machine.  Here is the 1/4" foot:

Notice that the foot is only 1/4" wide at the very front and is larger back at the needle position, behind the narrow front of the foot.  So it's harder to align the fabric seam allowance right at the needle.  And see that angled part on the left side?  It catches seam allowances and pulls the fabric off-kilter.  Plus, since the feed dogs are so wide and it's a front load bobbin, there is nowhere to put a seam guide on the plate.  The Juki HZL-E70  is very nice, but it wasn't built for quilters. 

New Quiltville mystery quilt

Oh boy, it's that time again - when Bonnie Hunter starts a fall mystery quilt.  I scampered to the computer this morning like a kid to the Christmas tree to see her post about color selections, and while I love what she picked, I may change them for my quilt. 

The design is called Orca Bay and is based on a beautiful picture she took while in Alaska.  Her colors are red, blue, black and neutrals.  While I think her selections are lovely, I am ambivalent about making another dark colored quilt because my husband likes brighter, lighter selections.  He doesn't appreciate all the brown I use and I fear that he will feel the same way about black.  Truth told, I'm not a person who makes many quilts with black either.  But Mom and I have been discussing the large number of red and green antique quilts you see and I started leaning toward making a red and green quilt this time.  So, I substituted the green for the blue and bright golds for the black and came up with this:

I have no idea if it will work, I just have to trust and believe.  And remember that Bonnie says "No whining allowed!".

On other fronts, I made a house for the feral cat we have been feeding.  Since the weather started getting colder my husband has been worrying that it doesn't have a warm place to sleep.  We actually have no idea where it goes most of the day and night.  It will appear in the back yard several times a day to eat, and we will spot it around the neighborhood, but it keeps to itself.  That is probably what has kept it safe all summer, that it doesn't trust people and is scared of cars.  I don't want it to be too cosy with people, that's how stray kitties come to harm. 

Anyway, we decided to make little Hobo (that's what I call it) a house.  It had to be waterproof and warm and be able to shelter on the patio under the eaves.  I decided to use a plastic storage box with a locking lid.  I cut out a doorway with a saber saw - badly, it turned out because the plastic splinters easily.  I had to cover the edges of the cutout with layers of packing tape to shield the cat from the rough edges and it looks really tacky, but it was all I could do.  Then, I made a pad for the bottom and a liner for the sides and bottom to keep it warmer.  I had heavy fusible interfacing and leftover fabric, fleece and batting, so this was easy.

She may love it, or she may never set foot in it.  I may have made the world's fanciest opossum house.  I don't know, but at least we have offered a warm spot for her to make it through the winter.  We can't control her choices but I feel good that we made them better.

So, without further ado, I give you - Hobo House: 

Please note the color coordinated box, fabric and fleece.  I went overboard, but what the heck - it was fun.

The hobo kitty

As you can see, the little stray kitty is still quite at home in my back garden. Throughout the day I will glance outside and see it, either in my garden or across the street at the vacant house.  It likes to sleep on the porch.  Other times, though, we have no idea where it goes.

I think it lounges behind the plants there because of the faint hope that a dumb bird will wander by on the way to the birdbath.  It doesn't spend the whole day with us but comes by several times to eat and get a drink of water.  Sometimes the kitty takes a break during its meal and relaxes in the shade.  We put out a cup of dry kibble a day and it usually cleans the plate.  We are in danger of having the world's only tubby feral cat!  Come to think of it, this cat has quite the life.  Food in regular and ample supply and none of that pesky petting stuff!

I have started to refer to it as Hobo Kitty, or Hobo for short!

The shadow in my garden

A month or so ago I began to see a black cat around the neighborhood.  At first I thought it was my neighbor Marilyn's cat, but soon realized that this one had shorter hair and was much smaller than her pet.  It slunk around the area, walking up Marilyn's driveway, appearing around the house across the street, sitting by the swimming pool at the house up the hill.  It was never apparent where the little cat belonged.

And then one day, it appeared on my back patio, lying on the top step against the sliding door glass.  It was a brutally hot and dry day, one in a string of them that wilted plants and tired out animals.  I thought it was just enjoying the shade and the coolness under the eaves of my house.  Then my husband and I took a better look at the poor animal.  It was so thin you could count every rib.  Its fur was dry and brittle.  It had a scab on the back of one ear where it had tangled with another cat or animal.  It was in bad shape.

It was starving to death.

When it saw us inside the door, it retreated a little bit, but stood its ground looking at us steadily.  It was asking for help, for even a feral cat knows in direst need to hunt for a sympathetic person.  And we had to try to help it.

I got two disposable plastic dishes and took a scoop of Molly's cat food and a pan of water out to the patio by the steps.  In a few minutes it was back, voraciously eating and drinking.  Molly circled around inside the door, looking at the cat intently.  She probably hadn't seen another kitty since her encounter with the stray cat a few years ago.  Molly didn't know what to make of the new creature out on the patio.  When the stray saw Molly, she arched, puffed and growled.  My timid Molly ran around in circles, hair standing on end and tail out to full bottle brush status, confused and intimidated.  It was like she was saying "What's the matter?  What's the matter?  Why is that cat so RUDE?"  Finally, the stray disappeared and everyone calmed down. 

Since then, we've continued to feed it and see it once or twice a day.  It's a true feral, deathly scared of people and never socialized.  It has filled out and its coat is now shiny black.  It's also grown, because the poor thing was probably only 4 months old or so when we first saw it, just an adolescent, and completely unready to face life on its own.  I have seen it try to hunt and it's an absolute novice.  It had not been able to feed itself, and had probably been on the move for some time, looking for a place to live.  Who knows how far it had traveled or what became of its mother and littermates.

For the last few weeks we have settled into a routine.  Every morning after breakfast I put out water and food.  By 10 o'clock, the stray has had a meal and a drink and wanders around the back yard for a bit.  Sometimes it lies in the shade of the bushes.  Sometimes it makes an unsuccessful attempt at catching a bird.  All the backyard wildlife holds it completely in contempt;  the birds don't even leave when it arrives for a meal.  They know that this cat has no hunting skills and they are probably safe.  Later in the day it will visit again and finish off the food.  Who knows where it goes for the rest of the day.  Some days, it will nap on the porch of the unoccupied house across the street.  Generally, it is invisible as a shadow.

I continue to refer to it as "it" because I don't know its sex.  My husband thinks it's a female, which breaks my heart because soon it will be grown and there will be kittens, which presages a hard life for all concerned.  The life expectancy for feral cats is very short, and the mortality rate for feral kittens is high.  And we can't support a whole colony of feral cats in the neighborhood.

But we weren't going to sit still for any poor animal starving to death at our back door.  We know that it might not even make it through the winter, poor thing.  I have begun to refer to it as Hobo Kitty, or Hobo, after what my husband once called it, but he steadfastly refuses to name it and personalize it because he knows that to get too attached will only lead to heartbreak.

So the little black shadow continues to slink through my garden, watching me with wary golden eyes, and I feed it and worry, and know that there probably won't be a good ending to this.  It is far too wild to be caught, and even if it were apprehended and taken to the shelter, this cat is not pet material because it was never socialized as a kitten.  A trip to the shelter would be a death sentence in my town, because they don't keep unadoptable animals. 

Soon it will start to get colder, and then what will it do?  I am going to make a shelter on the back patio for it to provide soft warm bedding and a windbreak for when winter comes, but I'm not sure it will feel secure enough to use it.  That's all we can do.

The shadow in my garden walks alone and keeps its own counsel.   

She can sleep anywhere

This doesn't look comfortable. She's barely hanging on to the back of the couch but she's sound asleep. I wish I could relax like Molly can.

I just walked back to my husband's den to get a page off the printer and found this: It's almost dinnertime - and she's not going to let him forget it. He's trying to copy and restore old photos. Ha! Not while Molly's keeping the scanner lid clamped shut. "Might as well give up and go feed me," she says.

Cat quilting motif and cat tales

I'm putting the binding on my husband's half a quilt, and I wanted to show the panto motif the longarmer used: Isn't that just the most adorable kitty pattern? I haven't started his applique cat quilt, so I put cats in the quilting on this one.

Speaking of kitties, Molly and I had a run-in yesterday. Since she won't wear a collar, I wanted to get a harness or something I could put on her if there was an emergency, since she's pretty hard to hold on to if she's upset. I keep her carrier in my closet in the bedroom in case there's an emergency and we have to grab her and vacate the premises, but I worried that without a way to hold her securely, she could get away from me and escape outside the carrier. Plus she wouldn't have her tags. So, I went to Petco and bought a cat harness and short leash yesterday. I needed to see if the harness would fit her ('cause she's a big girl!), so I put her on the table and slipped the harness on her.

Boy, was she upset! Let the biting commence! Of course, not full-out biting, just nips to show me that she was not amused. I adjusted the harness (let it out all the way, actually) and then tried to take it off. It has one of those little plastic quick-connects that have tiny ears on either side to depress to unlatch it. It's ridiculously hard to unfasten. While I'm wrestling with it, she's wrestling with me, and by the time I got the harness off her, she was beside herself.

You see, she hates to feel that she's being pushed around. I think that's why she hates the vet so much, because she doesn't have any control over what is happening to her. When I put the harness on her she felt like I was manhandling her and she got very angry. I have never had a cat that did that. My last darling kitty, Sasha, would just give you a look like "Well, okay," if you had to brush her or bathe her or clip her claws. She would look so dejected, as if to say "Why are you doing this to me?" When she had to have IVs after she got sick, she went along with whatever happened, because her people said it had to be done.

Boy, not Molly. If she feels bullied, she just goes nuts. I gave her a little kiss-and-make-up turkey afterward, but I think she's still mad at me. I reached down to pet her head as I walked past her and she had a tantrum at me today, nipping my feet. I wanted to calm her down, so I sat down on the floor beside her thinking I could give her a belly rub and get her over her bad mood. She didn't want a belly rub even though that's her favorite thing, but she wasn't running away from me. She was just sitting there next to me, looking very irritated, so I had a little talk with her about how I didn't like being bullied either. Molly looked at me very solemnly, and then raised her little face for a kitty kiss, as if to apologize. She cracks me up, sometimes.

What's for supper?

Once you get a cat, you'll never cook alone.

My husband's furry birthday party guest

And, no, before you ask, she didn't get to taste the icing!

Belly flop

Our cat Molly is unusual, to say the least. She's smart; you can see the wheels turning in her brain when you look her in the eye. She's calculating, weighing her options. This intelligence makes it hard for her to simply play without a plan in mind. I haven't seen her exuberantly chase a string just for the heck of it in years. She sits and analyzes: OK, she thinks, I see the pattern he's moving the string in, and if I wait until now, it will be over there. Then, she jumps for the place the string will be and meets it there. This is a little more kitty intellect than I was used to.

She also isn't a lap sitter any more. Oh, for a few months she would curl up in my husband's lap in bed in the morning (usually falling asleep and resulting in him being late for work because he didn't want to disturb her) but that stopped before she was a year old. Her big affection thing is belly rubs. On the floor. Nowhere else.

This morning, I walked out of the bathroom to find her on her back on the bedroom floor, four feet in the air, looking for all the world like an automobile accident victim. She lay there, not looking at anything in particular, with a resigned air, like "Well, someone will find me eventually and rub my belly." You see, that's her plan. She flops down on the carpet and waits patiently for me to come upon her and join her on the floor for a belly rub. We call it the Belly Flop.

And, she doesn't walk up to you and flop down. No, she just picks a spot, composes herself there, usually on her back, and waits for someone to find her. This is positively the weirdest cat behavior I have ever seen. I try to tempt her to jump up on the bed or couch for cuddle time, but no go. (Sorry, baby, but mama's getting older and floor is awfully far down.) She will not be persuaded. Beds are for sleeping; backs of chairs are for observing the family in case someone goes to the kitchen; couches are not much good for anything. Floors are for petting. Like this.

So, several times a day I join her on the carpet and indulge in a good cuddle and belly rub. Then we lie down in front of the sliding door and discuss the birds in the backyard. It's a good life these cats have.

Half a quilt

Paula's going to be making a quilt for her sweetie. And, sometime before next fall I need to do the same. But for a different reason. Paula, The Quilter wrote that her guy asked for a new lap quilt for his new chair. I need to make half a bed quilt. Let me explain.

I am hot-natured. VERY hot-natured. If I try to sleep with more than one light quilt on the bed, I die. My husband, on the other hand, likes warmth. We have tried folding back half a full size quilt, and putting a twin size quilt only on his side. Neither work very well because the weight of the quilt pulls it off the bed. So I had a brainstorm. Why not half a quilt?

I plan to make it 48" x 84". Just enough to lie on top of the first quilt over one person, to add a second layer of warmth. And, being kitty people, he requested a cat pattern. I already found a GREAT piece of fabric for the back: but I haven't decided on a design. I looked at a bunch of cat-based pieced and appliqued blocks online and he didn't like any of them. So for now I'm stumped.

Anybody have a fantastic cat quilt pattern?

Cat proofing

Tanya blogged about buying new slipcovers and a commenter noted that it was a good way to disguise cat-attacked furniture. I've had a little experience with that myself.
This is my living room couch. It's leather. We bought it about seven years ago, right about the same time we got our cat Molly. See that skirt under the seat cushions? It's not original.

I was at work one Saturday when my husband called me. "You won't believe what Molly is doing." Well, I've had a lot of cats in my life. I knew she could be doing just about anything. "What?" I asked with some trepidation.

"She's digging her back claws into the sofa and pulling herself along the front of it. I can't make her stop!"

I could just visualize what the cat was up to. And I could visualize what it would do to the leather sofa. The nearly new leather sofa.

"Distract her," I replied. Hah.

Over the next week she continued to play her new fun game. Dig those back claws into the front of the sofa, scoot along the rug the length of the furniture. Turn. Repeat.

Next Saturday, I was at the fabric store, a swatch of leather in my hand that we received when we ordered the couch. I was looking for any upholstery fabric that wasn't too stiff to sew on my DSW. I found a piece that was fairly close to the couch color. At home, I cut a pattern from the couch that would follow the lines of the pillows and make a faux skirt on the front.

It's attached by large safety pins to the seat bed under the cushions and to the cambric dust cover under the couch. It sticks out in these pictures because the leather is more reflective and photographs lighter than the actual color, but behind the coffee table you barely notice it.

After I spent an entire afternoon constructing and installing this cat proofing, she never tried to claw the sofa again. Figures.

Almost finished with the Double Wedding Ring quilt

I'm down to piecing the back of the DWR. No picture - it doesn't look much different than the last time you saw it, just bigger - maybe when it's all quilted. The backing will have an 11" wide vertical stripe inset about 1/3 of the way from the edge made up of 3" strips of all sorts of colors which coordinate with the large print on the front. They will be cut from all the fat quarters I collected to make star blocks in the original design. In this strip will be a pink "center" section from the DWR pattern, encircled with rose half-melon pieces. The pink center will be where the label is appliqued when it's done. I don't know exactly what the label will look like - I may ask my longarmer to use her embroidery machine to make a rectangle of pink roses on cream fabric so I can add the words inside. I could hand embroider something, but it would take longer than the top did to piece.

Sometimes I think that if I had made the original design that was meant for this fabric the quilt would have been prettier. I like the solid arc wedding ring design, but it is just too plain for my tastes. I hope the recipients like it.

I have also decided that making a glorified nine patch will be a piece of cake compared to this one. The nine patch won't have these darned corner blocks, which had to be inset, and about drove me crazy. The curves are a piece of cake compared to that.

Oh, yes - I heard from the stray girl kitty's new owners about what they chose for her permanent name. Are you ready? Gumbo! The family moved here from the Gulf coast so the woman said it seemed appropriate.

Don't ask me - I'm a Kentucky girl.

My mom remarked that it seemed more like a name for a boy kitty. I thought it was better as a name for a food. I generally don't name animals strange things. Molly, Sasha, Sylvester, Charlie, Zack, Spike (ok, he was an old tough tom - nothing else would do). I will cop to naming a cat Uncle, but that was kind of a family joke. But I have never named a cat for a soup.

What's wrong with me?

I have a whole uncommitted day ahead of me - no reason to leave the house (and it's colder than whiz, don't want to anyway), nothing looming on the schedule. I planned to sew the entire day and finish piecing the double wedding ring quilt. So what am I doing?

Not sewing. Cleaned the kitchen, straightened the house, made lunch, caught up on the laundry, did my taxes, organized my spice cabinet, for heaven's sake.

Yeah, I'm avoiding, big time.

Why? Who knows. I set up the sewing machine, sewed two arcs on a melon piece, and stopped. I'm just not feeling it.

I know I better start feeling it, and soon, because I only have one row to go and I need to reserve a place in the longarmer's queue. Maybe I want to sew on something else, maybe I'm just burned out on the curves, maybe I just burned out about sewing in general (I get that way sometimes) but whatever the case, I need to light a fire under myself and get at it.

Playtime's over, kid, back to work.

P.S. I got another email from Stray Girl's adoptive family saying how thrilled they were with her. She's sleeping in their bed, for heaven's sake! Now that's a kitty that's got it good.

Closure

Stray Girl's adopted family sent me a picture of the children with the kitty and everyone is very happy. What a great ending!

Now that the drama is over I can get back to sewing on the last row of the Double Wedding Ring quilt.

Stray kitty has found a home

The stars were perfectly aligned for me this time. When I went to pick up Stray Girl after she was spayed on Monday, the receptionist handed me a note with a telephone number. "If you still want to find a new home for her, this lady might be interested."

Of course I was interested. While I waited for them to release the kitty, the vet stuck his head into the examining room and filled me in on the details. A family had adopted a 4 month old kitten from the local shelter. After three weeks it suddenly sickened, and died with acute anemia. No one knew what had caused it. The family, especially the 6 year old daughter, was heartbroken. The vet said that they had fought hard to cure the cat and only given up and had it euthanized when it was apparent it was in extreme distress and nothing was going to help, because they didn't want it suffer any more. He didn't have any idea what caused this sudden acute anemia. He knew they still wanted a cat, so he told the lady that I had a cat I was looking to place, and she was interested, especially when she found out it was a calico. She left her name and number for me.

In the mean time I brought the kitty home and made it comfortable in the small bathroom, with her bed, her litter box and her favorite catnip mouse. She was eating well and moving like she was sore but not in tremendous pain. We had a lot of quality time while I sat on the bathroom floor (ouch.).

I called the prospective family last night and emailed a few pictures. She responded immediately that she wanted to see the cat. I told her she was welcome to visit any time today. Around 11 this morning she came by and fell in love with Stray Girl, who is an exceptionally good people kitty, and did all the appropriate rubbing, purring and lap sitting, even while recovering from her surgery and not feeling tip-top.

The lady wanted to know if it was too soon to take Stray Girl home. I gave her advice about isolating the cat in a small room such as a bathroom for a few days to allow her to recover, and making sure the children weren't too rough with her. With those conditions,I felt it was all right for the cat to go to its new home immediately. So Stray Girl was loaded up in a carrier and left my care about noon.

I feel really good about this adoption, both because the little girl will be thrilled to have a new kitty and because of the description of the family the vet gave me. I'm sure they will be good owners, and Stray Girl will have a great life. She's going to email me photos of the children with the cat.

I sent her favorite catnip mouse with her. So, be well and happy in your new home, little stray kitty, I'm glad our paths crossed, and glad to help.

Feline ill feelings, but not from where I expected

Now that we know that Stray Girl has a clean bill of health, my husband wanted to see how our Molly reacted to another cat up close and personal. She only sees other cats at the vet's office, and she's in a "mood" there, so it hardly counts. I put the harness and leash on Stray Girl and brought her inside, which thrilled her because she definitely knows indoors - and likes it! She was sniffing and rolling on the rug when Molly came down the hall.

Molly stopped at the living room door, looking at the new cat but not particularly excited. She walked up slowly, no puffy tail or anything, and did a friendly "nose to nose" greeting, as if to say "Hi there, who are you?" My husband and I were holding our breath, because we were expecting her to throw a fit.

Stray Girl was the problem. She looked Molly in the eye and hissed, like "I'm taking over here!" Whereupon I scooped her up and took her back to the garage. I'm not having Molly terrorized or beaten up in her own house.

Perhaps next week, after the snip-snip, she won't be in the throes of hormone hell and will be friendlier. She's in season (probably the reason she was dumped) and we are going to have to listen to the "unrequited love blues" from the garage all weekend. Her routine is sleep, meow at the window, beg for food, rub ankles, sleep. Oh yes, and pull down my garage window curtain rod. Gotta fix that next week.

I hope her mood about other cats changes after she's spayed, because while we don't plan to keep her, fostering and placement would be easier without all-out feline war.

No good deed goes unpunished

a.k.a - anybody want a cat?

I'm in a real pickle here. All the no-kill shelters are full to the brim and can't take the little calico stray. She got a clean bill of health from my vet this morning, and a set of vaccinations. I have tramped all over the neighborhood with her picture, but no one is claiming her. I even checked with three local vets to see if anyone had lost a cat. I can't figure out where she came from unless someone got tired of dealing with her and didn't want to pay to have her spayed, so they dumped her. And in my opinion, there's a special circle of hell for anyone who would do that.

She's too good a cat to end up a throwaway. She's affectionate, clean, well litter trained, playful, and mannered. She didn't even have a flea. She has definitely been in someone's house somewhere because she keeps mounting campaigns to get into the kitchen from the garage. She knows what's in there - a warm house!

My plan is to have her spayed so that with that expense out of the way and a current vaccination record, she would be an easy sell for adoption. She's on the surgery schedule for Monday, and after recuperation I will post her on Petfinder, on the local pet placement center website and in every local vet's and pet store's bulletin board. In the meantime, she can live in my backyard and the garage. I don't know what else to do.

I'm serious about asking if anyone wants a cat. If you're in the east Tennessee/north Georgia area, leave me a comment and we can talk. I want to find a loving home for her, and I'll deliver!