Kitty

My poor baby was spayed today. I felt like the worst "kitten mommy" in the whole world this morning. She had to fast before surgery, and Vixen woke up hungry. We have our morning routine, and I always feed her as soon as I come in from feeding the goats. So, I came in and she was sitting and waiting by her dish. I had to walk past her, and ignore the fact that she wanted breakfast. She was so perplexed. She looked at me, looked at the empty dish, meowed a LOT, walked around and rubbed around my ankles in case I needed a reminder that she was there and didn't I realize she needed her breakfast? It made me so sad. After a few minutes of not getting fed, she resorted to sniffing around the kitchen floor apparently trying to track down a few stray crumbs of something or other, because that poor kitty was hungry.

And then....that look she gave me when I scooped her up and stuffed her into the cat carrier. She was horrified. I was the Mommy who took care of her, spoiled her, and catered to her every whim. Now I was a monster who starved her, and stuffed her into the hateful cage to take her to the "Bad Place". It broke my heart. But Vixen, at only 4 1/2 months, went into heat this week. I didn't think cats could go into heat that young, but according to my vet, it does happen. Apparently, cats can have up to 2 litters of kittens before they even turn a year old. Yikes!!! A cat in heat is not exactly fun to deal with. She wasn't that bad, but it made her restless, and she walked around meowing a lot. I called the vet to ask if they would still do the spaying because we had scheduled this several weeks ago. She said that cats stay in heat so often that even though its not ideal, they just roll with it, so we didn't have to reschedule.

Anyway, she's home now. Those first few hours at home were a little tricky. She was completely disoriented and she kept making this low, gutteral kind of growl, like a cat possessed by the devil. It alarmed me....like a LOT. It was like they gave me the wrong kitten. I didn't know if she was in so much pain that she could barely stand it, or if the whole experience of being left at the vet was so traumatic that she would never get over it. It worried me. But after doing a little research online I found out that cats are very hard to sedate due to a wonky metabolism. One of the anesthetics that vet's use during surgery is basically a hallucinogen and it takes quite a while to wear off. She probably didn't know where she was, or recognize us or anything. In other words, Vixen was having a bad LSD trip. Poor little baby. But tonight she is better. I think that part is wearing off. She knows who we are, and she was just purring when I petted her. We are keeping her in the laundry room for a while, just to keep her still and quiet. She seems to be resting peacefully on her favorite blanket right now, so hopefully in a couple of days, I will have my baby back to normal.

Last Night

My night went something like this:

11 pm - My shoulder was hurting, so I took some ibuprofen and headed for bed.

11:15 pm - Can't find a comfortable position. Pray for ibuprofen to kick in soon.

11:30 pm - Bruce comes to bed. I am still tossing and turning. I don't sleep well on my back, and my shoulder bothers me if I lie on my side.

11:33 pm - The snoring begins! God help me.

12:00 am - Feel the room shaking. Quickly review my limited knowledge of earthquake survival tips. Get out of bed to head for the nearest doorway. Realize the floor is not shaking, just our bed. Climb back in and poke husband to turn over.

12:01 am - After turning over, there was a one minute reprieve, and then the snoring begins again. Ibuprofen is definitely not doing its job. Lazy, crappy meds.

12:30 am - Get out of bed, walk to the kitchen for a drink of water. The dogs wake up long enough to eye me with sleepy disinterest and they fall back asleep. It makes me jealous.

1:00 am - Give up and move into Erica's room to TRY and sleep. That requires me to stop and move piles of clothes off the bed where I have been cleaning out closets. Clothes end up on the floor and I don't even care.

1:05 am - Realize I can still hear the snoring from across the hall. Sigh a long weary sigh of the soul out of sheer exhaustion.

1:15 am - Kick the covers off. Too HOT!

1:30 am - Pull the covers back up. Too COLD!

2:00 am - Start to feel a tiny bit drowsy and begin to relax into a light sleep.

2:10 am - Wake up to a sharp pain in my toe. Realize kitty is excited to see me sleeping in a new location and has decided to celebrate by devouring me, feet first.
She is playing rough and biting HARD.

2:30 am - Almost dozing, only to have kitty walk back and forth across my face about a dozen times.

2:45 am - Covers off, too hot again.

3:00 am - Freezing. Back under the covers. Notice that the snoring is still going on, but am too tired to care.

3:30 am - Watching the clock. Wishing I could sleep. Thinking about giving up and getting up but kitty has gotten comfortable snuggled up beside me and I hate to disturb her.

4:00 am - Last actual time that I saw on the clock. I think I finally slept after that. And then, when it seemed like I had just closed my eyes......

6:30 am - Alarm sounding. Husband wants to know why I abandoned him in the middle of the night. Time to get up and start my day......I feel somewhat like I just got run over by a truck. Joy!

For the record, my husband rarely snores. But when he does....you better look out.
I hope tonight turns out to be one of his non-snoring nights. On the other hand, I am probably tired enough to sleep through just about anything, so I guess it really doesn't matter.

Taste Test

In an effort to satisfy my husband's cravings for his Grandmother's long-lost chocolate bread pudding recipe, I have been working on narrowing it down by trial and error. I'm close...really close. But when you have no actual recipe, and are trying to guesstimate with approximates, its not that easy. For starters, this bread pudding is made with biscuits. I am even having trouble with THAT part of the equation. It turns out that homemade biscuits are not all that easy. The recipe itself seems to be fairly simple, but the actual handling of the dough makes all the difference as to how light and fluffy the biscuits come out. Again, Bruce is comparing what comes out of MY oven to what he remembers Grandma making umpteen years ago, with NO recipe or instructions, so....Trial and Error. I have the taste part down to almost there, but the light and fluffy part....not so much. My best result so far has been the recipe off of the White Lily flour bag. White Lily was the ONLY flour that his Grandmother would use, so it stands to reason that maybe that was her recipe???? But mine are not coming out light enough, so I need to play around with that. My first correction is to add more baking powder. And then I am going to have to resort to the one thing that I have an aversion to....Lard. Grandma used lard in her biscuits. That much we both remember. But I have never used lard for anything. It just seems so wrong and unhealthy. My grocery store doesn't even carry lard. We looked. And the other store we ran into to check had it, but it was in this huge bucket that I would never be able to use it in my lifetime. And apparently lard has a very finite shelf life....so....? I'm sticking to my baking powder idea first, and will resort to hunting down a reasonable sized container of lard only IF I really have to.

But anyway, my latest bread pudding attempt is in the oven right this minute. I think I have that recipe figured out for the most part. If I could only get those biscuits right, maybe the texture of the pudding would be right as well. I don't know, but I do know that this pudding is made with those "not as light as I wanted" White Lily biscuits sans lard, so its extremely "iffy". Not that my other attempts have been bad. Actually, it turned out to be extremely tasty. Just not exactly like Grandma's. But we ate it. And if this process turns out to be a lengthy one, we may both end up being about 300 lbs as we gobble up the test runs....

The Dog...

Jeanne called this morning and it sounded like she might have wanted this dog. So next time Bruce "finds" yet another rescue animal, maybe I should just drive it straight down to Wilmington and leave it on her doorstep??? Haha. Seriously, though, she used to have pomeranians and I think she might have been interested in this one.
I still like to think this dog has already found a good home. And Jeanne has as many animals as I do, so....yeah....there is such a thing as maximum capacity. But just to let her know what she missed out on, here's a pic of the latest rescue:

Another dog????

My husband rescued yet another lost dog on Friday. He came to see me at work, to try and break the news as gently as possible. I love dogs, but we have 4 (!!!) already. Also? I am finding this cat thing to be really cool. Kitty uses a litter box, which does require cleaning, but honestly....cleaning the litter box is a picnic in the park compared to dragging a dog out in cold rain/snow/sleet in the middle of the night. Bruce and I are enjoying the cat scene so much that we have pretty much decided that we are going to be cat people from now on. Of course, then he brings home a dog. It was a pretty little dog. Kind of a reddish pomeranian mix. And she was really sweet and friendly, but I did not want another dog.

Bruce took her to the vet, because she was so cute and friendly that we figured she probably belonged to somebody. They scanned her for a chip. You know...those chips that give out the owner's information. But unfortunately she wasn't tagged. So....out of sheer pity for our plight, the vet called and literally begged the humane society to take her. They are really overcrowded with animals, but when they heard we already had 4 dogs, 2 goats and a cat (1 dog and the cat are rescued animals) they relented and made an appointment for us to bring her in on Saturday.

Anyway, hubby took the dog. But not without some measure of guilt. They asked for a $30 boarding fee. He gave them $200. The woman was so grateful and she told him that with the economy like it is, their donations were seriously drying up. She also said that the last pomeranian that they got in only lasted about an hour before she was adopted. So, that made him feel better. This dog was young (about a year old, the vet thinks), healthy, cute and had an excellent disposition, so hopefully someone will want her in a hurry. I like to think that she already has a good home.

We are considering adopting 1 more cat so that Vixen has some company. Maybe we will go take a kitten off the Humane Society's hands to make room for some more animals. Bruce started to sneak a peek at the kitties yesterday, but we have a couple of things that we need to do first. Vixen has her surgery to be spayed scheduled for Friday. I want her to be healed from that before we throw another cat in the mix. She is pretty adaptable, and friendly and I think she might enjoy some kitty company. But I don't want her running around too soon, and tearing out some stitches or something. And then there is Scotty. Its time, maybe past time to do something about him. Poor thing. He is deaf and blind and basically helpless now.
We have already talked to the vet about having him put to sleep...and cremated....and kept in a pretty urn. The vet says that she would be more than happy to come out and take care of that here at the house. But I keep procrastinating because it makes me sad.

Anyway, Bruce is on Facebook now. One of his activities listed on his profile is:

Animal Saviour

And honestly, I don't know another single person who deserves that title more.