LostWoods Blog

Well, if any of you have visited the website in hopes of finding new pictures of Rand and Avi, you’ve already discovered that the site is there, but unless you know the exact page you want to find, you’re out of luck. Sondra ran into a problem editing her site and I confirmed that my site was the same (No surprise. They are both hosted by the same company.)  I opened a tech support ticket. They told me what to do. I did it last night and am waiting to see if it fixes the editing problem. In the meantime, it means an outage on my site temporarily. sigh…

Rand has an ear infection, poor boy! We noticed him walking funny and tilting his head on Saturday afternoon. I carefully examined him and thought he probably had an ear infection. Being late in the day with no vet available (except for emergencies) I broke into my stash of antibiotics kept on hand for this very type of situation. Yesterday morning I took Rand into the vet for a thorough exam to make sure I hadn’t been wrong. Yes, he has a bacterial ear infection. The med I’m giving him is correct and is the correct dosage. He should be all better soon. In the meantime, he’s running and playing like normal. The only problem is his equilibrium is messed up due to the ear infection, so he’s having problem running straight. And he’s still tilting his head.

Politics, chaos, and unhappiness reigning on the NFCFA list. It’s election time… what more can I say? I was not intending to run for any office, but in the past couple days I’ve had several people trying to convince me otherwise. Need to make up my mind by the end of the day… Guess I’ll spend part of the day — in between trying to do real work — thinking about it.  

At our house, we call the laser pointer the “Little Red Fairy”. Our old one’s batteries have been dead for some time, so the younger cats in the house have never seen the Little Red Fairy. That was remedied yesterday when I bought a new one. Let the fun begin!

As expected, Taiba, Polgara, and Basia were wildly enthusiastic about chasing the fairy across the floor and up the walls. (Yes, up the walls — Polgara jumped about 5 feet up the wall in pursuit last night.) At one point I made the fairy go up on our bed and Taiba followed in hot pursuit. When the fairy disappeared a little later while they were chasing it on the floor, she jumped back on the bed and search all over for it, meowing — calling for it? — the entire time. Jeremy and I had a few moments of naughtiness when we tried to get the girls to whack Shira in pursuit of the fairy. We’d get them running after it and then aim it at Shira’s side. No sale. Buzz came the closest, but even she stayed about a foot away, just waiting for the fairy to move on. No way was anyone going to whack Shira, no matter how many little red fairies were perched on her.

Avi and Rand also liked the fairy. Rand was quite willing to chase it across the floor, while Avi preferred to bat at it as it circled around her. They didn’t get that much of a chance to play, though, because every time the bigger girls realized the fairy was by the little kids they’d come charging over.

The more surprising fairy chaser was Talia. Talia is often quiet and sedate, but she, too, was running like crazy through the kitchen and dining room after the fairy. Peanut, Bug, and Spaz were also having some fun — when the terrible trio (Taiba, Polgara, & Buzz) would let them have a turn.

If you’ve never played with your cats using a laser pointer or pen, go buy one now. Okay, the next time you’re out running errands. You can find them in the pet section of stores like Walmart and Target, at pet stores like PetsMart and Petco, and a whole number of other places. They don’t have to be the ones that are marketed for pets. Just remember when you’re playing not to shine them directly in your cat’s eyes. Most cats love them and it’s great exercise for them to chase the fairy all over the room or house.

Silly Baby Buzz (Basia) continues to make me laugh. She’s taken to staying in bed with me for an extra hour in the morning, letting Ken get ready for work without her help. About 45 minutes after Ken’s alarm goes off, I hear Jeremy’s alarm down the hall. That is when I start thinking about getting out of bed. I think Basia knows this because when we hear the alarm, she sits up beside me and looks at me. If I don’t move, she snuggles back up to me and purrs. (She likes sleeping in!) However, if I’m stirring around, checking email on the Crackberry or anything, she’ll walk all over me, demanding I pay attention to her.

Once I finally get up, she races into the bathroom ahead of me. She jumps on the counter so she can have a drink out of the faucet while I brush my teeth. Sometimes I leave the water dripping while I take my bath and she’ll stay on the counter playing with it. Other mornings she’ll sit on the side of the tub while I bathe and bat her paws at the water.

This morning she was rowdier than usual and couldn’t wait to go downstairs before she started playing and getting into trouble. She knocked the bottle of bath gel from the side of the tub into the water. Yes, on purpose. Then she spotted my razor and intended to do the same with it, but I grabbed it before she could. She then jumped onto the counter and swatted the hand towel hanging from the rack. It fell down on the counter. Her job there done she moved to the top of the toilet tank so she could reach Ken’s and my towels hanging on the wall there. Once there, she proceeded to bat and pull at them until I got out of the tub and moved her away from them.

It’s the same kind of thing most mornings. Buzz goes from sleeping and cuddling to full speed in a matter of seconds. She doesn’t know any speed except full out. And as I told her Daddy Jim today, she a VERY helpful little cat. She helps cook. She helps do dishes. She helps us brush our teeth. She helps fold clothes. She tried to help us install the new dryer vent last night. She insists on being in the middle of everything that goes on at our house. Good thing we love her.

In case you haven’t noticed, Rand’s and Aviendha’s new pictures are on the website. They were good kittens and posed very nicely. Pam in MN asked about Rand’s cute little black nose… His nose will not be a drawback or a plus either way when it comes to showing. (If his new owner wants to show him.) It’s been very interesting to me to see if change from pink to black over the past 12 weeks and now it’s almost completely black. Now Avi’s little spot… It might drive her owner crazy and it’s possible that a judge might think it’s dirty rather than a “beauty mark” because of the grayish color to it. But trust me, it’s not dirt. Like Rand’s black spot — when it was much smaller — I’ve tried to wash Avi’s spot off, too. It’s permanent.

Or rather… they write! Yes, they finally posted their story, although it’s less of a story and more of them just talking, as you’ll see when you read it. LOL!

As for me, I don’t have a lot to say tonight. My new toy arrived — my iPod — and I’m busy playing with it. So enjoy the babies’ story and I’ll go back to learning how to use my latest bit of technology.

Brenda took some wonderful photos of McCoy in her yard the other day. No, he doesn’t go out and roam by himself. She took him out there for a photo op! He looks awesome and I’m just sure he’s going to be doing some more Smacking at the show in Loveland in a few weeks.

Isn’t he wonderful?! While his intended girlfriends are still too young, I am really looking forward to the day when we have kittens out of him and Danica and him and Basia. He will also likely father Keegan’s kittens, too.

Speaking of photos… I did upload the 11 week shots of Rand and Avi to their litter page. Rand’s nose leather continues to get blacker. Poor boy! I have scrubbed it several times making sure it’s not dirt, but all that happens is he ends up with a red and black nose. Avi now has a little blue spot on her nose, too. I don’t know why that is, but other breeders have had it happen, too, so I guess it’s nothing to be stressed about. And Rand’s black nose is quite cute, I think.

The past week has flown by. I’m not sure what I was doing all the time, but one day it was Christmas and now we’re on the second day of the new year. I do know what I spent Sunday and yesterday doing — undecorating. What goes up must come down… Basia apparently disagreed with me on that subject though. I was taking ornaments off the upstairs Christmas tree and she climbed up the tree. Every time I reached for an ornament she’d whack my hand. “No, mom! You said we can’t take the shiny things down — you can’t either!” Despite her hindrance, the trees are both denuded and put away in their boxes. We went to Lowe’s yesterday and bought another tree so next year I’ll have three to decorate. I must be insane.

I didn’t get new pictures of Rand and Avi yesterday or Monday, so I’d better get my act together and do them tonight. They are both getting back to the stage of having time for cuddles from lisa-mom and purr when we pick them up. They still aren’t sleeping with us again, but I do sometimes wake up and find them sleeping on the floor in our room. It might be just as well that they aren’t in bed with us. Lately we’ve had Basia, Kefira, Peanut, Polgara, and occasionally Lira Bug in bed with us.

Peanut and Polgara are big pests and I’ll admit to sometimes wishing they’d just LEAVE ME ALONE! Both of them walk all over us and give us head butts so we’ll wake up and pet them. Polgara likes to stick her nose right up to our faces and then meow at us. And neither Peanut nor Polgara is content with a couple pets. No. We have to pet them and pet them and pet them. Eventually — like 10 or 15 minutes later — they might lie down and sleep. Maybe.

Then we have Basia and Kefira… Ever since Kefira was a little kitten of about 6 weeks, she’s liked napping in bed under the covers with Ken and me. She insists on being between us — it is not acceptable to sleep on the other side of either of us. She waits until we turn out the light at night then she jumps up in the window sill and sits with her front paws on the head board of the bed. She stares down at us, waiting for one of us to lift up the blankets so she can go under them. If we don’t do it soon enough, she jumps down to the bed and paws impatiently at the blankets until we comply. Once under the covers she snuggles up to me and proceeds to give herself and me a bath before falling asleep.

The problem with this is that Kefira does not share her cave under the covers. And Basia wants to sleep in the cave, too. And she’s not polite in her requests. She’s a spoiled brat (Baby Stink!) who just climbs in between us and burrows under the covers. It’s like she can’t imagine us ever telling her no. The other night I was cold so I’d snuggled up to Ken. Basia came to bed and sat on top of us staring at the tiny space between Ken’s head and mine. Having come to the conclusion that she wouldn’t fit there, she instead tapped my repeatedly on my cheek. “Move over, lisa-mom. I need some room. Move!”

So whichever girl gets to bed first gets the cave. If Kefira is in the cave and Basia tries to go in there — and she will — Kefira growls and slaps Basia. If Basia gets to the cave first, Kefira takes one look at her, growls and goes off to the closet to sulk — usually scaling the sleeves of my clothes so she can sleep on the shelf above the closet rod.

BTW, Kefira appears to be pregnant with Beau’s kittens. Babies are due in about five weeks. I’m stressed because I don’t know exactly when since Kefira never acted like she was in heat and she’d been hanging out with Beau most of the time the past few months. I just have to guess from when she pinked up — the day after Christmas. Actually, my first clue was when she started shedding like crazy. I’ve been telling her that at this rate she will have no fur to keep herself and her babies warm once then arrive.

I’ve heard some talk that Rand and Avi have been chastised by the older cats in the house for not writing their story yet. So I expect you’ll hear something from them this week.