LostWoods Blog

As I said a year ago when I started this blog, from time to time I’ll write about things that don’t have anything to do with cats. This is one of those times.

I am a Christian — some of you may know that already, or have guessed it. No secret, but I don’t go around beating people over the head with “religion” either. I’d much rather live what I believe and bear witness that way than become a street corner preacher.

I have a necklace with three “charms” on it that I wear almost all the time. Each is a reminder of the “things” that are most important to me in life. One is an amber heart — the first gift my husband ever gave me and a symbol to me of my friends and family - the people I love. The next charm is a gold coin from the Isle of Man with a Norwegian Forest Cat on it encircled by a gold, heart-shaped coin holder – obviously a symbol of my furry loves. And the third and most important charm is a gold cross — a symbol of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

So… the other day I was in WalMart getting some groceries and stuff when I stopped by the book section to look for a new book or two to read. Why, I have no idea, as I have several sitting here at home begging to be read. But one can never have too many books! I picked up a book to read the back cover and as I put it back, another book fell on the floor at my feet. I glanced at the cover as I picked it up — not nice to leave things lying in the aisles! — and thought, “you ought to see what it’s about — broaden your horizons.” (Yeah, I get in a reading rut sometimes. Romances, Sci-fi, the occasional mystery…) It sounded pretty good and I brought it home. I started reading it Sunday morning and could not put it down.

The book is “The Shack” by William P Young. It is fiction — a story of a man whose youngest daughter is kidnapped and murdered. Yeah, that sounds uplifting, doesn’t it? But more than being a story of tragedy and loss, it is a story of hope and forgiveness. It is a story about faith and trust. And most of all, it’s a story about love and relationship. It is probably the most sensible and LOVING description of God’s desire for a relationship with each of us that I have ever read. I cried again and again, and ended up hoping that some of the lessons were sinking in so I could live my life more in communion with “Papa” (the name Mack’s wife calls God) and with much less worry about the stresses of the world around me.

I will be buying a few extra copies of “The Shack” to give away. I can’t give away my own - I know I’ll be rereading it. It wasn’t very expensive — only about $10 at WalMart — and one of the best uses of $10 I’ve made.

Anyway, if this sounds like something you might like to know more about, you can get more information at www.theshackbook.com

Tomorrow I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled cat programming. God bless!

http://www.funtrivia.com/email/play.cfm?egroup=323149&tmp=1215475508

More later — but it will be non-cat related.

… but Sondra is keeping her promise to take pictures every week for us. One week pictures of the Warrior Cats are up on my website. (Ask and you shall receive, Michelle!) I’ll update Sondra’s a little later with the same pictures. As you’ll see, the babies are starting to open their eyes. They are all gaining weight well. Danica — silly mom cat — has decided that the bigger of the two nursery boxes is the proper home for them after all. This after she insisted they must be in the little, cramped box for the first several days. I guess she came to her senses and realized they would all be more comfortable if they had a little more room.

I’ve been busy this week doing some work on the NFCFA Constitution. I think I mentioned that I’d been appointed By-Laws Committee chair, so along with learning my duties as Breeder Division Secretary, I’m also deep into the workings of NFCFA in general. I think our Constitution proposals are nearly ready to be shared with the membership as a whole. I hope that we’ve listened to what has been said by members over the past five months or so and have written something that they will approve of. Oh, I’m not naive enough to think that 100% of the members will be happy — although I’d love that! — but I do think we are proposing changes that the majority will like.

After our HOT weather last weekend we’ve been having cool and rainy weather for days. I think it’s supposed to be somewhat nicer in the next few days, though. We’d hoped to go camping, but with the possibility of rain or snow in the mountains, we’ll be staying home to work on the gardens and relax around the house. I hope you all have a pleasant long weekend!

Greetings from summery Montana where we enjoyed temps in the 90s over the weekend. I planted a bed of wildflower sod while Ken and Jeremy put down a stone border for our garden this weekend. It was nice to get to work outside and start planting. Can’t get too carried away because winter could still return for a quick visit, but more and more plants are popping up. And summer may soon revert back to spring,  as today is supposed to be a little cooler (low 80s) with Wednesday back in the 50s and rainy. For new readers of the blog, go back to about this time last year to see the beginnings of the flower gardens here at LostWoods. This year we’re adding a semi-formal garden for some herbs and other edibles. That is, if the deer don’t decide that everything we plant is a buffet for them. Much as I enjoy watching the deer, they are darn annoying when they chew on the trees, the roses, and assorted other plants in the yard. Sooner or later we’re going to have to give in and fence the whole place to keep them out.  

Today is my first sandal and cropped pants day of the year. I’m lucky to work at a place with a very relaxed dress code. Actually,  on my first day of work my supervisor’s comment about the dress code was “we prefer you to be dressed.” LOL! And so, we dress pretty casual around here. I never wear shorts to work and I rarely (maybe twice in the two years I’ve been here) wear anything with sayings or logos on it. But jeans, cropped pants, tank tops, and tee shirts are a staple of my wardrobe.

Keona went to Colorado to live with Brenda on Saturday and Brenda reports she’s settling in well. She and McCoy (her future boyfriend) are becoming friends and playing wildly. She’s met her Beau-dad and he is acting more like a father figure to her than a playmate. Brenda says it’s funny to see them adopting the father-daughter roles considering they just met and, of course, had no idea that is their blood relationship.

Isadora headed off to Virginia Saturday where her plane was met by her new mom and dad. They called after she arrived and are delighted with her. Upon arriving in her new home, she set out to explore the brand new cat tree and the rest of the house. I’m sure she’s going to be very spoiled and loved there.

In other LostWoods kitten news… I heard from Magic’s (the kitten formerly known as Kheldar) mom on Saturday evening — a quick email to say I should call her Sunday morning so she could tell me about what happened at the show on Saturday. So I did. Connie was thrilled with our little guy’s day — especially considering he hadn’t been in a show ring for six months. We talked again last night and Magic ended up the weekend with finals in 11 of the 12 rings at the show, including two Bests! Whoo-hoo! I guess this would be a good time to also announce a season brag for Magic — he was the 17th Best Kitten in TICA’s Mid-Pacific region for 2007-2008. Way to go, Connie and Magic! I’ll be seeing them in Chehalis in mid-June and can hardly wait. Yes, I’ll try to take pictures to share with all of you.

Speaking of pictures… Beth sent me some of Brasen and Keiran (aka the Master of Disaster) a week or so ago that I’ve been meaning to share. Here are the boys sitting in the window. Aren’t they handsome?

And here’s a picture of Bannack (now known as Tikki) that his owner sent me recently.

Kyrith’s Kaye-mom sent me a picture of him recently, too, but I don’t have it on this computer, so I’ll post it another day. It’s so fun to see how my fur babies are growing up!

Sondra reports that all the Warrior Cats are thriving and Danica is a wonderful mom. Danica does insist that the kittens be in the little (about 12″ x 12″) box instead of the bigger (about 12″ x 24″) box where Sondra thought they should be. She kept moving them. Sondra compromised with her and put some blankets in the small box. Now Danica leaves the kittens there — although she does takes breaks from them and lounges in the bigger box! We’ve decided the dark boy is a brown tabby and white, not a black and white.

Thanks, Michelle, for catching my mistakes on the Warrior Cats page on the site. I think I have everything fixed. That’s what happens when I work on two sites (mine and Sondra’s) at the same time. I forget what I’ve done where. That and I just can’t type… Off to lunch now before I make too many more typos in here.

Yes, I made it out here safe and sound and have been hanging out with Heather, Patrick, Braysen, and baby Merrick. We’ve been blessed with a couple days of sunny weather, so we’ve had a chance to spend some time outside and also go to the park. Braysen thinks that plants need to be fed with rocks, so he has spent a lot of time dropping rocks onto the shrubs in Heather and Patrick’s front yard. I’m not sure why rocks are the food of choice, but he spends long (for a two year old) periods of time “feeding” them.

Also in the plant front… this morning Braysen got in trouble for playing in the dirt in the potted plant in the family room. I got out the vacuum and cleaned up his mess. Not ten minutes later he did it again. And I cleaned it up again. Then we went to the park for a little bit. After we got home, while we were all getting and eating lunch, Braysen once again visited the plant. He took a handful of dirt and neatly piled it up on the floor beside the pot. Then he got the toy vacuum out and proceeded to take it to clean up the dirt. I had to go into the kitchen so he wouldn’t hear me laughing at him, leaving H & P to deal with their little mess maker. Kids!

I’ve taken pictures of Braysen, Merrick, and Xaria so far. The sweetest one I got of the boys has Braysen sitting on the floor holding Merrick’s hand.

It’s not the best shot I’ve taken in the past couple days, but it is certainly the one with the most “Awww!” potential. Braysen is much too busy to pose for pictures, so I just hold the camera and wait for a worthy shot. Neither he nor Merrick respond to a teaser worth a darn! LOL!

Xaria is beautiful and funny. I see a lot of her mother, the Queen of Everything, in her. She also has the most gorgeous green eyes. I’m still trying to get a shot that shows them off well. I have one, but her face was a little dirty, so I’m trying for a better one.

BTW, the runoff election for Breeder Division Secretary in NFCFA finally is over and I will be spending the next two years doing that, along with serving as By-Laws committee chairman. Going to be a busy time.

Most of today will be free for some sightseeing or shopping or a bit of both. Our ride to the airport leaves at 2:30 so I’m free until then. I don’t have a lot of room in my suitcase, so lots of shopping is out of the question — not to mention what it does to my budget. However, I can’t pass up the chance to visit a few stores that we don’t have in Helena in search of things I just have to have.

Yesterday we finished up about 5:00 p.m. I came back to the hotel, freshened up, and took the train to NJ to meet up with Barbara Chronakis, her husband George, and their beautiful cats — the wegies of Kashi Saga. I’d send you off to Barbara’s website to meet them, but as yet she doesn’t have a site. Hopefully that will soon be remedied as her cats are absolutely stunning. Barbara has been a NFC breeder for many years and was full of stories about the history of the cats here in the United States. She is also an avid pedigree tracker and knows a ton about the lines here in the U.S. especially — not just which cats are in the lines, but about the health issues that have occured in some of the lines. Our time together just flew by and I wish we were closer so we could have more enjoyable evenings (or weekends in the show hall) together.

Well, if I’m going to get anything more than packing done this morning, I need to make this short. I can’t wait to get home to see my babies. It was great to get my kitty fix and some cuddles from Barbara’s cats (they were sweet and friendly as well as beautiful) but it’s not the same as having my own cats around me, cuddled up to me when I sleep.

Oh, baby news… Heather still hasn’t delivered my new grandson. He’s not due until May 1st, but she and her midwife both were just sure he’d arrive early — especially since she’s been having contractions for several weeks and ended up in the hospital once, with both Heather and the staff thinking it was the real deal. But no. Not yet.

…or not so phun (fun)…

Greetings for sorta sunny Philadelphia. I’m waiting for a backup profile to regenerate so I can do a restore, so I thought I’d take a short mental health break and write in the blog. Much more fun than real work.

Our phun filled five day trip started out with omens of the doom to come. It snowed quite a bit on Saturday night, and we had light snow continuing on Sunday morning. Our flight was scheduled to leave Helena for Minneapolis (then on the Philadelphia) at 8:00 a.m. Unfortunately, both (yes, Helena’s airport is small enough that it has just two, count ‘em TWO) de-icing trucks broke down. We did not leave Helena until 10:30. Then we had to stop in Billings to refuel — something necessitated by a very full flight and the need to keep the fuel load light to get us over the mountains and out of the Helena Valley.

We landed in Billings, refueled, and were de-iced. Off we taxied to the run-up area where we sat waiting for Flight Operations to recalculate the weight and balance for our flight. Somehow they had lost our flight info… We sat there so long they sent us back to the terminal to be de-iced again. Finally we were back in the air on the way to Minneapolis. As you can guess, we missed our connection in MSP. Part of the group was rescheduled on a flight leaving MSP at 4:10, but some of us (me included) weren’t able to get a flight until 7:45. We finally made it to the hotel in Philadelphia just past midnight.

Yesterday morning we started all our work at about 9:45 a.m. (The mainframe and network staff started earlier, but without their parts working, I couldn’t do all that much.) We had a fairly decent day yesterday and miracle of miracles, we went back to the hotel around 8 p.m. Had dinner and a couple drinks, went to bed.

We started work again this morning about 8 and have had our ups and downs. We had hoped to have everything up and available for testing by late afternoon (like right about now) but one group will have to be rescheduled for morning, meaning we won’t be able to tear down until midday. But it’s still looking good for getting done at a decent time tomorrow — which means I’ll get to go to dinner with a local NFC breeder and get a kitty fix. It’s hard being away from cats completely for even one day, let alone several days. It’s just not right to go to sleep without a cat in my bed!

I haven’t posted a song of the day since Christmas time, but I’ll share a few that seem to be theme songs for recent days — two for the DR drill and one for NFCFA…

DR -

Sloop John B - Beach Boys (referring to our travel phun & games)

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/beach+boys/sloop+john+b_20013644.html

M.T. A. - Kingston Trio (this relates to how we felt stuck on the planes, waiting and waiting for de-icing in both Helena and Billings)

http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/the_kingston_trio/m_t_a.html

NFCFA

Whistling in the Dark - They Might Be Giants

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/whistling-in-the-dark.html

Well, I suppose I ought to get back to work. My restore is nearing completion, at which time we may be ready to restore something else. Maybe.

That’s what it was when I walked from the parking lot across the street to the office. This is what I thought winter weather in Montana was going to be like, but in the almost two years we’ve been here, these tastes of real winter have been few and far between. Yesterday it was in the 30s and melting was the order of the day. Today, nothing will be melting — instead the snow will be piling up again. And because I only have to drive across town to work and back, I don’t mind at all. Remember, I like snow!

At lunch time I’ll be making an extra trip across town to let the dogs out for a bit and check on Kefira. I’ve been thinking her due date was early next week, but she has been showing definite signs of nesting since yesterday morning. She’s confined to the guest room and she spend most of her time in the closet in her bed, kneading, purring, and grooming herself. She had the Leprechauns without me there, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she does it again. But I’d rather she didn’t.

I’ve been trying to come up with a litter theme for these babies and wanted something to honor Beau — or reflect that these will be his only children. However, no names in the category of “only” or “legacy” made me happy. Brenda suggested these be “Beau’s Gifts” and having not yet exhausted the names that mean gifts, I think they will be. Kittens just might have two names, though, as I’d like to incorporate silver or possibly snow (in honor of a lovely weather) into the name, too. So we’ll see.

Not much else going on to write about today. The cats were all wild and crazy all weekend long. Shira killed teasers. Basia, Taiba, and Polgara raced around attacking everything. Rand and Avi ran, jumped and wrestled. Bug snuggled in bed with me. (I guess that’s a little out of the ordinary, ’cause usually she is content to sleep on the floor.) Finny, Tucker, and Caboose enjoyed snuggling in the new fleece throw I bought them. Life at LostWoods, proceeding as usual…

Deleting all the FrontPage extensions for all the sites and then reinstalling them solved the problem. I spent several hours last night rebuilding all the navigation for our sites and I think they are back as they should be. There’s a chance I’ve missed a page here or there and it will look a bit odd, so let me know it you see anything without the buttons at the top of the page.

Busy getting ready to go to Loveland, CO for a show this weekend. The added bonus of going to CO is seeing Brenda, Sondra, Heidi and other friends, plus getting to see my son, Justin. Jeremy is going with me and will share the driving if the roads are clear. Kinda questionable at the moment. They aren’t terrible, but there are snowy spots and it’s spitting snow as I type.

The show this weekend should be a good time — and an excellent opportunity to see NFCs. When I checked the show summary on Monday for counts, there were 13 NFCs entered in the show. Wow! They were the third highest count of any breed, behind the Persians and Maine Coons. This is truly remarkable. It was just a few years ago when I started showing and my wegies were usually the only ones at any show I attended. The judges will have to work to decide on who deserves which ribbons at this show and it will be fun to watch. LostWoods fur kids Fin, McCoy, Basia, and Danica will be there, as well as some extended family members. Ce’Nedra (now known as Skadi) is entered. Heidi — Skadi’s owner — will also be showing Liby, who is LostWoods Bozeman’s daughter, Alta, who is one of Comet’s grand daughters, and her male Narvi. Sondra is showing Maxine — one of McCoy’s littermates, in addition to Danica. Our friend Kris will be showing LostWoods Colyn and a boy from McCoy’s breeder, Logan. the other cat is as yet unknown although we think it will be one of two boys that also live in CO. One has a LostWoods girl as his mother.

I’m going to be posting a candidate statement about myself on a new blog page here in a few days. I’ll let you know when it’s up so you can stop by and read about me and my qualifications and thoughts about NFCFA. In the meantime, I’m off to finish scooping litter boxes and packing up all my show stuff.

Sigh… Still working with Tech Support to get my website and all the others we host on our account fixed. Now they’ve told me that the FrontPage extensions are corrupted, so I have to delete them from ALL the sites and reinstall them. Of course, it can up to three hours to deactivate, plus another three hours to activate. Then I get to test it. At the moment, I’m waiting for everything to deactivate, with hopes of activating them again later this morning. Then by the time I got home from work I’ll be able to try logging in and getting everything back to normal.

I decided to run for Breeder Division Secretary for NFCFA (Norwegian Forest Cat Fanciers Association) after hearing from a several people that I should throw my hat in the ring. I suppose it’s the right thing to do, since I often have opinions about how things should be. I ought to be doing some work instead of just telling people what I think.

Speaking of NFCFA… you don’t have to be a breeder to be a member. We have a membership class just for people who have or just love NFCs. Dues are $10 per year and include access to our online newletter, The Skogkatt. Dues go mostly toward association expenses, but we’ve also had a few fundraisers in recent years that have enabled us to donate thousands of dollars to feline health research. We’re always looking to improve and as owners/fanciers of our beloved wegies your opinion is valued, too.  Check out the website at: www.forestcats.net. I did try to look at the membership application and see that the link is broken (notice a trend here… no, I’m sure it’s not related!) so I will send a note to our webmistress about it.