House Broken

We adopted our new cat, Pocket, in late June. During the summer she spent all her nights on an old blanket in our basement. She never came on our laps, but I blamed it on the hot weather. Who wants a cat on her lap when it's 90 degrees out anyway?
As fall turned to winter, Pocket has finally warmed up to us enough to hop on our laps. Okay, the throw rug helps. And she still prefers to lie between my legs and the arm rest.
Her favorite time of day is play time. Every evening we have to play "Chase the light" with her. And she loves playing with paper balls. No expensive toys for her. Of course, we spend the money we save on her food bill. That cat has quite an appetite! However, we have learned from past experience - and an over 14-pound cat - that it's a bad idea to give a cat as much food as she desires. So, no matter how much she begs, she gets the same measured amount of food at every meal. A lean kitty is a happy kitty!

Confessions of a dog magnet

Let me begin by stating that I have never owned a dog. My parents had chickens and rabbits. Nowadays, we have two cats.
But for reasons I cannot explain, I am a dog magnet. Such was the case on Saturday morning again when we went to Sewickley Heights park to see some birds. This is a park where dogs run lose and I can't even get out of the car before the first dog comes over to greet me. Later on the trail two beautiful dogs approached from the other side. One of them ran right past my husband to me. It was a beautiful retriever and I was astonished to learn that it was a five-months old puppy. It was big enough to be adult. Since I can't even lift our chubby cat out of the car I consider everything over 10 pounds heavy.
Speaking of cats: Our "Chubby" has recovered from teeth surgery like a trooper. She has lost a bit of weight but not as much as we would like. The downside of her diet is, of course, that she wakes us up early on weekends because she wants to be fed. So, perhaps I should feed her a late night snack if we want to sleep in...

Good news and bad news

Last week, I got two assignments for Pennsylvania Magazine. One of them will be a big photo feature and the other one a regular one. I'm very excited about both jobs.
On Sunday, I attended an art show with my photographs and greeting cards but I did not have a single sale. That was a bad omen since my week got worse from there. My arthritic knee flared up again and has been bothering me since Monday. On top of that, my back also began hurting hellishly. Then yesterday, I took our younger cat to the veterinarian for her annual check-up. She had lost some more weight since last year so I decided to have her blood tested. The veterinarian called me back to inform me that our kitty's kidney enzymes are elevated. She suggested to put kitty on a special diet and I rushed back to her office to pick up the food before the weekend. I don't know yet if she'll take to the food. Right now, she is still bummed out from her rabies shot. I hope we can manage her disease since this is the cat that is attached to my lap all winter. In summer, not so much...
On the birding front, I haven't seen many migrants passing through yet. The only one was an Eastern Towhee I spotted yesterday under our birdfeeder.

Adventures of Dog Sitting

Today is Valentine's Day, but we don't feel very romantic. The hair ball that our cat spat out this morning was pretty much the highlight of our week.
For reasons I cannot divulge here, we have become sudden and somewhat reluctant dog sitters. The dog is a high-strung Jack Russell Terrier named Brandi. This wouldn't be so bad if we were a no pet family. But we have two middle-aged cats who don't take too well to intruders, particularly the "in-your-face" kind. Brandi wants to be friendly and is met with hisses. The first week was particularly bad since the weather was windy and rainy and we learned that Brandi gets scared when it rains. We didn't get much sleep therefore--and then the phone rang at 2 o'clock Friday night. I would have paid real money for a good night's sleep.
Things have calmed down now and we let Brandi loose in the house more often. In fact, I think I've been adopted. She follows me everywhere. The best part is that she now sleeps through the night. This morning I caught her growling at our washing machine. I guess she has never seen a frontloader before. Oh well, this too shall pass.