Cute Kitty Pictures

I has them!

Allow me to introduce our new cute kitty, Saratoga. Sara for short.
As you can tell from the above picture, she has lots of white fur. So in addition to Scheherazade leaving her black cat hairs everywhere, we now have source of white hair so no matter what clothes we wear the cat hair will be evident.

In the above picture I was trying to photograph her but she was curious about the camera and came to check it out.
I gave her a little bit of milk. Don't tell the kids, as I discourage them from doing this. But they aren't here right now (Hallelujah!) and if I pick up the plate before they get home from school, no one will be the wiser.
Sara is a playful baby, and like Scheherazade likes to gnaw on electrical cords. And other things she shouldn't chew on. She's been busy this morning, but is now asleep on my shoulder. Awww!

I tried to sleep in a bit this morning, but had those disturbing dreams that I get when I'm not fully asleep nor fully awake. This morning I dreamed that we lived in a huge old house that needed lots of work and had way too much junk in it. Superman was trying to be helpful by putting away the half dozen or so old ironing boards by disassembling them. Not helpful! The kids were disobeying, I couldn't find anything, and was specifically looking for my deodorant. Then the in-laws showed up to help, and they hate being at my house. In the dream I was lying on a mattress in the family room, naked, covered by a sheet when they walked in. In reality I was lying on my bed, naked, covered by a sheet. Thankfully no one but the kitten was there. I was glad to wake up!

Here's a useful chart for those with cats. It tells me that I must stop Sara from playing with my pothos leaves. My pothos tells me I should water it, and get the damned kitten away from it already.

I discovered a way cool YouTube channel this morning. Check this out:

I love this piece of music (Beethoven's 7th symphony, 2nd movement). The animated score is fascinating to watch. At least I think so. Give it a chance. At least watch it from the 2 minute mark to the 3 minute mark. Each instrument has a different color in the animation. I find it fascinating. Double click on the graphic above to go to the YouTube channel to find lots more animated classical pieces. I'm enthralled.

I'm going to watch/listen to more pretty music and perhaps read the newspaper or something else, maybe something useful. Today the world is my oyster. Boo-ya

My boys and the kitten Scheherazade

My 17 year old son Twitch views life from an interesting perspective. He's always been a unique boy. He quietly observes the world around him (when he isn't too self absorbed to be oblivious to it). Sometimes he shares his point of view with the family.

I have a white board hanging on the wall in our kitchen. It's a wonderful place for messages, notes, lists, and tirades. Twitch put this on the white board recently.

Members of the household are represented on the left. S and C are of course our gay couple. The D and M are for Dad and Mom. Next he shows himself (Twitch) then S-Sproing and D-Diva. The red line represents Courtesy, green is Productivity, and black is Respect. Along the bottom of the chart we see his terms for the levels of each virtue. In ascending order we have suckish, poor, fair, good, and parent.

He qualifies the chart here, saying "figures based on distant observations." Why distant I'm not sure. He's right here and sees it all. But this is Twitch's opinion of how well each family member shows courtesy, productivity, and respect. I'm glad Superman and I define the standard. That's as it should be. 

Sproing wanted me to take his picture. He posed for me. He thinks he's hot sh!t, so he gave me some bad a$$ poses. This was the only one I captured. He was thrilled. Sometimes he is very easy to placate. He is lots of fun!

And here are some pictures of our sweet little kitten, Scheherazade. She snuggled up to Superman for some scritching. She's really getting into this petting stuff.The first few days we had her she spent most of her time hiding under the furniture in our bedroom. We have her food, water, and the litter box in our bathroom, and I've been trying to keep the bedroom door closed so I at least know what room she's in. Whenever she saw us she'd hiss and run away. It was tough to catch her! We had to catch her at least twice a day to give her the antibiotic. Once we held her and pet her she purred like a little outboard motor. She loves it. But then she'd hiss next time we got close to her. Hey, make up your mind, Little One!But since the weekend she's been much more social. Here she is on our bed playing with a little catnip toy I bought for her. She's so cute when she bats that thing around! She has learned how to climb up onto our bed. To give some explanation, Superman built our bed. The mattress is nearly 3 feet off the floor. Our grown cat, Samhain, can jump up on the bed with no problem. Scheherazade is way too tiny to do that yet. However, there's enough junk piled up on the sides of the bed for her to climb on until she's close enough to jump. Yep, time to clean the room. :)

Here's a close shot of the catnip toy she was playing with. It's on the floor now, as she batted it off the edge of the bed. Now she's on the floor looking for it. You can see it. You can also see her back as she looks elsewhere. What a silly little girl kitty!She's doing much better. She uses the litter box consistently (that was hit and miss the first couple of days). She's eating and drinking well. The antibiotic seems to have worked pretty well on her respiratory infection, as she isn't sneezing and coughing anymore. However, her left eye isn't getting any better. If anything it's getting worse. I need to take her to the vet again to have him take another gander at that eye. Her eye is producing a lot of icky gunk, and the sclera (I think that's what it is) is inflamed. 

Kitten and thread

Sproing and I took the kitten to the vet this afternoon. I decided to try a different veterinarian from the one we've been seeing since moving to Greenwood. I don't like the facilities at the other animal hospital. The vet we saw today is really old. There was another doctor-looking fellow in the office, too, not as old as the Old Veterinarian, but it was the Old guy who examined our kitten. Really old. Slow, somewhat shaky, and seemingly vacant, somehow. The ladies who assist in the office are charming and wonderful. I really like them. Anyway, this is supposed to be about the kitty, not the vet's office.

So Sproing put the kitty on the exam table. The doctor and assistant came in and we told them the story of how Sproing found the kitten in the road, all wet and miserable. I asked about the kitten's sex. The doctor examined the cat for close to two minutes, the poor baby objecting vocally. He finally said he thinks it's a girl, but I'm not entirely convinced. It really is hard to tell with kittens this age. They estimate her age to be 6 to 8 weeks. 

The poor dear has an upper respiratory infection in addition to the eye infection. She's got a cold in her eye, basically. The doctor prescribed an oral antibiotic and told me to gently wash off her eye a few times a day. He checked her for ear mites and worms and she looks fine. She's too young for a rabies shot just yet. He said to bring her in again in about 6 weeks for that. The assistant gave us a few sample packs of kitten food and a starter dose of flea-be-gone. (Revolution) We're all set. 

Well, not quite. I took Sproing and the kitty back home, got Diva and went to the grocery store. In addition to miscellaneous food purchases we got some kitten food, kitty litter, and a scoop for the litter box.  Yes, we seem to have a new cat.

But if she's going to turn into a girl kitty I think the name Mephistopheles isn't quite right. She needs the name of a female character, don't you think? I'm partial to Scheherazade. Especially since Superman was pretending to not let her stay another day, I think Scheherazade is appropriate. I doubt she can spin a good yarn, but if she snuggles up on Superman's chest and purrs really loud (she's good at that) I think he'll let her stay another day. And then another. Etc. 

I went to the fabric store today to pick up a couple of things, not the least of which was red thread. I really only need basic red thread. I can probably make do with one red for general use. If I need to sew a garment and thread color is important I'll match the fabric to a specific red. Right now I just need a basic red. You see what they put before me? Yes, red thread but which one? Lawsa mercy. I found one that said "red" and got that. There was brick red, tomato red, atom red, lipstick red, and I can't remember what all else. I'm glad there was one simply named red. So now I have red thread.