Ayla's 13th Birfday Pawty

AYLA:  I am 13 today.  That is starting ta get serious!  Becoming a teenager means I am sort of old like TBT.  But I will remember my youth...

So we will have a huge pawty!  Partly for me myself, but partly because Laz has never seen a full-outright slam-bang "The Mews" Pawty...

There will be chick-hen.

There will be ham.

There will be shimpsies.

There will be drinks.  Mostly Niptinis and Meowgaritas; but if ya have a desire fer a shrimp and chick-hen broth smoothie, TBT has the equipment.

And we will play games!  There will be some fancy ones.

There will be lots of regular ones (sorted for your convenience) in choosing.

There will be wand toys which TBT will move around using all 4 paws.

We have great cat trees.

There will be ladders to climb and jump (and boxes and bags too).

We are expecting quite a crowd, so just mingle, enjoy, and meet old and new friends.

For the outdoors-allowed cats, there will be a backyard (quite frankly, there just aren't any in the front yard) grand mousie hunt in early morning and late afternoon.  TBT says they are invading his garden, so catch (and eat if you wish) every mole, vole, and mouse you can find.  Especially voles.  If you catch more than you want to eat, there will be a plastic box.  Toss them in there.  We have have some caught yesserday, but we might need more. They will go to good use at the next event.  Which IS...

And for the indoors-only cats, there will be a special "mousies in the bathtub" event.  It will be "catch and release" until every indoors cat has had a turn at catching and playing.  Then you can all play Velociraptor...

BTW, TBT has set up extra litterboxes (cleaned hourly or more often as needed).  And there is a special large square of heavy black plastic next to the litter boxes for bomitting in case ya eat too much or get too excited.  Do TBT a favor and use it.  No harm, no foul, and in fact go back upstairs and eat again!

Thank you for coming to my pawty!

13th Blogiversary

TBT:  As the Hobbits say "13 is a lucky number because it can't be divided... 

Well between Skeeter and LC in their elder years, and Ayla/Iza/Marley to start young, we have collectively managed 13 years of blogging!  I am sometimes amazed.  It all started because I discovered Max The Psychokitty's blog in 2004 and then 1 or 2 others. 

One of them (I think Max's) had a button that said "Free Blog".  After I was retired a few months and had some time, I pressed the button.  Pressing buttons should not be done lightly.  Like the wardrobe in 'The Chronicles of Narnia', Bilbo's road out of the Shire, Alice's rabbithole, or the WWI soldier who went wandering around France and discovered 'The Man Who Planted Trees' you never know what will happen when you try something new to you.

In my case, it was a rescue.  I had engaged in discussion groups on several topics back when the internet was 9.6k dial up.  It was slow streaming chat.  Some of them closed, some were overtaken by trolls, some were so contentious that I left, and one triggered me to sufficient anger that I (to my everlasting shame) was kicked off of.

Then the BUTTON showed up and I pressed it.  It was all quite confusing at first.  I tried a first post on August 25, 2006.  I only got it to show up days later, but the title of the post was the date, so I count that the official start.

My original idea was (and to an extent still is) to describe the world from a cat's POV.  Skeeter and LC did not understand glass doors,  where food came from, what *I* was (which is why I'm "TBT" mostly), etc.  But you can't keep that up forever.  I've let the cats gain understanding over the years.  Their English has improved a bit (but they maintain some spelling and grammar of their own).  They can type somewhat, but I always do some minor editing while trying to allow their basic sense of the world to come through.

Well otherwise,  mousies and birds and frogs, crickets and Stinky Goodness from cans would all just be called "food".  Some allowances to readers is necessary.  And some slightly improved (but hopefully not overdone) spelling seems good but plausible.

We collectively have lost some good friends over the 13 years.  Some went over The Bridge , some just vanished (OTB or just stopped blogging), some announced they were stopping, and some we dropped from our reading list.  That last is awkward. 

At various times, at some blogs I have had to resort to a lot of work to comment and it became just to difficult to get a comment posted (word verification was bad but picture-matching became an exercise in futility for me).  So one day I just deleted a dozen blogs from my feedly list. 

And there is the number of blogs I can visit these days.  I used to manage a list of 100.  Today 60 seems like too many.  As I get older (and also as the yard and house requires more attention), it gets harder to visit all my favorite blogs.  I really do apologize for that. 

I keep telling myself I will do better about that.  I also keep failing.  You would think that a retired person has all the time in the world, but what happens is that you do more things to use up all that time.

I have some ideas though...

13 years can use up most of your creative efforts.  It used to be easy, but now I have to think of things to post about.  I worry that I get repetitive. 

I hope to get to 14.

Love to all...