Cali

When I told Carrie the news, she said it was like the end of an era in the Parks' household, no Swissys and now no cats.



We let Cali, our sweet muted Calico, go this morning.  She was 19 1/2 and had been in kidney failure for the last two years.  We knew it was time, and so did she.  Everyone was ready, except for Frank,

She had become his cat for the last 5 or so years.  She sat with him at night and watched TV.  She slept beside him or between his legs every night.  She called loudly to him sounding so pathetically starved when she wanted fresh water or more food......or simply for someone to come and watch her eat.

While Frank dug her hole between the big 22 lb Chips and my Whitney Dallas (she came from Whitney TX which is near Dallas, not Houston) I gave each Basset offerings of her food from her last bowlful.  They all sat quietly and waited for their tiny pieces to be doled out.

Goodbye my sweet kitty.  Play nice with the heaven mice and birds and live pain free.  And remember we loved you this much.

Slow Cat and Fast Airplanes

She doesn't care....

Here is where I got to last night before I quit.  I could have gone further, but my eye was bothering me.  All that cat pee is really getting to me.  Stupid cat.  Soon we will have tile and you won't have a place to go in the bedroom!  She won't even go in the litter box I put right there!  Stupid cat.

Cali still has power though.  All three dogs and the cat were outside and I opened the door tonight and called them to dinner.  The dogs were pushing and jockeying for position to get in the door first.  Ahead of them all, the cat slowly stepped on the threshold, stretched one leg, then another, then the third and then the last.  She arched her back in a high stretch and THEN came inside.  No one dared go past her or push her out of the way!

Got a call from the nursing home, my mother has lost another 4 lbs.  Because they have had her on
megase for three cycles and she has not improved, they are not going to use it again.  They assigned her an aide to help her eat last year, and that keeps her focused on eating.  And every bite is fortified with as much as they can.  She still loses weight.  Now at 85 lbs there is not much more than bones.  I talked to AJ, who was Chief of Nursing at Earl K Long, which is our charity system for many years.  She says this is pretty typical of Alzheimers.  And with the seizures she is having it is just time now.

I have another airplane finished.  I don't know if you can see it or not, but I have sketched in some clouds.  The white layer will be the fluffy white clouds you see on a beautiful day at sea.  There is another cloud layer and then blue blue sky.  I am really loving these airplanes.  I guess I will turn the edges of the clouds under and set them on top of the next layer.  The white is from a purchase at the Purple Cow.  It was a set of double bed dust ruffles in a kid's room.  Bright red ruffles and this white was the part the mattress sat on.

I need to pull some fabric to see if I can put borders on or if it is just going to be plain.  Plain planes!  LOL.

Chat Noir and the Moulin Rouge

I have been drooling over the tea towels and the process pieces that the gang over at 15 Minutes of Play are all are showing For the Tea Towel Challenge.  I was certainly wishing I had a tea towel to play with everyone with.  Then.  I remembered that when daughter Carrie graduated from Design School at LSU, she took a 7 week backpacking spree across Europe with a girl friend and a gay guy friend.  That was important because she had just become engaged and he was not going on this wild trip with her.  She brought me these two tea towels from France.  (All I got were these lousy tea towels - kind of thing, you know.)

Anyway, I have these two tea towels.  I love them and never knew what I was going to do with them so I squirreled them away in my sewing room.  Amazingly, I walked in there today and just put my hands right on them.  And you would truly be amazed if you actually saw what my room looked like.  Yikes.


So I was excited.  And I pulled some fabrics.  Chat Love.  And my Cali looks just like that cat on the towel....sort of.  A few more colors here and there.

And Moulin Rouge!  Moulin Love!

So I need a few more fabrics, and maybe a zinger for the Chat Noir one.  Maybe a mousie block.  Definitely more black and more of that terrific deep yellow.  And an orange needs to move over to the Moulin Rouge for sure!

Do you think I should give her one of the quilts when I finish them??????????  Maybe not! We shall see what a good daughter she has become...........


glen

Reflections, Camera Zoom and Cat Heat

Happy New Year!  Soon........

It has been wild around here with the 4 dogs.  But now they are about exhausted and are sleeping. I hope that means that the next 24 hours will be easier!

I have 35 blocks from the Reflections quilt completed.  I worked most of the afternoon when I was not getting up and removing dog's ears from dog's mouths and refereeing free for all runs through the house.  It is cold outside and they go out for a bit but want in pretty quickly.  If the cat goes out they all jockey for position to be the first dog out with the cat......for obvious reasons.

Sorting the fabrics for Reflections was in the high mid level of difficulty because you had to decide if a fabric was light or dark.  Often there was no cut and dried decision.  So you can see that the quilt so far is not totally dark and light.  There are medium blends in there as well.  I have yet to add the very light center to any of the blocks, I think I will get it all together and see what they look like with that stark contrast.  I may want a lower contrast for the center.

Or none at all.  We shall see.

The cat is so cold that she hugs anything with heat.  She has been sleeping with DiNozzo, who is terrified to move once Cali settles in with him.  He knows she is no benevolent tyrant and will take his nose off in a flash second.  Chloe has shown him her cat scars on her elegant nose.  He learns quickly.  Frank also knows not to push that cat off his computer and to use words that do not use letters under her.  She likes the fan port of the laptop.  At night, she curls in his lap sucking his heat into her fur.




I was intrigued to see this new piece of artwork Carrie had in her entry way.  Can you see what it is?  It is Paint Chips!  That girl is really talented.  I wish I had her way with color and invention. I need to copy it in a quilt for her birthday, maybe she would like that.  She has not liked anything I have made so far.  I am sure you have daughters who like your stuff, is that even possible?


Oh, and I wanted to show you some of the pictures with the zoom lens.

 This is the high power wires that mark the boundary of Baton Rouge proper.  We live on the Baton Rouge side but the street beyond the power lines is what is called "the Parish".  Outside of city limits, they have the Sheriff rather than the BR Police but most everything else is the same.

No one lives in the "no man's land" beyond our property to the property of the people in the next subdivision, which is Millwood.

Here are the lines close up.  This is where the red tailed hawks often sit looking for small things to eat for dinner.

 And this is looking out to my deck and Japanese Garden area, now stark and cold in winter.  And this is the closeup of the bird bath and the loon rock.  Pretty sharp!  Nice focus in that zoom shot.  Much better than the old camera!  So it was a good deal to get the new one.

We are waiting for the ball to drop tonight, and I will be sewing!

Have a safe celebration, where ever you are!

glen

Progress on the Saints and a Good Read

I got three more blocks done on the Saints before being called away to pick up McGee from his heartworm treatment.  It is coming along, the pillow is completed and I am not worried about having it ready for when Karen wants to meet for lunch and exchange gifts.  I more worry about what she will get as a giftie!

I had brought the cat in earlier for a fluid transfusion (she is in kidney failure) and was told that she is now known to have a nodule on her thyroid.  Which the vet says is not so bad if you have kidney failure, which is why she is doing so well with her kidneys.

If it is not one thing, it is another.  Cali is coming up on 18 years and is still catching lizards and going strong despite all this other stuff.

Today I won't ahve time to think again, I have a hair appt and then lunch, and I have to let dogs out.  Way too much running across town.  At least I am on the last CD of my exciting book, Remarkable Creatures by Tracey Chevalier!

http://www.tchevalier.com/remarkablecreatures/index.html

Blue RibbonFriday Plan for Quilting and the Cats

Cali

I took the cat in early this morning to get a fluid dialysis done.  She was not a happy kitty and once again, cursed like a sailor all the way there, demanding to get let out of the crate and released.  Cali is an interesting kitty.  She will take out her frustrations on a dog when she gets home, otherwise she leaves them pretty much alone.

Whitney Dallas

Whitney Dallas would go hunt up a dog when she wanted a challenge.  All my Swissys had their noses handed back to them on occasion by that tiny cat.  And she was a huntress.  She eliminated all birds in the area of our house in less than a year and kept them gone for the next 16.  She taught all my dogs manners.  I miss that girl.

Chips

Chips was the garrulous old guy who weighed in at 22 pounds of svelte catflesh, but was as timid as a mouse.  He was beaten up by the girls regularly, and any cat who happened to know where the big guy lived.  He was not a friendly guy, but I do miss him.  He was a good guy.

Oh, yes, I am working on my Paint Chip Challenge once again.  I have gotten the blocks quilted and nearly together and now I am looking to have the borders on by this weekend.  I really wish I could show you the fabulousness of this quilt, but it will be judged at the August Meeting and no one can know it is mine.

I know there are some who have their friends keyed in to their pieces so the votes can go that way, but I  think fairness is best.  So no pictures or description until the day after.



Hopefully with a nice blue ribbon!

glen

Now for the cat.......

Cali

I have one cat left, Cali.  She is a muted Calico and a very tiny cat.  Even though she is 18 years old and in great health we still call her the kitten.  She was much smaller than the other two and younger.  Whitney Dallas and Chips the 22 pounder are both gone to Kitty Heaven now.  We are not really sure Chips actually got into Kitty Heaven, but he headed that way.

Cali has this really bad habit of sleeping between your knees at night.  It is a fight to turn over, she is not happy to be awakened by a peaceful sleeper changing position.  She has been known to bite a leg or foot to show her displeasure.

She also talks.  She say "Milk" plainly when she wants some.  She is very polite and says, "Thank You" when you let her in or out the door.  She will ask a question when you have not added more food to her bowl by lifting her voice up at the end after several syllables asking, "More food?"  It is uncanny how she can say, "Out" when you ask what she wants.

Chips

Chips would huff and puff around when he was agitated, but Cali has always cursed like a sailor, spitting out deep throated cat epithets when she is annoyed by a dog.  And she is not above taking off a nose and handing it back to the offending dog.  They all have learned to keep their noses well above striking distance.  The Bassets are not that high and both have slashes on their muzzles to demonstrate their slowness.

Cali

So last night, I fell asleep on the sofa and Frank was in the bed.....with Cali between his legs.  He has these vivid dreams all the time.  And he will talk and move according to what he is seeing in his mind dream.  Last night he was dreaming he was fighting with super heros and doing karate.  He karate chopped his evil opponent and the backed away to karate kick him.

When his foot landed in his mind dream on his evil nemesis, in the night reality he landed a solid kick on Cali.  She began to do her deep throated yowls yelling "OOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOOUCH!"  on and on and on and on.

Cali

She continued to loudly yowl for what seemed like an eternity!  I raced back to the bedroom thinking the cat was dying.  DiNozzo was padding down the hallway, alert to the horrifying sounds emanating from the bedroom.  Chloe stopped at the door, unwilling to enter the room for fear the cat would fly at her in revenge.

OOOOOOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOOOOUCH!    OOOOOOOOOOOUCH!  Cali yelled on.  Frank was trying to calm her, stroking her back, feeling her legs, looking at her head.  He finally looked at me and said, "What do I do?"

I couldn't answer him.......I was (as usual) rolling on the floor, nearly peeing on myself with laughter!