Swapping Feline Family Members

The weirdest swapping around here in recent weeks has been in the composition of our feline family. After four cats crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2015, Mom decided it was a good idea to introduce a new family member in December. His name is Rascal Spatz, and he was born in March 2015.

We have only seen him at the screen door to Mom’s bedroom, but Jou Jou B–who spends 99% of her time out in the living area–has suffered a number of his overzealous, “playful” attacks, especially when he had just arrived. Of course, Mom kept him in a cage at first; soon she was letting him out on “trial runs” to see if he would get along with everyone else. He usually had to be “re-caged” within a few minutes for bad behavior. Lately, however, he seems to be minding his manners most of the time. We hear a lot less whining and growling.

Swapping Room Preferences

A new frequent visitor to our private chamber has been RubyDoo. She frequently would leap in here when Mom was not careful, but would soon want to be gone again. Then she had to have some dental work done, including two extractions (one fang), and had to wear an E-collar temporarily. She came in here with us and stayed a while.

Now she wants in more often, and Mom lets her stay as long as she likes. That’s OK with us; she does not bother us, except when she picks the best places to sleep next to Mom.

Swapping Bedrooms

Our “orange invader” brother also was a frequent flyer here, but almost never spent the night…until recently. Invariably, Mom would head to bed and get to sleep for a little while. Then Pawscar would howl, and Mom would return him to his lair in our kitchen/bathroom area (we have never seen it, but have heard reports about the warm dryer on laundry days and the heating vent that releases warm air at floor level in the bathroom).

Last Thursday, something changed. Mom was worried about Pawscar Awesome’s eye. When she put the drop in his right eye that morning, he started squinting really badly and rubbing his eye. Mom checked, and saw that the tissues around the eye were red. Since Pawscar has had pressure problems in that eye, and some strange condition in both eyes for which he has gotten treatment for more than a year, Mom took him to the kitty ER. He had developed corneal ulcers (whatever that is) because the steroid he has been taking for a long time weakened his immune system. Mom had to add an antibiotic salve and pain medicine to his treatment for several days, and he has been staying in with us full-time ever since. He sleeps most of the time and never bothers us, so it’s OK.

Today Mom is happy because the ophthalmologist said Pawscar does not need the eye drops for high eye pressure in his right eye any more, and his “chicken slop” (compounded liquid prednisolone) is reduced to .25 ml every day. The right eye also does not need the antibiotic salve, but the left one still does. At this moment, Pawscar Awesome does not seem to care; he is too busy cat-napping.

We wish you a happy new year!

We hope there is nothing to fear.

We want every word to be clear,

And no one to shed a tear.

Are we great poets, or what?

Disturbing the Peace: Snoring

It has been very quiet here this afternoon, once Mom’s cousin and niece departed to their homes…until now. And what I want to know is: who’s snoring now? The sound seems to be coming from Mom’s bed….

Oh wait! Now that I am blogging about the noise, it has stopped. I guess I will never be able to prove the identity of the culprit, but I suspect it was this cat:

All’s quiet again. Tune in again for the next episode of “Who’s Snoring Now?”

Disturbing the Piece: Chomping

Before I could complete my post, another noise beset my delicate ears. Someone was chomping a piece of dry chow…or two. Allicat is still napping, Jenise is in her plush cube, also sleeping. I am pretending to doze, but keeping my ears on alert. I know who the hungry cat is: our orange invader has left his hut to enjoy a few morsels of OUR cat chow. The nerve! What’s worse is that he is hogging Mom’s lap AGAIN. Some people’s cats just don’t know how to behave when they are guests in someone else’s home.

So what time is it? Frustration time. Mom has had all sorts of problems with her church website today. This evening she noticed that the Events Calendar is already on tomorrow. She decided to check our site, because it uses the Events Calendar, too. Lo and behold, ours says it’s Wednesday, September 9, but it’s only the 8th here in the Detroit area.

Mom went to the Events Calendar website. Other people in New York and Chicago are having the same problem. They were told that it MUST be a theme or plugin conflict, and were given a set of instructions to check this out. Mom did NOT want to change the theme on her church website; it already had had enough problems. She chose to try out the steps on ours.

First Mom changed the theme to Twenty Thirteen. Our website looked really funny. Everything was in strange colors and places. Then she turned off all the plugins except for the calendar. She cleared the browser cache. Did it help? NO! Mom concluded the problem must be with the Events Calendar plugin.

Mom says she would be afraid to ask those people over at Modern Tribe who make the Events Calendar, “What time is it?” If they don’t know what day it is, they surely do not know the time.