Older news

There's not much knitting to show at this point, although I am, in fact, getting knitting done. But as I'm working on the Brambler scarf and the mitts for Older Daughter, any pictures that I might take would look about the same as the pictures I've already shown you, so there doesn't seem to be much point.

I really appreciated everyone's thoughts on cooking, and mileage varying between people. I have some more to say on that, but I'll try to space those posts out. Meanwhile, in the spirit of taking each day as it comes, we ordered pizza on Wednesday night, as we had dog training to get to right in the middle of our usual dinner time and it was Rick's birthday and we wanted to have time to sit down to dinner together (see? each instance is new and different). We did follow it up with homemade blueberry/lime pound cake, though. And last night, we had grilled polenta and veggies with tomato sauce. The kids asked if we could have it more often. I love it when that happens.

Something else happened a few weeks ago that I've been avoiding talking about. I think I'm in a certain amount of denial, although it's hard to stay in that state really. Just before Rick's parents arrived on the weekend that we went camping (around May 28th), Atticus didn't come home one night. He has persisted in not coming home. Given certain evidence found near a neighbor's house, we're pretty sure that we know what happened to him, and as much as I'd like to believe that he's taking a (very, and increasingly) extended adventure tomcatting around the neighborhood, I know he's not.

And it makes me sad.

He was my loving baby boy with the soft black fur, and the softer white tummy. The one who liked to sleep with his nose just touching my cheek. The one who was all about the little love nips on my nose in the morning so I'd pet him. He purred really, really well, and was a huge fan of the belly rub. I miss him. I still wake up at night, expecting to find him sleeping on my elbow.

Gwilim is missing him, too. He's taken to following me around the house. He has even (and you can have no idea how weird this is) jumped into my lap and settled down for whole minutes at a time. For the first several days, he'd walk around the house meowing. No-one answered, and it broke my heart every time. He is now sleeping near my stomach instead of between my feet. I think he's lonely. I know it makes me a little lonely to see him sleeping all by himself on the bed in the day, instead of curled up with the Atty-Cat.

Rick and I are doing some major regrouping, in terms of how to keep our cats safe while still letting them out. I know that the letting out thing is, for a lot of people, a big no-no, but it's how we work with our pets. We both grew up with happy indoor/outdoor pets, and all of our pets have had the same privilege. Also, living as we do in an area with far more rats and gophers than we'd like (and given how we feel about poison), our cats are working cats. Gwilim, at this point, is the talk of the neighborhood, having moved on to other yards after clearing ours of gophers (our neighbors have been known to stop us on the street to thank us for his diligence in clearing their lawns; I am not joking here). So, we've instituted an "all animals in at night with the pet door closed" rule, and we are fixing the fence in our upper yard to limit incursions from other, larger, non-cat-like animals. We're hoping that this safe space will keep this kind of thing from happening again.

And, of course, we're in that state of asking when it's time to get a kitten, someone for Gwilim to be with, or whether he's going to be OK, and we can give ourselves a little more time to grieve. The shelters are full of kittens right now, and we know that we'll be adopting one who needs rescuing, but it's hard to make that decision right now.

Thanks for listening.