Animal Lovers!

Boy, what a day!

When I got up this morning, Mandy informed me that good old Mama cat, Jorge, had decided to up and move her family -lock, stock and barrel! Seems that sometime in the early morning hours, she had decided the location of the box we had fixed for her and her babies was too risky, creating too much disruption for her and her little ones, not safe because of a certain little over zealous four-year-old who wants to hold, cuddle, and darned near squeeze the living daylights out of these sweet little kittens, so she went in search of a new, safer abode.

Her decision, as Mandy informed me where she'd found Jorge and children, was to move them into my bedroom and try to stash them in a dark corner under my sewing machine! I decided I wasn't in favor of that move and promptly managed to get all four kittens out from that corner and placed them back in the box just outside my room! Wish you'd seen the dirty looks that Mama cat gave me too when I moved her children out to where they'd been.

The really funny thing about this move though -and I wish I could get a picture of this to show you - is how she must have struggled to move the kits from the box to the area under my sewing machine.

My bedroom used to be the sunporch on the house. It's located right off the front entrance and in fixing this up as my bedroom, my son put up a partial wall that split the sunporch into two segments. The larger part (which really ISN'T all that large) is my bedroom and the smaller segment serves as a sort of foyer between the front door and the dining room. But that wall doesn't go from ceiling to floor. No, it has about a foot gap from the ceiling down to where the wall begins. The top of that wall is also lined almost solid too with shoes - children's and baby shoes belonging to Maya and Kurtis!

Seems the way that Mandy found out what Jorge was up to was because when she got up this morning, she noticed some strange noises coming from the foyer area and upon checking into this, saw the Mama cat, scaling this "wall" with the fattest of the kittens in her mouth and somehow, by the Grace of the Good Lord, she managed to get up and over that barrier with no harm to the babies at all!

Later today, when Kurt's speech therapist arrived, Mandy went to take her to show her the kittens and lo and behold, one of the kittens was missing! We figured maybe Jorge had decided to start moving her babies again back under the sewing machine and looked there but found no kitten! We hunted high and low for almost two hours for that baby until Mandy finally found it -kind of wedged between a box under an old dresser in my room and the dresser beside the sewing machine! We then decided to just move the whole box into my room. Like I have so much room in there to spare you know. Well, what the heck is one more box in that small space that's already pretty jumbled up to begin with if it gives Jorge that much extra peace of mind, ya know!

Tonight, my son came down for supper with Mandy and the kids and me. It was a "normal" meal with him here as he loves to tease the 16-year-old as much as possible along with lots of barbs getting tossed back and forth between him, his sister and me in the process too. Always a fun time with him here. And, he -like Mandy - is also very much a cat lover too so he wanted to have a chance to spend a little time watching the new babies a bit too before he goes back on the road early this morning now and will be gone for probably the next 5-6 days. By the time he gets back home, no doubt these babies will have grown a lot and changed a good bit in their appearance too.

About 90 minutes after he finished supper and left, he pulled up in front of the house and came running in here to grab Mandy as he breathlessly began to tell her about a dog that her sister-in-law had discovered while out walking along the woods this evening with her two children. She could tell the dog was emaciated, had most likely been dropped off and she, like my son -and Mandy -gets really worked up over an animal in need. So she texted a message to Clate about this dog and how something needed to be done to help it.

So Clate had dropped everything and drove out to where she had found the dog, got him loaded into the cab of his pickup truck and was here then, looking to see if we had anything like dog food here that we could give him till he and his roommate could get things set up at his house for the animal. Of course, Mandy went running out to check on this poor dog and me, right behind her too.

But I have to tell you this much, although my kids and I all tend to favor large dogs -and the last dog my son had - Andrei -was a very big German Shepherd and Akita mix, nothing prepared me for the size of the beast in my son's pickup truck!

Folks, I kid you not! At first glance from the sidewalk, it looked like he had a pony in the cab of his truck! This dog is ginormous! Yes, indeed it is!

He looks to be a mix of either a Great Dane and Mastiff or possibly has a bit of bloodhound in him, judging by the face and jowls. He's also obviously a much older dog too - has a good bit of gray hairs around his muzzle. But the eyes and his very quiet demeanor just begged all of us to "please, love me, won't you?"

Yep! That's exactly what Clate's going to try to do too! The dog is now up at his house and Clate and his roommate Dan, are trying to figure out now what they have to do next to ensure that the dog has the best chance possible to being put on the road back to better health.

The poor thing is -for all his size - really very scrawny right now so he must have been on his own out in the woods for a little while. Hopefully, regular feedings, some good old-fashioned loving care and he'll make for a good companion for Clate and his roommate to have in the house.

Clate said he seems to have "decent enough" manners and was trying to get a little accustomed to their house. Although Clate had told Mandy to call Dan and tell him to herd Nina, the cat, into one of the bedrooms, Dan hadn't been able to do that before Clate brought the dog home and into the house. He said that the dog was sort of sniffing around the living room when Nina decided to come downstairs -totally unaware that there was a strange animal there much less one almost the size of Sasquatch! She (Nina) had made her way down almost to the bottom of the stairs, mewing a bit in her special way of announcing that she is coming to visit and grace you with her presence ya know when suddenly, the dog stuck his nose around the corner and she was face to face with his imposing presence! Clate said the look on her poor little face was absolutely priceless! But she didn't go running away -just stood there, eyeing him up and kind of doing a little sashaying around him then as delicately as possible. And he didn't seem to get upset to have a cat face to face with him either. Just a look that kind of said "Well, so be it!"

So now it should be interesting to see how this latest addition to our family will deal with the cat, with my son, with Dan, his roommate -and if they can nurse him into fairly decent health now too in the process!

Say a little prayer for the dog - the guys named him "BON" -after some musician in AC/DC apparently -and for reasons I won't go into on my blog! Some connotations there that are best left unsaid, ya know!

Time now too for me to go join Jorge and her babies to catch some sleep - in my room -for a change! Since Kurtis is now doing so much better at falling asleep at more reasonable hours and also, not awakening several times during the night, I've pretty much finally been able to sleep in my room again instead of camping out, night after night, on the living room couch! Gives me a chance to finally rest my back now for a change -and I'm really happy about that!

Nite all!