NQ99HQ

"When we were young" (yup, you've heard that phase before) we were poor but nobody told us we were poor, we did not receive any assistance. As it turned out , our character thereby benefitted from the independence. we, as kids, managed our own little society by ourselves with no intervention, not only in the school yard, but on the softball field as well.  We thereby built a rather "thick skin" to deal with the realities of life that we surely would encounter. No snowflake us.  And, complaining to our parents about nearly anything did not bring help, in fact complaining usually brought the risk of more to complain about.

Lets see now, Amber must be up to about Cat Life No.5.  In the time since the last post, she has been acculturated to the inside of the house---that took all of an hour before she took over----and has made it clear when she is hungry and sleeps in the library closet room.  More recently we let her outdoors for a romp and that's what gets interesting.  When first let out onto the concrete of the breezeway, she squirrels around on the concrete making sure that she has marked the area good, letting any nighttime visitors know that she is home.  After a few rolls on the concrete, she heads for the wooded area to the front of the house.  Its pretty dense there and she creeps along stealth fashion, looking for whatever. Then, she disappears from sight and sound.   After about an hour, she can be spotted up in the top of a large live oak tree, perhaps 20 feet above the ground.  Sometimes she mews when up that high, but we yell at her that we are not abo...

Cave Girl (must start calling her Amber) just got through some narrow scrapes.  Of course she survived well with Mari for the three weeks we were in New Mexico, then we brought her home and prepped her (verbally) about going to the vets for a physical and some shots before her hysterectomy.  Well, that was a mistake to talk to her as the morning came to truck her off to the vet in her travel container, as it was impossible to get our hands on her to shove her into the cage. Tempting her into the cage with food was even a poorer choice for luring her into the cage.  Appointment called off. A week later, the same scenario, but this time she was in for the full treatment, hysterectomy, nails clipped, rabies shots, feline leukemia test and vaccine, what else?  Well, this time we spent two hours getting her ready for transport, and nothing worked---she seemed to suspect our every move.  Finally, as a last ditch measure, Dee put on gloves and her leather arm protecto...

We are always on the lookout for church picnics.  They are not as common here as they are in the Chech country to the southeast.  Nevertheless, we saw an ad in the paper for a church picnic, raffle, flea market, and what have you at the Lutheran Church in Uhland. We knew where Uhland is, just north up Hwy 21 and about due east of Kyle.  We motored up there and did have a bit of trouble finding it as the church yard was empty with no activity, and in fact saw no activity anywhere in the area.  Making another pass through this little community, we spotted about 20 cars at the community center, so we pulled in there.  Its on the old Spanish Trail road which parallels Hwy 21 about 100 yards away, but not very visible from 21.  We asked if this was the right place for the turkey dinner and sure enough, it was. The dinner was $8 each, was inside the community center and served in an line with beans, (always), sauerkraut, sweet potatoes, dressing, turkey and cra...

Well it's the day before we leave for New Mexico and it's time to get Cave Girl settled in her new home for the next 3 weeks. Cave girl is just barely tamed and does not know what's in store for her. We have a transport cage that we will need to get her into so that we can take her over to Mari's place. Well, the hour has arrived. We  get her into the travel cage and she is miserable. Screams howls, yowls, growls, all the sounds you never heard from a cat. We get her over to Mari's, and  put her in her cubicle inside the barn which will be her home for the next 3 weeks. As soon as we open the door to  the  travel carrier,  she runs to the corner behind the wooden pallets. Then, she climbs the plywood wall to the top of where the plywood ends, looks down between the wall stud cavities and decides to go down inside the wall, where she is now blocked from going further. She now starts to howl again, scrambling around inside the wall. She then begins to claw her wa...

This morning, CG was feeling pretty good, was snooping around all the garden areas, but otherwise just curious.  Then she decided to munch on some green grass blades.  So, I decided to introduce her to catnip.  She merely sniffed it but then walked away.  A few minutes later, she was a terror, jumped up on the rolled up car cover, raced around on it, burrowed into it, climbed on the back of the chaise lounge chairs, and then, became awol right in front of our eyes. After some minutes went by with no sound from her, we did pick up some faint meows.  Here she was up in the oak tree in front of the house, exploring every limb on this big tree.  Really bizarre behavior all of a sudden. Was it the catnip?   Who knows?

A couple weeks ago, a mother cat and four small kittens showed up in the breezeway looking kinda sorrowful.  We gave them some milk, they drank it all, and expected more but didn't get any.  The mother cat was large, mostly dark color, and the four young ones were all sorts of colors, some light orange, some black and white with no tiger striping, etc.  There was one kitten of the four that seemed to not fit in with the rest of them, hung back from the other three and when they were all scared, the one ran in one direction the others ran in the opposite direction. Well the next day, all the other cats were gone but not this outcast as I will call it.  It found a home in the block wall in one of the holes of a cinder block.  When called, it would meow but not come out.  Finally we coaxed it out with food.  It was small, ribs were showing and generally acted kinda weak. Thus, this cat's nickname got to be Cave Girl because every time she fini...