Frankenkitty

How many lives do cats have? Our Kneadermeier has nine and counting!

Last week while my friend Vicki and I were working on our latest mosaic projects Kneadermeier came strolling in to check on our handiwork. Somehow or the other we got to talking about the cats and how the long haired cats get knotty hair clumps. I mentioned that I found one on the top of Kneadermeier's neck and it was something I needed to take care of.

Vicki, being the helpful gal that she is, asked for a pair of scissors and said she'd just cut it off right then and there. She grabbed the kitty and I gave her the scissors. She got the top half off pretty well and just when I was about to say "be careful, those scissors are really sharp" she cut a little too close to the skin.

Oopsy.

The amazing thing is that Kneadermeier didn't cry out or struggle at all. She had about a 1 1/2 inch slice in her skin. Vicki felt so bad she took Kneadermeier in to her veterinarian to see if he could patch her up. When she picked her up the next morning the slice had been enlarged and then stitched together.

We're not really sure why he made the cut twice as big as it was, but we think maybe because the cut had been open for a while he had to re-cut in order to bring the skin together neatly.

They sent Kneadermeier home with a bottle of antibiotics. From the looks of the label I don't think they had a very optimistic prognosis...
Fortunately, the cat is doing much better and doesn't seem to be bothered by her new Frankensteinish look.

Vicki's friend, the veterinarian's wife, told her it happens all the time and they now use seam rippers to help remove the fur clumps. Kneadermeier still has a few knots that need to be removed. We'll keep Vicki away from the scissors and I'll be off to purchase a seam ripper!

Garden Updates

This weekend we tackled some gardening chores. We bought some inexpensive cattle panels. Using t-posts we already had, I was able to fence in the tender young fruit trees to protect them from the browsing sheep, goat, and cows. My efforts even gained my husband's reluctant approval. I think he was afraid I would make the fence out of leftover pallets and odd pieces of board and wire mesh. Right now the panels are being held up to the posts with simple plastic zip ties, but that is only temporary. My plan is to get some snaps that will enable me to remove the panels easily in order to easily access that area to mow the weeds grass. I'll show you what I'm talking about in a later post. (At least the idea makes perfect sense in my head.)

Next up was the out back garden. I was hoping it wasn't too soon to plant plants and I got tomatoes and pepper plants, as well as some bean and melon seeds.

It turns out it was a little too soon. We had a frost Monday night and all the peppers and one or two tomato plants perished. I'm not sure if this poor guy is going to make it or not.

We put a few buckets over the remaining tomatoes overnight and hopefully this will protect them in case of any further frost. (We removed the buckets in the morning.)

Strangely enough, the frost did not affect the side garden, next to the driveway, where we have romaine lettuce, beets, and spinach growing. Maybe those are just naturally hardier or they are more protected by the fence releasing stored day time heat? In any case, the biggest problem here seems to be the snails, which we are keeping a close eye on.

The final garden thing we got done was to rototill and plant the box in neighbor Dean's garden with corn, like we did last year.

I couldn't end this post without a picture of the lambs. Here you can see all eight of them (count the heads). The big guy in the middle is Francine's, the first born of the year.

Monterey Afterthoughts

I thought I'd share a few pictures of our trip to Monterey.

Above is the view from the room at sunset. We had three rooms in all. My husband's and my room was on the opposite end of the hotel from the other two rooms. We met at one of the two side by side rooms for a little appetizer before dinner. I was going to get a picture of the food we were eating (because I couldn't believe we were eating all that right before dinner) but by the time I got back with the camera everything had been put away.

We ended up eating in the hotel's restaurant which was probably not a bad idea as we all (with one exception) had a few drinks. I'm now going to take this opportunity to complain just a little so if you're not into whining just scroll through the pictures.

First off we ordered our coctails from the server. Some time later the coctail waitress brought our drinks. I had ordered a Tom Collins. The only thing I recognized about the drink I got was the cherry floating on top. It tasted terrible, like maybe the orange juice in it was bad or something. And besides that Tom Collins don't have orange juice! I had everyone else taste it and they agreed with me that something was wrong with my drink.

I flagged the coctail waitress down and told her I thought something was wrong with my Tom Collins and I couldn't drink it. I ordered a vodka and cranberry juice instead. I figured it would be hard to go wrong with that.

When the coctail waitress returned she gave me my vodka and cranberry and asked if I had ordered a Tom Collins or a John Collins. I said I've never heard of a John Collins. She then informed me that the drink I was given was a John Collins and that it is my responsibility to make sure my server understands my drink order.

That's funny. I always thought it was the server's responsibility to make sure he got the customer's order correct.

So then we move on to dinner. When we were giving our orders I ordered lamb chops. They came with either white rice or fried potatoes. I asked if I could get rice pilaf instead. The answer was no. I was disappointed but went with the fried potatoes. Whoever heard of a "fine dining" establishment not being able to serve/substitute rice pilaf!!

Then a little later, after the drink confusion the waiter made a snide comment. Maybe I was being overly sensitive about it at that point and I don't know if anybody else heard it. I was midway through my second v&c and he asked if I would like a Tom Collins (heavy emphasis on the Tom). I said no thank you.

Other than my food being just okay and the minor conflicts with the wait staff it was great being together with family we haven't seen in a long time. We were all laughing quite a bit and it was really fun.

This picture is after dinner when we went back to the room. It is showing the same view as the first picture of Monterey and the bay, only obviously this time at night.

Here is a shot of the family just outside the room. This was taken from the beach when my niece and I thought we saw big crabs scrabbling about the surf. I ran down to take a picture of the "crabs" but it turns out they were actually some sort of birds! Who knew birds stayed up at night! And don't say anything about drinking too much to figure out the difference between birds and crabs. (I thought those crabs were moving awfully fast!)

The next day while the others took care of some business my husband and I went in to Monterey to shop along Cannery Row. I wasn't in the mood for the Aquarium, particularly since there were several bus loads of school kids there.

I was a bit disappointed. The majority of the stores were very touristy types with nothing but junk stuff. I was also very surprised by the amount of candy stores. How many candy stores does one street need?

The one good thing I noticed was that since our last visit to Monterey a few years ago there has been some very recent remodeling of Cannery Row. Some attractive new buildings are up, but they were so new they are all still unoccupied.

After wandering aimlessly for about an hour we headed up Highway 1, taking the long way to San Jose. I had to take at least one picture of the yellow fields that seemed to be just about everywhere.

And since we passed by the lighthouse at Pigeon Point it was only natural that I took a picture of that too.

It was really nice to get out of town for a day or two. But what really made the trip was being able to see our relatives again.

Sheep Shots

Here are a few pictures of some of the babies. One of Ewenice's girls has a brown left ear and you can plainly see the brown dot on the back of her neck. The only thing I can think of where the brown came from might be from Perry. He's a 7/8 blood Dorper, so it may be from whatever the 1/8 part is. You can also see I've banded all their tails, so at least that job is done. They should be falling off in about 2-3 weeks.
And here are 3of4's boys peeking out from behind her. For some reason they both have rather droopy ears, one obviously more so than the other. They are so terribly cute.

Today I got the fence panels to protect the trees. I'll install those tomorrow and then I'll be able to let all the sheep out so the babies can start gamboling about.

I hope everyone remembered to change their clocks to Daylight Savings time!