new box

We had to get John new work shooze today. So Savannah and Orleans have a new box to fight over. Savannah won round one! She loves her some new box! Once her brother puts his fat arse in it, all 4 sides will split out and she won't want anything more to do with it! Well, that and it will smell like boy!!

Helper

Savannah is helping Daddy remember WHY he needs to put his dirty clothes in the garage before he showers. Because when he doesn't she rolls allllllllllllllllll over them and smells like Nasty Stanky Daddy.

TUNA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Daddy's fixin' tuna sammiches for breakfast. Yes, breakfast! He has a rapt audience of two. They know if they sit quietly they will each get a bite. Note Savannah is the one sitting and Orleans is the one rubbin dad's legs to remind him that he's here. Maybe if I walk over here he can see me better. Dad.  And waiting. Are you done yet? Dad. TUNA. Dad. Dad. Ummm DAD. If I had claws, I'd be climbing up your leg dad!

Walk with me...

Down Memory Lane. It won't be far. To the 1980's or so!

John is cleaning out the secretary that we inherited when his Grandmother passed away. We bought me a new stamp storage system (more on that another day!) and we need to make some room in my (s)crap room for it, so we are moving the secretary back to the living room where it used to reside. But first we wanted to clean out the 17+ years of accumulated crap...junk...important stuff that we're gonna need someday... out of it.

Here are a few "treasures" he found.

The glasses I wore when we got married. In 1989. Sexay! NOT!!

Some .20 stamps. Ahhh...the good old days!

And probably the BEST of all. A pack of my old cigarettes that I put in a drawer "in case of emergency!" You know, if I ran out in the middle of the night and needed a smoke! So glad those days are behind me!

Of course he had a cone-head helper! She's gotta be where the action is!

Love how she's on her red crinkle bag, partly inside her box and still surrounded by the ephemera of the secretary!

And last but not least, she's making sure we're not throwing anything of importance or value away! Every job has to have a Supervisor. Savannah is ours!

:::and an update on Savannah. The vet called the other day with the results of the Pathology tests they did when they removed her toe. It was Hemangiosarcoma, a very rare but aggressive blood vessel tumor. It moves very fast in a localized area but does not spread to other areas rapidly. The margins came back clear, so the Doc was feeling very good that she got it all. But because this is so aggressive, we are going to have to keep careful watch on her paws from now on and if anything looks out of the ordinary, they will want to see her so she can be tested. She's in the cone for at least the rest of this week and we'll see how she's doing when we take her back to the vet for her recheck next Monday.   

The nine-toed cat

Savannah now has only nine toes. She ended up having a tumor on one of the toes on her right foot and we decided to just take the toe off. She's a little on the woozy side yet, but just as I figured is doing remarkably well. She's been on and off the bed all by herself since we brought her home and is now enjoying her dinner and laying on her favorite red crinkly bag! She's on the antibiotic for another 4 days and she's got double the pain meds she had earlier in the week and she'll be on them for 5 days. She will have to be in the cone for 10 days to 2 weeks until the stitches in the paw completely dissolve. But she is doing great!

Cone Head

My new name for Savannah! I know, I know...bad mamma...makin fun of her baby!

She's got something up with her right front paw. Not sure exactly what yet, but it's not been fun around her the last couple of weeks. She's been chewing at it and making it bleed, then bleeding allllll over the house. I got up the other morning and it looked like a murder had taken place in my kitchen. Blood on the floor, on the walls, in the dining room, in the hall. Nothing better than having to drag the Swiffer out before I can even have my cuppa tea. So we took them both to the vet a month early for their yearly checkup yesterday. The vet took some blood samples from her foot and is sending them off for tests. Hopefully we'll have results back Fri at the latest and then we'll know how to proceed. Until then, she's in a cone so she leaves the paw alone. And he gave me some pre-filled syringes with pain meds in them to give her 2x daily. He said since she can't tell us if she's in pain, better to err on the side of caution.

And she is NOT a happy camper. Hates the cone. Keeps trying to figure how to get the dad-blasted thing off. I take it off for her to eat and then it goes right back on. She keeps bumping into things, which makes me laugh. I know...I'ma a sick woman!!

On the good news front. Our two year quest to get them to lose weight has finally come to pass! Savannah is at a svetle 8+ lbs...though not a lot over 8. She was 14 lbs I believe when we started. And Orleans who was at almost 20 lbs 2 years ago is now at a tad over 11 lbs, with FIVE of those pounds lost in the past year. The vet was extremely pleased with both. He said now we just have to maintain.

In my next life...

I should like to be a cat. Owned by me.

They aren't spoiled. Much.

Drowned Rat...errr...Cat!

Orleans gets to stankin' that MAN smell and we are forced every so often to give him a bath. And we did just that yesterday. He was not happy. And Savannah is even less so now that he's had his bath, she hisses and spits if he comes within a house-length of her. They were in fighters face off mode earlier today. Her at one end of the house giving him the stink eye and him looking at me like" WhatdidIdoMa?!" It will all get better in a day or two. Once he gets to smelling like "himself" and not shampoo! Just like most human brothers and sisters, they aren't happy unless they're fighting!

Orleans

Has decided he likes sleeping in daddy's chair. Might as well since John's home so little! At least someone's getting good use out of it!

Airing out

Mah tummiez so fullz I has to air it owt!

That's mah boy!

Mama got a new 'puter! Lightning fast and it has a 20" flat screen monitor! Mr Orleans had to come make the box smell like him while mama and daddy got rid of the old computer. He's so helpful like that! And he was very upset when we made him move!

Cute. Squared.

All together now....awwwwwwwwww!

Momma got some new CTMH products to play with yesterday. Convention bundles! Lots of new stuff that I'll be sharing sneak peeks of soon. In the meantime, there are two fur-kids who, much like HUMAN kids are fighting over the same box. There are two of them mind you. Boxes. And cats! But they BOTH want to occupy the SAME box at the same time. As is usually the case in this house...ladiez rulez! Savannah swatted Orleans on the nose and off he went. Now he's in on the La-Z-Boy with his daddy. Both of 'em checking their eyelids for holes!

sexay

In my next life, I'd like to come back as a cat. Owned by me. (Or maybe Jeanne and the 9TS!) Such a hard life these two lead.

That's mah gurl

Savannah was in her glory yesterday afternoon. It was in the low 70's for a high, the sun was shining brightly and mom had the sliders open onto the back porch! She promptly hopped up in their kitty perch on the porch. She was preening, turning this way and that way and making sure every inch of her body got some sun on it! Sure hope she enjoyed it since it's raining catz (!) and dogz this morning. The wind is howling. What a difference a day makes! I think this may be Winter's last gasp for us. I'm going out on a limb and predicting that once this cold spell is over on Friday, that will be it on cold weather for us here in Florida until next Winter. They say we'll be back in the upper 40's to low 30's for lows and highs won't get out of the 60's for the next 4 days and by Saturday we should see a high of 77!! So change is coming. Our weather guy said last night that this Winter was the 10th coldest on record for FL. The records go back to the late 1800's, so over 120 years. And our average high temperature this winter was 51.7 degrees. That's a full 10+ degrees colder than normal.

Thatz mah boy!

Wackadoo Orleans! Savannah's normally my constant companion in the scrap room. This morning, Orleans decided to come in and keep me company. He's relaxed and chillin...which is not hard to do this morning. It's cold again. 26 degrees at my back door. Weatherman said last night that our temps have averaged 7 degrees below our normal for this time of year for both January and February. The days are getting longer and the sun's getting higher in the sky, so we won't see too many more cold days and nights.

Curiosity killed...

the cat! When I took the pics of my layout yesterday to share, I found this still on the camera! It was too cute not to share!

These are the blankets we used during the Great Freeze of 2010 last month to cover our veggies in the Earth Boxes. Once it finally warmed up, I was probably feeling my worst, so was not inclined to wash them, fold them and put them away. Instead, I threw them in the rocker on the back porch to be dealt with when I was feeling better, or by my heirs when I died, whichever came first. And there were a couple of days I was hoping for death, believe me! They have since been dealt with, only to be brought out again a couple of days ago when we had yet another freeze!

Mr Orleans had to get up and "see" what outside feral catz had come by and sprayed the blankets. Ish! Boyz are so weird!! Testosterone rulz!

They're so sweet...

When they're sleeping!

Savannah and Orleans piled-ass up in our bed yesterday. Probably trying to stay warm! Orleans is sleeping with his "stuffies" that he "kills" nightly and brings to me in bed, since I'm Alpha! Every morning I gather them up and put them back in the basket and he will generally take them back in the bedroom and leave them in the bed. It's a silly game we play! I rub him with them and tell him thank you for bringing me my "snack" and he maows you're welcome at me in his "hunter/killer" voice! Savannah is perfectly content to lay on the end of the bed in a tight little ball. If I'm in the scrap room, she's generally under the computer desk at my feet.

And an "extra!" CTMH Convention is in Washington DC this year and since John and I have talked about going to DC since we got married, we are gonna go and make it a vacation as well. The theme of this years Convention is "Picture This" and they have asked all Consultants to send a head shot when we register later today. So I had John take a head shot of me last night. Just as he went to take the pic, my eye started twitching and I rubbed it. He took the picture anyway! Now you know why I don't let him have the camera very often. At least with digital, I can delete them. Back in the Dark Ages, I can't tell you how many ass shots of me I paid for and threw away. I've told him for years, just because he likes my ass, doesn't mean everyone else does!

Still cold here. They said last night that we've got another front coming thru on Fri and temps in Tampa could reach 20 degrees this weekend. That means low to mid teens for us, since we are north and more rural than the airport in Tampa, where the "official" temps are taken. Why? I dunno! Nobody lives at the airport, so why is the official temp taken there?!

Our furbabies...

Are so happy we are home. Savannah loves bags. Plastic bags that crinkle, paper bags that crinkle. She's not particular! Her favorites are the red bags I get at Ruban Rouge. She will play in them, getting inside and chase them all over the house. But once they quit smelling new, she's done with them! We had all sorts of bags from our purchases while we were in the mountains. I've got them all folded up and stored neatly so she will be in bag heaven for a while. Orleans, on the other hand will lay on top of the bag. He much prefers to lay on his back, legs all askew! They have to be right where I am when we come home from a trip. I think they are afraid we will leave them again!

Crying with laughter

Liane sent these and I have to share. I was crying because I was laughing so hard. Hope you enjoy.

Catz

They can lay so nice together in this instant and in the next instant, Orleans has rolled over onto Savannah and she's hissed at him and run off. Like happened the instant after I took the picture!