Thimble is Finally a Cat

Two and a half weeks ago I stopped putting Thimble in his crate at night. I waited this long to see if this time, it would work. The last time I tried this he was an angel the first night, and by the fourth night, the other two were begging me to crate him!

This time, he's grown up enough to restrain his wilder impulses, and so far, everything is going well. (Yes, I know I just shot myself in the foot saying that.)

In fact, things are going more than well. Somehow, this time, having Thimble around all the time made his relationship with Apricot better. I think perhaps Apricot had to put his foot down instead of just avoiding the issue.

But now they will even sleep together sometimes, although it's Thimble's idea when there's contact during sleepy times. Apricot doesn't leave, however, and he certainly could if he wanted to.

They stayed like this for quite some time.

All three of them seem much happier now, and I'm certainly happier--I didn't particularly like crating my cat as if he were a dog, but it was the only choice back when Thimble's night-time behavior was intolerable.

And the new, improved relationship between Thimble and Apricot has translated into a better relationship with Apricot and Colby ... and that I really don't understand the cause and effect of. I walked in and found those two both drinking out of the fountain at the same time. That had never happened before. Colby and Apricot had been good friends before, and it's really nice to see them be even better friends now.

Apricot on left, Colby on right of fountain, and
Thimble the photo-bomber in the foreground.

As I write this, Colby is under the desk at my feet (I am having to remember not to stretch out my legs!), Apricot is on the daybed by my side fast asleep, and Thimble is on the cat tree, not in the top spot, stubbornly asleep even though he's almost falling out of the tree.

Apricot fell asleep holding the blanket

Is it any wonder I think Colby's small?
He certainly doesn't look 16 lbs here.

Thimble refuses to admit gravity exists.

They all came in here when I brought the laptop in, since they know that means I'll be here for a while. Thimble and Apricot took turns walking across the desk between the laptop and the window, as if to point out that they could, before taking their spots. Apricot settled in first, and Thimble walked over to him. This used to result in either a mighty battle taking place with Apricot a reluctant participant, or Apricot simply leaving and finding another spot. This time, Thimble simply ducked his head down until he was nose-to-nose with Apricot (but not touching), and then passed on.

His tail waved across Apricot's face, and I pointed out that wasn't very nice (yes, in those words, with a mild tone of voice) and so he sat down at the end of the daybed where the cat tree is, contemplating his next move while sitting down instead of standing. This controlled the waving tail--his goal--but instead of getting it out of Apricot's way it simply settled across Apricot's tiny orange and white paws. I gave him an inquiring look and he gave me a cat shrug in return, as if to say, "he's fine, he'll move soon," which he did.

This very pleasant calm, happy interaction among my cats makes my heart full. I love it.

And don't worry, they still have mighty battles. But at least Thimble asks first and will take no for an answer (most of the time)!

Retrospective: Pippin Gives Me a Present (and not the wiggly kind)

I wrote this for the website What's Your Grief, but I thought I'd put it here, too. Since I don't remember sharing this particular part of Pippin's life with you.

Cats don't usually give you things. Aside from rodents and birds, of course. But Pippin was unusual in a lot of ways, from being mostly blind (and never letting on how bad his sight really was), to understanding way more than you'd ever imagine, to being autistic, like me.

He was always a very precise eater. He didn't leave pieces of food strewn around his bowl like some. At the time he was eating food that came in several different shapes. And one day, randomly, I came to fill his food bowl and found one piece of food set aside on the floor next to it, very carefully, as if in gift to me. It was the heart-shape.

Did he know? How _could _ he know what that shape meant to humans? Yet, I felt it was a gift, from him to me. It was the _only_ time he ever let a food piece stay outside his bowl.

I mourn his loss still. Because he needed me to be strong, I could be strong for him. Because he needed me to be steadfast, I could be the foundation of his world. I wonder how much of my ability to cope was wrapped up in being the person he needed me to be.

I kept the heart. I kept it with some of his fur I took off the cat trees in a box with an angel holding a kitty on it, and a locket with his picture even though I can't wear necklaces. I have that box sitting on the head of my bed, where he liked to sleep. And oddly, the new crew (CAT) have always left it alone.

We've Been Cooking

So as you know I've gotten a sudden intense interest in food; cooking it, the nutritional aspects of it, playing around with recipes, and so on and so forth.

The cats appreciate this because I'm in their favorite room a lot now (the kitchen, and no, they don't get fed there so I have no idea why they like it so much) and because I'm doing all sorts of fascinating things there, too.

Well, I keep messing with recipes I find, sometimes even combining some to make one, and as I bring this food to my friends and my parents, I have had the occasional "so how do you make this" question.

Hey, blog idea! Today I finally got around to making up the new blog with a single recipe to go with it (took longer than even I expected) so if you want, head over there and check it out.

Watching me cook

Something Strange Went Down That Day

Monday or Tuesday of last week, when I came home, things were very strange in my house indeed.

First, nobody was in the kitchen to greet me. Even after I came in and shut the door and went to turn off the alarm. Usually at least one of the Coons is in the kitchen (most often Colby) and the one on lookout tells everybody else "her car's here" and the other Coon comes running to pretend he was in the kitchen waiting for me agonizingly the whole day too.

Apricot knows there's no dealing with me until I turn the alarm off, so he doesn't come running, but he's already making his way across the living room toward the kitchen by the time I get to the alarm panel (I can see into the living room from there.)

But this day, nobody was there. I called in a hesitant, scared voice (because my anxiety had pounced on me with naked claws and ripped into me declaring they weren't there because one of them had had a dreadful accident and the other two were with him), "Colby?" No Colby. "Apricot?" No Apricot.

A pause while I struggled to get the errant, nasty thoughts under control. "Thimble?" There was a note of disbelief about that one. I'd waited until last to call him. He's my velcro cat. He's always with me (unless I'm asleep or not in the house). On the few occasions he's missed my exit to another room, he's always dreadfully worried about it and runs to find out where I am, so I hate pointing out to him that he "lost" me again. I always tell him when I'm leaving but there are rare times when he's so busy doing something else (sleeping or having mighty battles, usually) that he doesn't register what I said.

Anyway, luckily for my heart rate, about the time I got the last syllable of his name out, they all three came thundering into the kitchen, just thrilled as could be that I was home. But even this was weird because Thimble came in last, and he was hesitant about something. Not me. Apricot. Thimble gave him a look, a kind of "may I come in too?" look.

I began to have suspicions that maybe Thimble had gotten a little too full of himself while I was gone (on vacation, a week ago) and Apricot had had to lay down the law (today).

Because of my weird "always cold" thing, in the summer my house is 77 degrees during the day. Despite the temperature, when Thimble came in to be with me a short while later as I was riding the exercise bike, he crawled under the blanket on the sofa (I use the blanket in winter) and stayed there, only his tail and nose protruding.

Normally he sprawls out on the sofa or the back of the sofa, on his back, paws splayed out, getting as cool as possible. He likes to burrow but normally only sticks his head under the blanket for just a short time before deciding it's too hot.

Not only did he stay there, but Apricot strolls in, all seemingly unaware. Apricot clambers up onto the sofa (no graceful jumping for him, mind you) and walks onto the blanket on top of Thimble. And then he proceeds to knead the blanket, with Thimble underneath it, and then collapses onto him, with every apparent intention of staying there.

Thimble's tail is next to Apricot's tail, closer to the back of the sofa;
Thimble's head is sticking out of the front of the blanket, next to the foot rest. See him?

Again, not normal. This usually would have caused an explosion from the blanket as Thimble extricates himself and turns on the cat who climbed on him (it has happened before, in the winter, with Colby) and uses it as an excuse to have a mighty battle.

Nope. Thimble just stays there, and after only a short while (long enough to make a point, perhaps?) Apricot climbs down off of Thimble and wanders off in search of his own thing, while Thimble waits until he's gone and then pulls himself out from under the blanket and does his normal "mom it's too hot in here" sprawl.

There were a few other minor things I noticed, not that I remember them all these days later, but all together I came to the conclusion that whatever actually happened, the result was that Thimble was treating Apricot with more respect, which means Apricot had to have done something.

Good for him!

Vacation Time Part II, or Spending Time with Relatives (Thursday) - Updated

continued from Part I

We had two whole days before the reunion, so my mom had scheduled some time with various relatives which I was welcome to come along to if I wanted.

Well ... I didn't really want to sit around and talk (or listen to other people talk) for three days straight, since that's what I was planning to do with my relatives at the reunion. I wanted something more active.

I made an appeal on facebook on our page, and one of my cousins P- responded that she'd like to spend some time with me; what did I want to do. I mentioned a number of things, and the horseback riding was one of the last ones, as I knew of only two relatives with horses (horses that you rode for fun, not horses that you used for farming, anyway).

P- asked those two if either could accommodate me, and my cousin F- volunteered. So this was all planned for Friday.

Thursday, then, I planned to go with my parents to their various meetings (my mom with an old school friend, my dad with one of his brothers) and drop them off and then drive to a gift shop I knew of and go shopping (one of my other suggestions to cousin P-).

My dad didn't want me driving his car all by myself. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of my abilities in a car--the more distractions I have, the more difficulty I have driving safely. So basically, I'm at my best in a car by myself without any music going, which is how I planned to drive to the gift shop. However, it's his car, so I resigned myself to just staying at my cousin A-'s house for the day on Thursday. After spending the morning in bed, it wasn't entirely an unwelcome thought, either.

But no, my Aunt K-, wife of the brother my dad was spending talk-time with, said she'd go shopping with me. (Turns out she isn't really much of a shopper, so this was a really nice thing of her to do). And my dad was okay with it as long as I had someone else in the car. (Again, how long has he known me? Strange.)**See note at the bottom

So after dropping off Mom at her school friend's house, and Daddy at Uncle L-, Aunt K- and I drove the requisite 30 minutes to anywhere to get to the gift shop. (Here, where I live, it's 15 minutes to anywhere, or less. To the grocery store. To my job. To where my brother lives. To where my friends live. Somehow it's always 15 minutes. Occasionally traffic will make it 20, but you can pretty much count on 15 minutes. Where most all of my extended family lives, it's 30 minutes. To anywhere you want to go. Or 45, depending on traffic, the route you take, and, apparently, how badly you want to go there!)

This gift shop is amazing. I've been there before. There's a monster buffet restaurant on top, with a dessert bar to die for (and you'll be adding quite a few pounds if you indulge!). But I didn't want to go there; buffets aren't worth the money anymore now that I can't eat a lot at one sitting. It's huge though, like three times the size of most buffet places. And underneath, stretching the entire distance, as big as a walmart, is a gift shop.

They have everything. Toys and (genuine) Amish-made furniture and clothes (mostly shirts and pullover hoodies) and trinkets and jewelry and wind chimes (including the huge bass wind chimes I love that cost like 400 dollars and I'll never get because of that). Greeting cards and magnets and all the normal things you'd find in a gift shop. Just tons of stuff.

I wanted clothes. All my tourist-y clothes from where my relatives live are too big for me now, plus all my clothes are too big except for a few I've bought since the sudden slim-down. So I wanted tourist-y clothing. I found quite a few I liked. I got more greeting cards (last time I was at this gift shop I'd gotten some packs of variety greeting cards for birthdays and stuff and had gotten quite a lot of compliments and "where did you get these" on them, and I was almost out, so I stocked up again).

And Aunt K- patiently trailed along after me. She even pointed out some shirts I overlooked (easy to do in there) that she thought I'd like based on my other choices (she was right). And she said at one point, "aren't you cold a lot? What about these?" and pointed out fuzzy slippers. I got a pair. I wish I'd got two. These things are almost as warm as LL Bean's Wicked Good slippers for a lot less money, and they've got tread on the bottom. (The little plastic dots to give you grip).

The tread makes a funny noise on my non-carpeted floors and the cats were not pleased with them at first. They're used to it now.

Then we drove back to Aunt K-'s place. We didn't have to collect mom because Aunt K- pointed out acerbically that there were two cars at her place, one hers and one Uncle L-'s, and if the two guys couldn't manage to pick mom up with one of those, then they had a bigger problem. So mom was there when we showed up.

Well, they wanted to order pizza from a pizza place right around the corner. Within walking distance, as it turned out. But put four of my relatives in the same room and they'd discuss all night what pizza to get. I was hungry and got impatient, especially when it became apparent that they thought they'd have to order a specific pizza from the take-out menu.

I pointed out that the pizzas are made fresh, and you can mix and match the crust, the sauce, and the toppings however you like. This made their choices even larger (but more acceptable to them) and everybody got really into the discussions.

I asked for a pen and paper, and then made them tell me how many pizzas (2), and what they wanted on them and wrote it down. For myself, there was a 6.99 personal stromboli with mozzarella and steak with sauce on the side that sounded just right (a stromboli is a calzone that's shaped like a crescent moon, in case you don't know). Because I knew that most likely whatever they chose, I wouldn't (a) like it, or (b) be able to eat it.

So we had our order. And then everybody's just kind of looking at me since I'd taken charge, and I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach knowing they'd want me to call in the order. Which I said, mostly out loud. "You're going to want me to make this phone call, aren't you?" in a tone of voice which said the part that I didn't say (at least I think I kept it behind my teeth) of I hate making phone calls.

Daddy rescued me by pointed out that the restaurant was within walking distance, now wasn't it, and it wouldn't take that long to make the pizzas, so "I'll go with you" and off the two of us went.

The restaurant really was just around the corner, plus a short distance of like one or two small shops. They said it would be 25 minutes, so Daddy and I went for another walk just up and down the alley ways behind the houses. The shops and restaurant were at a crossroads that otherwise was surrounded by homes. Kind of cool.

The entire day had been rainy, off and on, and cool, so since this was an off period for the rain but it was still cool without a hot sun, it was a lovely walk. I enjoy spending time with my dad.

(Also, he totally got that I did not want to make that phone call, but he doesn't get the driving thing? He confuses me sometimes.)

I carried the pizzas and the stromboli back. Now, those pizzas were about 15 dollars each (large size). The stromboli was called a personal, and it was 7 dollars. I was not expecting a large size pizza folded over to be the size of this stromboli, but it was. Therefore I now had food for the next night too!

Supper was fun, and Aunt K- produced fresh fruit for dessert (with blueberries, yum).

But by the time we got back to Cousin G- and A-'s house, it was late, and so I got to bed at my usual "too late" time. I had been hoping to use this vacation as a way to get my bedtime schedule back on track! Oh well.

**After my father read this he wanted to clarify that he does too trust me with the car. He just has an irrational thing about not having the ability to leave/have a car, that's his, available. ("Irrational thing" is his phrasing, not mine.) Well, since I am the queen of irrational "things", I can hardly point fingers, now, can I.

And I understand it. I too have an irrational thing about not having the ability to drive myself places. It took a lot of trust and was part of the strain of vacation simply having gone in one car where I didn't have the option to jump in my car and go wherever I wanted to, but to depend on other people for transportation. Honestly, I'm not sure I could have done it ten years ago (hey, something that's improved over time!).

continued in Part III