Vet Visit

Crazy big vet visit today - 5 kitties went! It was originally supposed to be four, but things happened.

Here's the news on everyone:
Cocoa: Healthy but about a pound overweight (she's 14lbs).
Chloe: Some mild dental disease so she needs a cleaning but the lump in her neck that we saw the vet for turned out to be a sebaceous cyst so yay!
Emmett: Just had a booster shot but he managed to climb up behind the moving exam table (the one they use for big dogs) and wedge himself between it and the wall. He's special.
Happy: Even with the supplement she's been taking, her potassium levels are still low. They are going to see if there is anything else they can really do or if this is just how her renal disease will go.
Gidget: She wasn't originally supposed to go to the vet today, but when she hopped up on the counter for brushing this morning, I saw that her back end had exploded. This has happened to Happy before so as much as it freaks me out (cause it looks icky) I kind of feel that this is old hat. She's been cleaned out and gotten an antibiotic and is now in the cone of shame. Other than looking silly or icky (depending on which end you are viewing from) she's in good spirits.

As for the two that didn't go:
Bitty: She's not 100% on board with the new kitties yet, but then she talks smack under normal circumstances so it's not that different from normal. She's not overly thrilled when Olive tries to chase her, though. Still a lovey, grumpy girl (that has a meow like she smokes three packs a day).
Olive: Still a tiny bit people shy, she's making great strides. She even cuddled with Dan in his chair for almost half of The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers (which is a really long movie) so I'm a bit jealous of that but hope it's the start of the cuddle-Olive.

And there we go. Kitty updates! Hopefully we won't have any more vet trips for a while. Our kitties are worth it, but dang are they expensive!

RIP Little Octopus

Like all kitties, Emmett has a favorite toy. Or should I say had? Because apparently, he destroys the things he loves.

Of course, it didn't help that the octopus happened to be Olive's favorite toy, too. While Emmett would carry it around everywhere and pull at the little top tuft, Olive liked to try to pull the legs off and then groom the top puff. So it wasn't exactly in pristine condition when Emmett got his mitts on it.

But yeah, we're gonna need another octopus. Hopefully we'll be able to find one, but while we search I've trimmed the puff down so it is just legs now. Not near as cute, but Emmett is tossing it around as I type (and ouch! just slammed his head into a cabinet while playing with it - he's pretty clumsy for a cat) so hopefully we have some time before the octopus is totally unusable.

I think the next step of destruction will be when we start finding legs scattered through the house.

He's a Keeper!

Just a little kitty update. Emmett is officially a Zimmermann now!

He and Olive have been getting along so we decided, yes, he is perfect Olive-entertainment and thus gets to stay. Because when they play together, it means that Olive is not harassing Gidget (and the other kitties, too, but she bothered Gidget the most), which means Gidget is not grumpy before bed (because Olive loves playing right before bedtime) so Gidget is back to cuddling at night. This makes me happy.

Added bonus: Olive has seemed to even out mood-wise thanks to the added Emmett. She's still a bit people-shy (we attribute that to a physically-not-nice former owner) so having the new kitty excitement split between her and Emmett seems to have eliminated the times where she would hide under the couch.

Also, her manic periods seem to be gone, too, likely because she has a willing partner in playtime to tire her out. She isn't quite as lap-cuddle-friendly as our more established kitties are, but she's showing some signs of growing in to it.

There has been one little kink in our plan for a calmer house, though: Emmett's bedtime cuddling. Which sounds great - because kitty cuddles are awesome - except for the fact that if anyone touches Emmett during the night in any way that might be considered a pet, he starts purring. And he is loud. Seriously. He wakes me up purring and I sleep with earplugs in. And once the purring starts going, he starts tromping around the bed, sticking his little nose under hands to demand pets. It's magnificently cute, though I might encourage it more if it didn't happen at 3am.

Regardless, Emmett gets to stay, Olive has a friend and we now have seven cats again. Honestly, things with these seven are calmer than when we had just six!

Woohoo!

I seamed my sweater!

I still have to do the hem, button band and something to do for the cuffs, but it looks much more sweater-like than it has before today. And it even fits! Yay! I do hope I can block out the waist shaping just a tad as it is a bit extreme. Right now it would look great when buttoned but pokes out a little when open. But I'm not too worried about it. I think this will turn out great!

Knitting Updates

I have officially stalled on all of my knitting. I have three projects going and I just haven't been working on any of them. I've been tired lately so I tend to just want to curl up and read instead of knitting (or doing housework). But I'm determined to get more sleep so hopefully that will help.

One of my outstanding projects, I have no reason to have incomplete. It's just a freaking dishcloth. I frogged an old dishcloth because it wasn't square and that bothered me the more I washed it (since I couldn't stretch it square as easily). I'm using that yarn to make another on-the-bias dishcloth since I really like those. It's a project that should only take a few hours of actual knitting. But when it just sits there for ages? It takes much longer.

My second project is my tentacles must-be-seamed sweater. Since I blocked it, it no longer looks like something that will one day be a striped octopus. Instead, it looks impending-sweater-ish. But it's just been sitting there, ready to be put together. Staring at me. Making me feel guilty. For weeks. Sigh.

But today I actually pulled myself away from random reading in order to knit! Or, in this case, seam. Yes, today I started putting the sweater together. Currently, I have the shoulder seams done connecting the front and back pieces and one arm seamed at the shoulder and on one side. It's taking a lot longer than I anticipated but it's looking pretty good! Hopefully I can get the seaming done in the next day or two (maybe even today if there is a hockey game tonight) and then work on the hems and button band.

My last neglected knitting project is a pair of socks for Dan.

Well, currently it is really just "sock for Dan" as I only have one started. It's getting pretty close to done so that's exciting. I have a little over an inch of the leg done so I need at least another four in pattern and then ribbing. And then a whole other sock.

So yeah, as exciting as my progress on that is, even finishing the sock will only get me half way through the project. Of course, I won't get to that point until I actually work on the current sock, but details, details! Dan totally deserves another pair of hand knit socks so I'm gonna get them done! I'm thinking they might be his Christmas present - much longer than a pair of socks should actually take but at least they won't take as long as my sweater. (Please don't let those be famous last words!)

Test Driving a Playmate

Please meet our newest insanity:

This is Emmett, a 7-month old kitty that Dan & I (tentatively) adopted through the vet yesterday. The idea is that he will be a playmate for Olive so she stops harassing the heck out of our other (slower, less energetic, geriatric) kitties. We ended up doing the same thing way back when we first got married - we had gotten 6-month old Nibby who harassed the dickens out of then 10-year-old Ashes. A few months later we brought Chloe home and the two of them ended up pretty inseparable, leaving Ashes alone to nap in the sun. We hope the same thing will happen here.

But, just in case it doesn't, we have Emmett for a two week trial run. Since this is a bit faster than our normal acclimation schedule, we've moved things up and Emmett is currently out-and-abouting (supervised) in the general pop. Well, theoretically. He takes forays outside of his room but currently is hiding in the litter cabinet, watching the world go by. Most of the kitties are either avoiding him or stalking him when they see him wandering around. Except for Olive. Olive likes to stalk him at all times and will stare at him while smack talking in chatters and hisses. She's swatted lightly at him a couple of times, too, but not in an aggressive way. (Though I had them both playing with a ribbon earlier and a couple of times she forgot she was supposed to hiss at him.) I think she's just trying to work out who is dominant. Emmett seems happy to be the one to back down so as soon as Olive clues in to this, I think they will settle the hierarchy without any real fussing.

Hopefully this works out because Emmett is a complete doll. He's amazingly soft (an admin at the vet's office referred to his "mink coat") and has the loudest purr motor I think I've ever heard. He's lovey and sweet and apparently learned at the vet that if you are squatting down and he reaches up to pat your chest, you will pick him up. Total doll.

Wish us luck!