I'm happy to report that after a week at the vet, Rowdy's been doing well the last few weeks at home.  The other cats aren't too happy because I have to take their food away when he's out during the day because he can only eat special foods now to avoid developing crystals again. Wish us luck that he doesn't block again!

Milo got 4 purple ribbons in Huntsville, but no finals, that was a bit depressing, but last weekend he made two finals and got 56 of the 67 points remaining (out of 200), so now we are within striking distance of that Grand Champion title.  Tip got 29 of the 75 he needs for his Grand Premier title in his first show as a PR and even Chi got 3 points, so good show competition wise!  Had some disappointing personal encounter, which took the buzz off a bit, but I guess that's just the shakes sometimes.

Otherwise, things are quiet, which is a good thing! :)

After spending the day in Chattanooga yesterday, among other things to get a MP3 player/radio installed in my car, we came home late to Rowdy behaving strangely.  After about 15 minutes he started crying and he really screamed when I palpitated his stomach.  Called my vet at home at 9pm.  Can I just say how much  I love her!  If we ever move, she'll have to move with us!We drove the 25 minutes to the clinic, with Rowdy occasionally moaning rather loudly.  Not a sound to make one feel very hopeful.  I couldn't help but remember that his half-brother died of mega-colon...

We got there and the pronouncement was 'blocked'.  Which is better than mega-colon because it does not require (immediate) surgery.  The good news is that we were able to insert a catheter and drain his bladder, but due to the amount of blood in his urine we don't know yet what kind of crystals he blocked with.

Amy just called and he's doing well this morning, albeit still a bit groggy and draining bloody urine, but she thinks he's going to be okay.  What a relief!

He'll need to be on a special diet for the rest of his life to prevent him from blocking again, which will be difficult to administer considering that I'm currently free feeding his group in the living room.  I'd hate to put him in our walk-in cage, but I might not have a choice.   This was beyond scary and if feeding him by himself and making sure he doesn't get to eat the others' food means he won't get this again, it will be worth it!

I'm so glad he didn't do this while I was gone in July.  If untreated, very bad things might have happened to him.

Milo, Chi, Tip and I went to Portage, IN, this last weekend for a TICA cat show.  It was Milo's first show as an adult.  Chi and Tip were still competing as kittens.

Once a cat is considered an adult (at 8 months old) the goal is to become a Grand Champion.  CFA (where we usually show) and TICA have different ways of determining how a cat achieves that goal.  In TICA the cat has to earn a predetermined amount of points and make 6 finals under at least 4 different judges.

Milo made 8 finals out of 12 possible and became a one show Grand at the tender age of 8 months and 2 days old! :)  He has enough finals for a TGC (Triple Grand Champion), but he needs more points to achieve Double and then yet more beyond that to actually get the title TGC.  The ultimate goal is Supreme Grand Champion for which the cat has to get a high amount of points, make 10 finals total and get a Best Cat from at least one judge.  A one show grand is none too shabby for a little 8 months old Maine Coon who is 'cute'! :)

Chi didn't do much this weekend (he got 2 3rd BOB, but no finals), but Tip (who didn't do anything at the last TICA show we attended) made BOB in two rings and got a 9th and a 6th in AB and got a 2nd BOB and 3 3rd BOBs into the bargain.

To make life even more fun, I won the 50/50 raffle and the prize was high enough to cover the gas cost going to Portage and back.

All in all, a very successful weekend.  I'm thrilled.  Tip behaved much better than at the last show, so I'm hopeful for the CFA show next weekend in Columbus, OH.  It's Milo's first show as an adult in CFA, but since CFA goes about things differently, he can only get his winner's ribbons to become a Champion and can't start competing for grand points (in CFA a cat needs to get 200 points by defeating 200 other champions) until the week after.

We'll be at cat shows for the next 3 weekends in a row and then I'll be madly packing for my trip to Germany.

Keep your paws crossed for us that Milo can do as well in CFA as he did in TICA last weekend, because once he's granded, he can make babies! :)  Nova is very eager for him to be old enough and I can't wait for the all red babies we will get from this litter!

We all had the last weekend off from cat showing and it's like I gained a day in mysterious ways.  All day yesterday I thought it was Thursday! :)

This weekend, Milo, Chi and Tip and I are headed to northern Indiana, which is about 525 miles from here.  Does anybody know what timezone/daylight savings or not that part of the world is in?  I seem to remember that Indiana is kind of weird with regard to daylight savings time.

Tip has been a growly, hissy, territorial little snot at the last couple of shows (but only in the rings; in the benching area he's the sweetest, most playful and cuddly cat imaginable).   I had one judge take me by the side telling me I needed to make him stop, since he's such a nice kitten with lots of potential.  He was in boot camp this week (aka the cat room where his aunt let him know in no uncertain terms that hissing at *her* has undesirable consequences) and he seems more mellow.   We will see if he'll do better at the show this weekend.  If not, I'll have to pet him out now, which breaks my heart because I'm really bonded to him.  On the other hand, I always planned on placing him once he was granded, so it would just be a little earlier than expected.  He probably won't care.  Both Fire aka Kate and Dusty seem to be perfectly happy and adjusting well to their new homes and people.

I placed Dusty with a nice couple in OH over the June 13-14 weekend.  Chi looked for her for a couple of days and cried for a while.  Tip couldn't have cared less!   Milo was kind of 'hey, why isn't she here to be pestered?' 

Milo still looks like the cutest little thing, which is ... cute, but I'm not sure how helpful this will be to him, since he's entering the adult class this weekend.  Wish us luck!

In other news, well there really isn't any.   Except that I'll be flying to Germany and then on to Croatia in less than 4 weeks (should that be 'fewer than'?).  I'm kind of getting excited! 

I had planned on losing another 10 pounds down to 135 till then, but I'm kind of stuck around 143 right now, grumble.   But since I refuse to exercise, I guess the fact that I manage to lose weight, even if at a slower pace than I would wish, is a good thing.  :)  And I have hopes that hanging out at the beach and, you know, swimming a lot, will actually help.  On the other hand, there will be three regular meals a day, which might put a monkey wrench in that plan! :)  Especially, because the parents really frown on one not participating in these occasions.

Well, I'm off to the orthodontist now.  Be safe all and have a great day.

I woke up at 2.30am this morning to a loud crash and things shattering in the kitchen.  Raced out there with my eyes barely open to stumble over Rowdy with his head in the empty plastic lining of a cereal box.  That was my first mistake.  Usually I just give them the box to play with, but this time I forgot to take the plastic thingie out.

Obviously Rowdy had been playing and then decided it would be fun to run, jump and race around the kitchen counters, not being able to see a whole lot.  He wasn't freaked out or scared at all, thankfully, and followed me trying to get the plastic gizmo back from me.

The second mistake was that I had left a pan, grate from the oven and a crockery kind of (not quite empty) dish with lid on the stove top. 

Yup, the big crash was either Rowdy with plastic bag over his head or one of the other cats who was scared by seeing him that way jumping on the stove and making things fly in twelve different directions.  Fortunately, the crockery style dish didn't splinter very much, but broke into several big pieces, and I was able to mop up the mess on the counter, stove and floor fairly easily.

Most importantly, nobody got hurt.  I checked all paws and mouths and dispensed cuddles, although those were probably more to calm down myself rather than the cats.  They seemed fairly un-impacted by the whole ordeal.  That should teach me to leave breakables around in this manner.  Although, in their and my own defense, this was the first time anything like this has ever happened and even though they party a lot on the counters and kitchen cabinets at night, things don't usually go bump.

So, I had promised myself I'd have all the cats bathed and ready to go by 9pm tonight for an 8am departure tomorrow morning.  Right. 

The alarm clock is now set for 4am and I'll be bathing for 4-6 hours and then driving 10-12 hours to OH.  Right.  I really need somebody to keep me focused, obviously.  Sigh.

On the plus side, the car is packed and I'll just need to get the cats and myself loaded once they are prettified.

Another positive: I was at the orthodontist today and I now have a date for brace removal before I'm flying to Germany next month!  It will be really weird after 3 1/2 years to be brace-less again.  I'm a bit worried about staining aka whether the parts of my teeth beneath the braces will be a different color than the rest, but overall I have to say it's been a positive experience.  I mainly went because I had jaw issues and those are resolved and my teeth are all straight now, too! :)

What's next, Lasik to get rid of the glasses?  Maybe, I haven't decided yet.  If I keep going to as many cat shows as I have, I won't have any money left over anyway.  And if I do all that you all won't be able to recognize me I'll be so pretty.  Can't have that! :)

Oh, and to make life more interesting, some 'readers' posted a couple of informercials on a DA thread praising extasy e-books.  I mentioned my less than stellar experience with this publisher and have now been accused of libel and attacking the poor author (funny when I posted on LRC back in the day I did not name either publisher nor author and didn't mention the author this time either) and publisher on several loops... those loyal extasy readers seem to know a lot about this situation that happened mainly between me and publisher person via private email.  Go figure!  Call me cynical but I can't help but be convinced that those two posters are working for extasy and thought they could pimp their outfit in the guise of 'readers'. 

Life's never boring here. :)

Off to get some zzzz.

We went to the CFA show in KY May 15-16 where I delivered Fire to Cyndi for Susan and Richard to pick up the next day on their way home.  She's getting settled in and apart from not being too excited about their 70 pound Boxer she's doing very well and not taking any flack from the resident cats.  She's been renamed Kate to go along with their male, Sawyer.

Kate made a final in a specialty ring (SP) and got a 2nd Best of Breed (BOB) in an Allbreed (AB) ring in a class of 9 older kittens beating both her brothers and Milo, so I was thrilled and Susan was happy, too.  Milo got a BOB and Chi a 2nd BOB from the same judge in another AB ring, which was really cool, but due to some politicking they ended up not making the final which was rather disappointing.  Well, really, I was infuriated at the poor sportsmanship shown by the person involved (whose 2 kittens made 9 out of 12 possible finals at the show, talk about greed!), but I got over it in the end.

Dusty's still with us, but she really needs to move to a new home.  Her blue color is kind of starting to grow on me! ;)

We had another weekend off on the 23-24, which was nice and during which I again didn't get anything accomplished whatsoever around the home.

This last weekend we went to a TICA show in Pigeon Forge with an alternative format.  The show started at 4pm on Friday afternoon and the second session in the evening was a pj party for the people.  I didn't get back to the hotel room until 2 am and to sleep by 3am, which was a bit of a long day since I had procrastinated about bathing kittens till midnight on Thursday, then decided to get some sleep until 3am, except I was so wired because I knew I had to bathe 3 kittens that I didn't sleep more than an hour, then got up, bathed kittens, finished packing the car and then drove the 4 hours to PG.  Considering all that, I was surprised I didn't sleep right through the alarm on Saturday, but I woke up fairly refreshed at 8am for the Saturday session that started at 10am.  The show ran long and we didn't leave till 4pm, but even on the drive back I wasn't overly sleepy.  But you should see the black bags under my eyes! :)

Milo has put on some weight and is pudgy so he didn't do as well as I had hoped, but he did get a 2nd BOB and a 3rd BOB and made 2 finals in SP (a 2nd and a 3rd). The star of my bunch was Chi, who got one BOB and a 5th place in an AB final, a 3rd BOB with 5th place in a SP ring and a 3rd BOB with no final in an AB ring.  I was really thrilled, especially since he jumped off the grooming table when I was preparing him and almost got away from me while the doors were wide open and people checking in.  Talk about a heart-attack inducing incident!  He was a little fraidy for a while but got over it eventually.

Tip, the brat, has decided to hiss at the other cats and the judges, and while he got a bunch of looks, he ended up empty-pawed (he's also a bit pudgy which didn't help).

I haven't quite figured out how to feed a group of kittens that consists of two pudgies and two skinnies.  For now I've taken away all the dry food and put them on canned only, while I figure out a new raw recipe, but I'm worried that Chi and Dusty will lose weight, which they really cannot afford.  I think I'll move them into the living room so they can have access to crunchies during the day, except somebody had decided not to use the litter box while they were out there before (I think it was Milo, but don't know for sure), so that's adding a bit of extra excitement to a permanent move of Chi and Dusty into the living room.

Cats, gotta love them! :)  Never a boring moment.

Right now it looks like I'll be out of town at least 3 weekends in June (one conference, two cat shows), possibly adding a 3rd cat show, and then the first 3 weekends in July before I fly to Germany/Croatia.  I'm getting tired and broke just thinking about it, but the show bug has bitten again. :)  And, anyway, I need to keep Dusty out there where she can be seen and find her new forever family... that's my story and I'm sticking too it... he he

This is the first weekend in a month that I didn't bathe 4-5 kittens (which takes 6-7 hours) and then drive 4-7 hours to a show on Friday and I'm at a loss what to do with myself!

Not that there aren't plenty of things to be done around the house and otherwise (not the least a long, long, *long* overdue website update), but I just don't feel like much of anything.  Watched a bit of Netflix online, been reading, but nothing's hitting the spot, so instead I spent about 6 hours online making travel arrangements to fly to Germany and Croatia in July for 3 weeks.

I haven't been back home in 3 1/2 years and not in Croatia in so many years I cannot even remember.  The family isn't getting any younger and this seemed like a good time to go when my parents will be down there as well.  Not so sure about the 2 nieces (4 and 5), since I'm not exactly auntie material, but it will be nice to see something different and I haven't been to the beach in many, many years either.

When we used to go there when I was a kid, we never did much in the way of sight seeing, but I figure I might be able to borrow somebody's car and go to the Plitvice Lakes and maybe down to Dubrovnik to see what's left after the war, if the the family (parents, brother, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, her parents and her boyfriend and 2 nieces) overwhelm me.  I plan on putting more books on my Sony e-reader for beach reading, although I have to say that it's not doing so well when it's hot outside.  The text kind of fades.  I might have to look into rigging some kind of cooling device.

The kittens are all doing well.  Dusty got spayed this week and is now ready to go to a new home.  Fire is slated to join a breeder friend next weekend, if all goes well, and I haven't made up my mind yet which one of the two boys will be staying.  Tip and I are bonded, but Chi is developing very nicely as well, so I'll hang on to both of them for a little while until some sign causes an epiphany.

I don't think I mentioned that I traveled down to Houston in mid-March to pick up the new baby stud aka Milo, who has been doing well at the shows.  He's a darling, purrs all the time and seems confused about his gender, since the evil babies are nursing off him and he's perfectly happy to let them!  If it weren't so funny, I'd be annoyed at the fact that they've significantly shortened his belly fur with their nursing, but when he's purring so loudly you can hear him from the living room and you can hear the 4 months old smacking their lips while they suck, what can you do!  They are all confused! :)

Here are a few pics taken by Helmi a month ago.  Chi had a scare just before we took pics, so he looks a bit scrunched in this one.

Via mmegaera

Your result for The Pop Culture Archetype Personality Test...

The Paladin

Ninja, Monkey, Punk, Clown

Take The Pop Culture Archetype Personality Test at HelloQuizzy

As if the reader harassment, review manipulation and delisting of POD books not produced by the POD company that Amazon owns wasn't enough, Amazon, in its infinite wisdom, has now decided to protect us all from 'adult' content by removing these books from rankings, listings, recommendations and 'some' searches.

So far, it seems mostly GLBT and erotic romance, and non-fiction dealing with 'adult' topics are the victims of this tactic.

I noticed on my Titlez ranking listing that Spice titles had gone to 5,000,000 a few days ago, but I didn't think much of it then.  Now I know what it means.  Maya Banks also reports that her Berkley Heat titles are deranked.

I'm sure the list of authors will grow as folks start looking into this.

I emailed Amazon to tell them how incredibly disgusted I am by this.  I hope many other people will, too.  Cause if this isn't a slippery slope I don't know what is.

I recommend BooksAMillion for your book buying online (until somebody tells me about what they do :(.  I won't ever buy from Amazon again!

After a storm early this morning we had a calm, overcast day until about 1.30pm when the tornado watch turned into warnings all over the place.  RJ made it home just in time.

I had all the cats in carriers in the hallways and was sitting with them, listening to the different TV stations talking about what was going on.  We never lost power and we were able to listen online when the satellite went.

One station reported that there was a touch down in town, but if there was, it fortunately didn't come near us.  We had some hail and some water made it through the back doors, but that seems to be the extent of the damage.

We got lucky, again. 

Murfreesboro, where we used to live, wasn't so lucky.  The TV coverage is showing total devastation, for the second time in a week (they had another tornado about a week ago) and it looks like they had 3 touchdowns this time around.  There were fatalities.

I can't help but feel that we have a target on our back, and the feeling gets stronger with every storm that doesn't hit us directly.

Hope everybody who was in the path of this is okay.

Suzanne Brockmann, Dark of Night, 2009, Ballantine romantic suspense ?

This is full of spoilers, so if you haven't read it, please don't continue.  I'd been mulling my reaction since I finished the book on Monday/Tuesday and Azteclady's review triggered my putting these mullings on 'paper'.

Tracy and Decker are going to split in about 12-14 months when the pheromones wear off, if they make it that long. ‘Cause 4 days ain’t enough to make a relationship and I’ve found zero evidence that Deck wanted anything to do with Tracy before (and I even went back and looked in earlier books because it was such a ‘huh’ moment). As much as I disliked Dr. Jo, I agree with whoever mentioned elsewhere that they thought there was more spark between Deck and her than between him and Tracy. And I just cannot see neat freak Decker with slob Tracy…

Sophia and Dave will stick together longer since they have a reason, but Dave’s justified insecurity and inability to believe that Sophia loves him and Sophia’s ‘I love him because he is there and he loves me’ BS will ruin their relationship eventually, screwing up the folks around them.

If Brockmann felt Sophia/Decker wasn’t going to work due to their baggage (which I can see), it would have made much more sense to me to find them new non-baggage partners; and I felt Dave deserved much better.

This book felt like a total redaction of all characters. I was laughing at Sam’s relationship advice, too, in disbelief.

And at Dave the super agent. I did find a couple mentions in earlier books that said he was a much better agent than he looked at TS, but sorry, a guy who has sex for the first time in his 30s with a woman who’s out to kill him and gets an STD in the bargain is not James Bond… so that whole conflict she manufactured for Sophia just felt off.

I can see how the relationships in this book might work for folks who read this as a standalone and didn’t see how these characters acted and interacted in the last 7 books. However, I didn’t recognize any of them and this book was a continual ‘huh, really?’ for me.

I didn’t read any of these books for the suspense plots and this one is indeed even more implausible than any earlier books, but since I only read it because I wanted to see if she could make me believe in the Sophia/Dave and Tracy/Decker thing, that part didn’t bother me all that much. It does go into the minus column though and this book has many.

My biggest issue was that I just didn’t care. I got to chapter 2 and I put it down for 2 weeks because I was just bored. I had to force myself to make it through the first 100 pages, but then the story did pick up for me and I finished the rest in a day.

After I finished it, I kept feeling that there should have been more, that the book wasn’t finished and I think that has to do with the fact that the main action is 4 days and then a couple short ‘tell’ sections which comprised another 5-6? weeks, when I felt such a drastic left turn in the main relationships should have been developed over months at the very least.

While others find her long story arcs to be innovative romance, to me they have gone beyond romance and I’m just not willing to follow, especially since I originally felt she was trying to pull one over on her fans with these new pairings. My main reason for thinking that was that she’s too good an author to have been this bad at planting seeds and foreshadowing through the 6 earlier books in this arc.

Now I think she didn’t lie to us, she lied to herself… because it’s plain sad if an author has to rewrite multiple characters from her earlier books to try to make a new development plausible and even so fails.

It really is too bad, because as much as I don’t believe in the HEAs for S/D and T/D, Brockmann left me with a 24 hour buzz in which I wanted to read more about these people and there’s that little voice that wants to know what happened to Izzy and Eden…  D

Well, yesterday was a big day for the evilies.  They and mom Nova went on their first vet visit (well, Fire had been before, but she clearly had forgotten) and got their first shots.  On the way to the vet they kept staring at me with their big little eyes in complete disbelief that *this* was happening to them.... :)  I'm mean, I thought it was funny.  They all did very well with the several vet techs and the vet whom they had never met before and who all adored them.  Go babies! :)

Sometimes, cats can get a bit sleepy for a day or so after vaccinations, but nobody told them that and they were their usual evilie selves, which made me very happy... up to a point.

Unfortunately, that included one of them peeing on things s/he's not supposed to.  I'm a bit at a loss, since they all use the litter box and I haven't found any evidence of them peeing in their Habitat.

I first noticed it the other day when I found a rather noticeable yellow stain on the little cat tree.  Yesterday's 'little' stain was a bit worse, since one of them peed against the side of the bed and on the carpet and in rather copious amounts.

I found out because I heard Tip scratching there.  I tend to assume it's him, but I don't know for sure.  He's only 9.5 weeks old and it would be a bit early for stud marking, but I guess it's not impossible.

I haven't quite figured out how to deal with this yet.  The joys of cat grandmotherhood, I guess.  They are grumpy today, because I didn't let them out, but until I fashion stud pants that will fit 3 pound Maine Coons rather than 20 pounds ones, nobody leaves the Habitat! :)

I know one thing, before there is another litter, the carpet in the bedroom will have to go and I'll have them install the lovely linoleum that looks like wood laminate that we have in the living room and hallways.  Lots easier to clean!  Grumble, mumble, mumble...

Well, I'm behind again.  What else is new.  Today's reads:

Elizabeth Boyle, This Rake of Mine (library book), 2005, Avon Historical Romance

This was one of those weird books that you finish reading all the while you think, 'that's stupid', 'boooring', 'what next?'.  Folks who like spy plots with their historicals might love this.

Not sure what grade to give it.  It wasn't all awful or I wouldn't have finished.  I guess a D.  I would have been upset if I had paid for it.

Joan Wolf, A Double Deception, 1983, Signet Regency Romance

This had potential, but it was all smothered in the rather Gothicky subplot.  I don't regret reading it, but I kept wishing it would concentrate on the characters rather than the plot.  C

I've been taking all the pictures, but I hadn't prettyfied them yet for upload, so here's a bunch from the last couple of weeks.

Dusty at 7.5 weeks.



at 8 weeks



and at 8.5 weeks