We love the kitties!

I haven't given much update on the cats! And since they have their own category, I think it is high time to remedy that.

We are LOVING being pet owners again, and these two cats in particular. They are so fuzzy -- I mean, funny -- with two little distinct personalities. Apple is SO "girl," and SO "big sister." She definitely believes she is in charge. She sits so pretty, when she's upright and stately. Most of the time, though, her default position is "cat loaf." Paws tucked under and rounded on top. ;)

And she is indeed rounded. Hee hee. Side note, I just wrote an article for work about body types and swimwear shapes (you know that article, about the pears and the apples, it gets published every year by every women's magazine, ever). She is aptly named. You see, Apple really prefers to eat kitten food, which is higher-calorie than her adult cat food. Anytime she thinks we aren't paying attention, she has a snack from Ash's bowl. I felt like she gained a lot of weight quickly when we first adopted her, which is why now, their dry food bowls get put away after they eat in the morning, before we humans leave the house. I think that's helping. I just don't want her to get toooo fat and happy. But I'm glad she's happy.



Favorite napping spot? Rocking chair in the guest room.
Best trick? Allows us to hold her, for just a minute. Sometimes even snuggles.
Funniest habit? Scratches the wall/door frame after she uses the litter box. (In case any got up there, I guess? It looks like she's torn up the door frame, actually, which is annoying.)
Nicknames? Apple-cat, Apple Jack, Apply-Dapply.

Ash is our little brother kitty. Shawn calls him Loki, the Lord of Mischief. He's harder to catch on camera, but ever so lovey when he's in the mood. When I work from home, he'll walk around on the table in front of my laptop. Classic. He's also SUPER talkative. Meow? Meow. Meow meow. Ash will start a chase any day of the week, you don't even have to ask. He loves to play, and jump on Apple. She tries to ignore him.

He and Alex have a particular friendship and he usually sleeps on Alex's bed during the day, and at night.

Ash will not let us near his paws, so off to the groomer he went last Friday, for a bath and a mani-pedi. ;) He smells so nice now and is so soft! (Apple's up next in a week or so. I couldn't wrangle both of them in one day.)

By far his most noticeable characteristic is that he prefers his water fresh out of the tap, please and thank you. We keep a rubber band around the faucet handle when we're out of the house, because more than once he has turned it on himself!

Favorite napping spot? Alex's bed.
Best trick? Drinking water from the faucet. (Oh, and jumping up to the tippy top of the kitchen cabinets one Friday night late!) (And running down the stairs to crash into the mat by the front door. He's wild! And he has lots of tricks!)
Funniest habit? He watches the birds outside and talks to them, whining that he can't go catch them.
Nicknames? Ashy, Ash-kitty, Buddy

I'm so excited for Mom and Dad to meet them at Easter!

Update: Allergy/Asthma, says the Nurse Practitioner

The best thing about the doctor's appointment was I met with an NP who told me she herself has FOUR cats, and a young son with asthma. So it kept the (dumb) guilt factor out of the conversations. I've heard doctors before say, "When people knowingly have allergies to pets, but they have pets anyway, that's their fault." It may be true, but it's not very nice to say.

Anyway, I'm armed with Singulair, Symbicort, albuterol for emergencies, and an instruction to not let the kitties sleep on my bed (or in my bedroom, probably). She admitted that part would be hard. Last night Ash snuck up onto the bed and I didn't even realize it until I woke up, so... yeah. But we'll get it worked out.

I should have known it would happen, really, but no guilt. The kitty love is worth it.

Allergy / Asthma?

In other news, my allergies might be flaring up.

We went two months with the cats and I had not a single allergy symptom. I was taking Claritin or Sudafed every day and felt absolutely fine, even with them sleeping on my bed, even spending lots of time (as much as possible, really!) petting them, and even allowing myself to deal with the litterboxes (because despite all their promises, the kids don't just "remember" on their own to do it, surprise surprise). (Supposedly there is a lot of histamine in feline urine, and isn't that a pretty sentence?)

Anyway, I was fine. Hooray for cats! I do love cats.

The night that we had snow, our power went out for about 5 hours. Being Christmastime, I had several candles around the house already, and I lit about 6 of them, downstairs. We all kind-of camped on the couch during those hours, with the candles. Sure smelled nice! The kitties did come around, and they curled up on the couch with us for an hour or two. Around 11:00 pm, still in the dark, I noticed I was wheezing a bit. I felt sure, since I'd had no trouble with the cats so far, that all the candles were probably affecting my breathing. (At this point I was a week into taking a generic Zyrtec -- I don't know why I bought it instead of Claritin, but I did.) So I blew most of them out, and the power came back on after a little while longer.

(That day I had also vacuumed downstairs pretty thoroughly, which probably kicked up a lot of dander in the living room and on the couch.)

But my lungs still haven't really recovered. It's been more than 2 weeks and I've been carefully NOT lighting candles, but I've had this tiny little wheeze ever since; if I get to coughing, it gets worse. One night I was miserable, and miraculously found an old Albuterol inhaler, which I used. (I think it was Alex's, actually, from one time he'd been sick as a toddler.) I'm trying NOT to use it, but I've used it more than twice. It helps a little. The wheezing is worse at night.

I'm back on Claritin now and really hope it kicks in. I want to just tough this out and am hopeful it  will go away on its own. But if it doesn't in another week, I guess I'm going to have to see a doctor. (Side note: In my 20s, a primary care doc had diagnosed me with a touch of allergy-related asthma, and given me a prescription for albuterol to keep around, just in case. I had a few attacks of wheezing when I visited friends with cats. But 3 or 4 years ago, a different PCP, whom I didn't particularly like, told me I did NOT have asthma, and she didn't know why that previous doctor thought I did. Hmph. I'd like to go breathe on her now and see what she says.)

Am not happy about all this.

I might be going a little crazy

I find myself with nothing to do. We have projects in limbo because of yet another "re-configuring" of our work, this time led by a top exec in the company who... still hasn't hired us a Director of Marketing. Instead, she's decided to start making sweeping declarations herself. Such as, the product catalog we've produced every year for millions of years will no longer be produced. The Magazine-of-Much-Angst which we decided NOT to print any longer, 2 years ago, may now come back into print production. Slash! this brochure. Cut! that brochure. While we're at it, we're going to rework all 12 global websites in 12 languages and do that all by April 6, she declares. With a flick of our magic wands, apparently. 

Anyway, no one's assigning work right now as we await further instructions/clarifications, and the work we had been planning to do might not need to be done. Our Content Strategy could be out the window, despite all the work we've done to get it in place. Just because. Or so it seems.

It's super fun. Anyway, I've been online reading and reading to keep occupied, everything from "how much should I feed/bathe my cats?" to the usual reactions to mass shootings (how sad that we have "the usual" reactions). But at the moment it seems a lot of websites aren't loading. Such is the life of a desk jockey like myself. Sigh. Look busy.

At my lunch break I went to PetSmart again. ;) It's right across the street from my office, which is very handy, and they so kindly emailed me a $10-off coupon after taking my email address the first time we visited. It expired tomorrow, so I wanted to go spend it. Nothing exciting, just 2 more bags of dry food (one kitten and one adult), 6 little cans of wet food, and ... another set of kitty dishes. I couldn't resist, Shawn, I'm sorry. They are cute and now we can stop serving the wet food on my 2 random little pieces of yellow Fitz and Floyd china. HA! Everything matches. We are now pet owners from Pinterest.

I had to make the cats' feeding area cute because the current dilemma of the day is what to do about them while we're at Disney in 3 weeks, for 5 days. We're asking a neighbor if she wouldn't mind feeding them (and thus, be in our house and see the pet feeding area and it needing to be cute). We don't feel right about boarding them, this early into their having found a home. And gosh, I love those little critters -- the actual thought of being away for 5 days makes me sort-of want to ...stay home! Don't tell my mom! Not really, but... I'm crazy, right??

Leave the cats reluctantly to go play with a giant mouse. Heh. 

---------

In other news, we have a teenager in the house. He feels he is old enough to express his opinion to me now, which is a good thing in the long term but not so wonderful sometimes in the short term. I don't want to dwell on the specifics of just how he's judging me, but I'm trying to remind myself that he's growing his independence and learning to test his limits just as he should. He said it lovingly (I think?) and meant no disrespect, but it hurt a little. 

Oh, alright, I'll tell: it doesn't make sense without the context. He said he respects my parenting and all, but gets annoyed when I give in to his sister sometimes. It didn't really bug me so much immediately - I told him that there are days when I just don't have the energy to fight with her, and I choose my battles - but the more I think of it, the more it bugs me. Last night when Kate was giving me The Business but I was Sticking To My Guns, Alex then had the gall to stage-whisper "good job!" to me as she went on and I didn't. !!! The nerve. I mean, encouraging nerve, and of course he's probably right, but. 

But.

As for Kate, she learned that she can, indeed, boil water and egg noodles even though she's only 9, when meatloaf and mashed potatoes (nor any "non-dinner" thing like yogurt and sandwiches and cereal) are not to her liking.

So that's how the kids are. Otherwise great -- basketball and drama are in full swing, so Saturday mornings are shot for a while, but still, that can be great. I'm eager to Stay somewhat Present in all of the busy-ness and taxi-driving, and to enjoy This Time of Their/Our Lives, because I know, I KNOW that when it's all finished, it's finished and you can't ever get it back again. Some days it's a challenge. Especially the driving. But we keep on plugging, and juggling the drop offs and pickups as best we can, saying hello to each other, Shawn and me, when we remember to (sad sad sad) and just marching to the calendar. Every time a new Thing pops up needing to be done (a form, a donation, a volunteer opp), I either:

1. Remind myself that it's OK to say no sometimes, or

2. Immediately set a reminder for the Thing on my phone.

Update, and Halloween notes

The cats sleep on our bed. ;)

I was alllll determined, when we first decided to get them, that our bedroom door would have to stay closed, due to my allergies. 

That ended on about the 2nd day. Maybe third. The last few nights, I have woken up with a cat (sometimes two) nestled up against my legs on top of the comforter. 

It's hot. 

But it's the sweetest and I love it.

--------

Happy Halloween! We had a "Potluck and Costume Contest" at work and exactly four people dressed up. My costume was chosen because it was easy and I was not in any way TRYING real hard (I wore, at Shawn's good suggestion, a Thrashers sweater and said I was the "Ghost of an Atlanta Sports Franchise," ha ha)... but at least I tried A LITTLE. Not even the guy who concocted the event was wearing a costume. LAME! Everything here is lame. (The food, at least, was decent.)

The kids will trick-or-treat tonight, in our own neighborhood, and I'm hopeful there will be lots of other families out. It's my year to stay at home, woo! Because of the kitties, I'm going to sit on the front porch so I don't have to open the door a million times. They're microchipped but we don't want them getting out! 

Kate fussed that we didn't bother getting a pumpkin to carve this year. I told her, "Yeah, but instead I got you a BLACK CAT."

We Got Our Kitties!

Shawn said that as soon as he read that headline, he knew it was a done deal. ;) He was right. We took the (overly expectant) kids to the shelter on Saturday, and after an extensive tour, meeting every kitty in the place (it's a really lovely, impressive place with nice volunteers), we settled on the ones we wanted. Each kid had found a cat that made them happy.

After that, we made a trip to PetSmart and gave them a whole bunch of our money in exchange for 2 crates, a scratching post/tree, food, food bowls, litter boxes and litter, and some toys. We could have easily spent more than the $250-ish we spent! And we were trying to be conservative! So fun.

So, Ash and Apple came home yesterday and they're just as sweet as can be. Apple hid out under the guest room bed most of the afternoon. They had warned us she would be skittish and scared at first, and she was. (She'd been adopted once before, but sent back to the shelter 6 months later for not using the litter box, a fact that made Shawn very skeptical. Me too, if I'm honest. They told us she had no medical reason for that misbehavior, though, and always used the box while she was AT the shelter. I hate that someone brought her back! I'm sure she was upset and nervous when she saw our crate.) BUT by 9:00 pm, and with a little wet food and a treat to tempt her, we got her to come out and eat something. She was actually really friendly, purring and rubbing and wanting to know us. And this morning she'd used the box! No problems so far!

Ash is a kitten, around 6 months old, and has had his share of issues. An eye infection, but thank goodness he'd just finished his round of eye drops for that! He was also having a kitty cold, sneezing and drippy nose, this past week. They sent us home with a bottle of liquid antibiotic. HA! We haven't owned cats EVER and we're taking medicine on already (liquid, 2x a day)?! I told the adoption counselor I felt sure that if I could get medicine into my 2 kids, I could get it into a cat. She was impressed that we were willing. And it's been fine, using a towel to hold him, aside from a little scratch on Shawn. Only 7 doses left. He's totally friendly and curious and wants OUT to explore.

We had to put them in separate rooms, so Ash is in Alex's bathroom and Apple's in the guest room we had set up as a "cat" room. I really hated locking them in there this morning, knowing we'd be gone all day, but I'm going to go home at lunch and play with them. Tonight maybe we'll try to introduce them to each other, or else open up their doors and see what happens.

It's all so new! And so fun -- when a little creature comes to you and wants you to love it... gosh, is there anything sweeter?