Hello.
I'm Margret; you can see my profile, which includes the one picture I have available for posting of my cat, Jasmine. She's almost three years old, a domestic longhair who appears to have a good deal of Maine Coon Cat in her recent genetic history.
Two years ago, my cat was Floppy, a 13 year old domestic long hair who, well, it's kind of a long story. When we moved into this house 26 years ago we had a cat door installed for Sweet Thing, who had always been an indoor-outdoor cat and knew how to take care of herself outside. It was an expensive, hard plastic, lockable cat door, and after Sweet Thing's death of kidney failure we locked it and kept it that way. Pretzel was always an indoor only cat, and so was Floppy. ("Meow. Meooow. Can't you tell this is a cat door? But it's broken. It won't open. I'd fix it myself if I had opposable thumbs, but I don't. Why don't you fix it? Meow?" Human: "Huh. I wonder how that got broken. Oh well. Too bad.") Then, about 12 years ago, apparently, a benign meningioma (brain tumor) started growing in my head. It was finally diagnosed and removed 2 years ago, by which time it was 2 inches across, but there was a while when I needed some serious help, getting up after I'd fallen down, for instance. Fortunately (or so it appeared at the time), my husband Roger had a nephew named Erik who was in serious financial trouble and on the verge of being thrown out of his apartment, along with his wife Lilia, and Lilia's adolescent daughter Kristina. Lilia was working to become a certified nursing assistant, on the way to becoming a nurse eventually, so Roger invited them to come live with us so they could help take care of me. And Erik and Lilia decided that our house needed interior painting, which they began doing without our permission, behind our backs. When they got to the cat door and saw that it was an expensive one, they decided they'd better remove it so they wouldn't spill paint on it, and broke it in the process. And they were too cheap to replace it with the same kind of cat door, so they put in a cat flap instead, at a time when Roger and I were too distracted by my health problems to notice. And one day Floppy disappeared. We went to all the shelters and couldn't find her -- she's gone. There are coyotes around here, very aggressive ones; she was probably eaten since we never found a body on the street. And every time I hear a cat cry outside I go to check -- it's never her.
Eventually, Lilia actually physically abused me, and we evicted them (and yes, we actually did have to serve them with an eviction notice) -- we've changed the locks and made it very plain to them that they are never welcome here ever again, and if we find them on our property we'll call the sheriff's office and report trespassers. I wish now that I had insisted that they be "invited" to leave as soon as I realized they'd killed Floppy, but Roger didn't see it that way.
Anyway, my birthday is in January, so late in 2012 I told Roger that it was time for a new cat and I wanted one for a combined Christmas/birthday present that year, and when he still hadn't done anything about it by late January I insisted, and we went to the Cat Care Society (the local no-kill shelter, where we had gotten Pretzel many years before), but none of the cats there were right for us. Then one day, a friend in my computer club posted a message asking whether anyone knew someone who wanted a cat, and I said "Yes!" Turns out that Jasmine's previous human had a granddaughter who had just developed an allergy, and Jasmine is a serious allergenic style cat -- very long, very fine fur, with an immense surface area over her entire coat to hang onto those proteins in cat saliva that people are allergic to. We went to my friend's house to meet her, and we both took to her at once. She's very sweet-tempered and thoroughly convinced that she's still a kitten (even now, at almost three). The master bedroom has a huge walk-in closet that will probably never hold clothes again because Jasmine likes to use it for gymnastics, leaping from one shelf to the opposite, eight or ten feet away. And she also is strictly an indoor-only cat -- the cat flap has been well sealed with packaging tape.
I have a friend who spins with a drop spindle, who has dibs on all the fur I can comb or brush off of Jasmine -- it's that soft and gorgeous.
As for me, I enjoy tatting (a form of lace making -- you can see examples if you do a Google search on it, and there are YouTube videos on how to do it), making temari (yet another thing you can Google; if you want to see the one I'm currently attempting, Google "temari Alhambra"), filking (the kind of songs -- frequently but not always parodies -- that Science Fiction and fantasy fans enjoy singing late at night at conventions or on Saturday afternoons in someone's home -- another good YouTube search, and for an example of a serious and gorgeous filk do a YouTube search for "Ship of Stone"), playing the guitar (goes with filking), and stereograms (stereoscopic pictures, either the random dot kind you've probably seen, or the kind with two pictures side by side -- I have a gorgeous black and white stereoscopic picture of the moon photocopied from a library book years ago, with the two pictures taken over a year apart from each other and the libration of the moon providing enough difference to give the stereo effect -- that one dates from the 19th century). And when I was a girl, many decades ago, I climbed Long's Peak, one of Colorado's "fourteeners" (mountains 14,000 feet or greater) and survived a thunder/hail storm at the top by doing as we'd been taught -- keep your feet as close together as possible so the lightning only "sees" one connection to ground, and crouch (not sit) as low as possible.
And I'd better sign off now -- I still have to order some cat food before I go to bed (please see my new post in Forums/Our Feline Companions/Nutrition), and it's after 2 a.m..
Margret
I'm Margret; you can see my profile, which includes the one picture I have available for posting of my cat, Jasmine. She's almost three years old, a domestic longhair who appears to have a good deal of Maine Coon Cat in her recent genetic history.
Two years ago, my cat was Floppy, a 13 year old domestic long hair who, well, it's kind of a long story. When we moved into this house 26 years ago we had a cat door installed for Sweet Thing, who had always been an indoor-outdoor cat and knew how to take care of herself outside. It was an expensive, hard plastic, lockable cat door, and after Sweet Thing's death of kidney failure we locked it and kept it that way. Pretzel was always an indoor only cat, and so was Floppy. ("Meow. Meooow. Can't you tell this is a cat door? But it's broken. It won't open. I'd fix it myself if I had opposable thumbs, but I don't. Why don't you fix it? Meow?" Human: "Huh. I wonder how that got broken. Oh well. Too bad.") Then, about 12 years ago, apparently, a benign meningioma (brain tumor) started growing in my head. It was finally diagnosed and removed 2 years ago, by which time it was 2 inches across, but there was a while when I needed some serious help, getting up after I'd fallen down, for instance. Fortunately (or so it appeared at the time), my husband Roger had a nephew named Erik who was in serious financial trouble and on the verge of being thrown out of his apartment, along with his wife Lilia, and Lilia's adolescent daughter Kristina. Lilia was working to become a certified nursing assistant, on the way to becoming a nurse eventually, so Roger invited them to come live with us so they could help take care of me. And Erik and Lilia decided that our house needed interior painting, which they began doing without our permission, behind our backs. When they got to the cat door and saw that it was an expensive one, they decided they'd better remove it so they wouldn't spill paint on it, and broke it in the process. And they were too cheap to replace it with the same kind of cat door, so they put in a cat flap instead, at a time when Roger and I were too distracted by my health problems to notice. And one day Floppy disappeared. We went to all the shelters and couldn't find her -- she's gone. There are coyotes around here, very aggressive ones; she was probably eaten since we never found a body on the street. And every time I hear a cat cry outside I go to check -- it's never her.
Eventually, Lilia actually physically abused me, and we evicted them (and yes, we actually did have to serve them with an eviction notice) -- we've changed the locks and made it very plain to them that they are never welcome here ever again, and if we find them on our property we'll call the sheriff's office and report trespassers. I wish now that I had insisted that they be "invited" to leave as soon as I realized they'd killed Floppy, but Roger didn't see it that way.
Anyway, my birthday is in January, so late in 2012 I told Roger that it was time for a new cat and I wanted one for a combined Christmas/birthday present that year, and when he still hadn't done anything about it by late January I insisted, and we went to the Cat Care Society (the local no-kill shelter, where we had gotten Pretzel many years before), but none of the cats there were right for us. Then one day, a friend in my computer club posted a message asking whether anyone knew someone who wanted a cat, and I said "Yes!" Turns out that Jasmine's previous human had a granddaughter who had just developed an allergy, and Jasmine is a serious allergenic style cat -- very long, very fine fur, with an immense surface area over her entire coat to hang onto those proteins in cat saliva that people are allergic to. We went to my friend's house to meet her, and we both took to her at once. She's very sweet-tempered and thoroughly convinced that she's still a kitten (even now, at almost three). The master bedroom has a huge walk-in closet that will probably never hold clothes again because Jasmine likes to use it for gymnastics, leaping from one shelf to the opposite, eight or ten feet away. And she also is strictly an indoor-only cat -- the cat flap has been well sealed with packaging tape.
I have a friend who spins with a drop spindle, who has dibs on all the fur I can comb or brush off of Jasmine -- it's that soft and gorgeous.
As for me, I enjoy tatting (a form of lace making -- you can see examples if you do a Google search on it, and there are YouTube videos on how to do it), making temari (yet another thing you can Google; if you want to see the one I'm currently attempting, Google "temari Alhambra"), filking (the kind of songs -- frequently but not always parodies -- that Science Fiction and fantasy fans enjoy singing late at night at conventions or on Saturday afternoons in someone's home -- another good YouTube search, and for an example of a serious and gorgeous filk do a YouTube search for "Ship of Stone"), playing the guitar (goes with filking), and stereograms (stereoscopic pictures, either the random dot kind you've probably seen, or the kind with two pictures side by side -- I have a gorgeous black and white stereoscopic picture of the moon photocopied from a library book years ago, with the two pictures taken over a year apart from each other and the libration of the moon providing enough difference to give the stereo effect -- that one dates from the 19th century). And when I was a girl, many decades ago, I climbed Long's Peak, one of Colorado's "fourteeners" (mountains 14,000 feet or greater) and survived a thunder/hail storm at the top by doing as we'd been taught -- keep your feet as close together as possible so the lightning only "sees" one connection to ground, and crouch (not sit) as low as possible.
And I'd better sign off now -- I still have to order some cat food before I go to bed (please see my new post in Forums/Our Feline Companions/Nutrition), and it's after 2 a.m..
Margret
