Four or five months ago our cat (and model) Hippo got out of the house "somehow" (ok, he's overweight ... we allow him to sneak out in hopes that he'll lose some weight). He came home a few hours later with a friend. 

His friend was an adorable, small, vocal gray cat. This fellow was immediately named Buddy, because he's Hippo's buddy.

I posted pictures of him on our local facebook groups and no one seems to know anything about him. So for the last few months we've been talking to him, trying to get a little bit closer to him, and feeding him each evening (he mostly comes by after dark). Years ago Hippo put a hole in the screen on our porch so Buddy uses that to get onto the lanai where his food is.

For a long time I wasn't seeing much of him but the food was gone in the morning, so I'd just set some out before bed.

That worked really well until one evening I walked past the lanai, checked for Buddy, and saw this instead:

 

Opossum was much less concerned about my presence than Buddy ever is and ate the whole bowl of food!

Now Buddy gets fed only when we see him!

 Two months without a post but with very, very good reason.

 River needed to perform community service for a Boy Scout merit badge he was earning. Given his age (12) and Covid restrictions finding a place to volunteer wasn't easy so he got creative and suggested fostering kittens for one of our local shelters.

 

In no time at all Quebec and Romeo were at our house, two less than four-week old kittens. While they are both black and about the same ago they were not litter-mates, we got Romeo first and Quebec a day later - they do so much better when they're not singletons and the two bonded immediately and were so good for each other.

 

A day after getting our kittens Cassie decided she'd foster as well and she's now temporarily rearing Duck and Goose - who are absolutely adorable. Duck is slow to gain weight, having a metabolism I can only dream of, so she's had hers a little longer.

 

When Q and R first arrived they were syringe fed every 3 hours, moving to every 4 hours after a week or two.  They did not "relieve" themselves on their own and had to be stimulated with a cloth to go. They were given every hand towel in our house and we still had to do their laundry 3-4 times a day between pottying and bathing (because of pottying).

 

As they got older they got so much easier! By the time they left us, at about 8 weeks old, they were eating soft food and kibble, and using a litter box like the big cats that they were.

 

Romeo was always a little bigger than Quebec, but each of them more than tripled their weight while they were with us.

 

Big question ... how did we tell them apart? Quebec has a white stripe on his belly. But to be able to tell them apart without flipping one upside down Quebec wore lipstick on the back of his left ear ... without that we'd have been lost. As they got older it got easier - Romeo has bigger eyes and Quebec's eyes were more blue-green than Romeo's. Quebec was a bit smaller. One of them had a few white furs on his legs, the other on his ears. And their personalities were different. By the time they were about 5 weeks old I could tell them apart, River never mastered that.

 

We loved having them with us and can't wait to foster again after summer. Quebec was adopted by Mia and he and Linc are best of friends. Romeo went back to the shelter and was adopted within three days of being there.

I'm not really sure how many hours River put in in the six weeks we had the kittens. Definitely enough to meet his requirement.

 

A few last things:
* foster if you can ... the need is great
* if you see a kitten in the wild watch from a distance for a few hours, Mom is likely getting something to eat

 Looking suave in his mint green bow tie, Hippo knows he's the life of every party and the center of everyone's attention.

Cats and snails ... nothing but perfect silliness. Check out this new cat and kitten bow tie available in the shop.

And thank you to Hippo, once again, for modeling.

Hippo meowed me this joke the other day:

How do you catch a unique bird? Unique up on him.
How do you catch a tame bird? The tame way.
  
ba dump bump 

(yes, if you follow us on instagram and facebook you've already heard that one, but doesn't it get better and better with age?)


Super exciting news for cat and dog lovers everywhere:

Because I'm Me now carries cat and small dog bow ties and collars.


And stuffed lion bow ties and collars? Sure, why not?

The collars can be sized for 8 week old kittens on up to full grown Hippo sized cats. These collars can be made to fit small dogs too, just add measurements when you make your purchase.


This is Willie:


He came to my house with a group of four foster kittens from our local animal shelter. I went in to the shelter to drop off an application, before I handed the application to anyone I was handed a carrier with four five-week old crazy adorable kittens. My father saw pictures of the kittens on the internet and fell in love. Now he and my mother will be the proud servants to Willie, their little prince, who is also madly in love with them.



And the other three sweethearts:


And the public service announcement: Get your pets spayed/neutered. Adopt from a shelter. Foster from a shelter if you can. Our shelter currently has 131 kittens/cats available for adoption and about 300 out in foster care. I have no idea how many dogs they have, but it's more than a few.

The kids and I are fostering three little kittens (who lost their mittens?) after their Mama was hit by a car.


They're adorable little bundles of cuteness, who are keeping us very busy. The kittens are about four weeks old now and have been with us just over a week, arriving at our home very hungry, dirty, and covered in fleas. They have no interest yet in eating on their own or using the litterbox so when I say they're keeping us very busy I'm not kidding.

The kittens are very attached to each other and I'm so glad they have each other, though I sure wish they had a Mama to take care of them. They're just discovering mobility, until a few days ago their legs were still very shaky, now they fall less but still aren't sure they want to leave the safety of each other or the nearest human.


We are not keeping the kittens and will be actively finding new homes for them in the next few weeks. To try not to get too attached they were given very boring names - X, Y, and Z ... Xray, Yankee, and Zulu in military code. Their names don't fit at all, as they are absolutely adorable and fluffy and those names are not, but they serve the purpose of being able to tell them apart.


Want a kitten? :)

The kids and I went camping recently. Tent camping. I took one picture. This is it:


Yes, that's a freaking rattlesnake. I don't like snakes. At all. There are six kinds of poisonous snakes in Florida and this guy is one of them. What. The. Heck. And we saw him as we were pulling into camp, not as we were leaving (which would have felt much better). And we were tent camping. Not cool. Not cool at all.

I'm very happy and relieved to say that we did not see him or his friends the rest of the weekend and had a great time camping. The kids played from sun-up to sun-down and got happily filthy. Very filthy. They came home covered in dirt and dust reeking a combination of bug spray, dirt, sweat, and campfire. After a strict command of, "Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Get in the shower immediately." I set out to do the laundry, much of which was equally as stinky and dirty.

A perfect opportunity to try out the Purex Crystals Aromatherapy Energy I received to review. I also received some coupons to give away, enter at the bottom of this post.


I have to go ahead and admit that I'm a little biased towards Purex Crystals. I LOVE this product and use it in every wash load. And, yes, it smells good, and yes, the smells lasts a long time. I love Purex detergent as well and have done loads with and without the crystals added in ... the load with crystals smells better and stays smelling good longer every time.

These new Purex Crystals Aromatherapy scents are Well Being, Energy, and Serenity. Each soothing scent is blended with essential oils, promises long lasting scent infusion, and, according to Purex, will "stimulate your life with peaceful bliss and boundless spirit".  The energy scent is citrus, the other two are floral.


Now I'm not sure any in-wash fragrance booster is really going to "stimulate my life" but I do love this scent. It's very fresh and clean.

Back to my laundry ... Yes, the Purex Crystals, along with Purex detergent, got rid of the camping odors. Because of the Purex Crystals the laundry came out smelling terrific, even the shoes that got washed smelled good.

Have you tried Purex Crystals? The Aromatherapy scents should be available now and I've got two coupons for you to try them for free. To enter to win the two coupons, leave a comment below and make sure you've got an e-mail address attached to that comment so I can reach you if you win. That's it, just leave a comment. Oh, and you can leave a comment every day through next Sunday, October 19th if it pleases you. I'll use a random number generator to choose a winner at midnight. Not sure what to comment on? How about letting me know if you've tried Purex Crystals, what you think of Purex Crystals, a snake story, a camping tip or trick, a laundry tip or trick, your favorite tie in my shop, or whatever floats your boat. Good luck!  

Congratulations to Entrant #9, Amanda, winner of the Purex Crystals!

Never fails ... at least one of them always wants to be in the picture.

Let me start by saying that this is a post filled with less than pretty pictures. You'll see both my cutting board and ironing board up close and personal, and they're ugly. But they work perfectly well, so ugly it is. Oh, and Lucy, who just turned one and is rarely calm unless she's asleep, wasn't in the mood to stay still at all, so the pictures of the "model" in action aren't the best either.

Ms. Lucy wore out her collar. It was pretty and purple but for some reason it was fraying a lot.

Rather than run to Target and buy her a new one I opted to make one for her.


And Miss Lucy now had a beautiful, pink, flowery collar, perfect for a precious girl.

And so, so easy. So easy that I thought I'd go ahead and make another, just so I could show you how easy it is!

Lucy couldn't care less what her collar looks like, silly little girl, so she was perfectly ok swapping out her beautiful floral collar for an equally beautiful new pink and green collar, so here we go:

To begin cut a piece of fabric 1.5" wide by about 18-20" long. Then cut a piece of fusible interfacing the same size.


Fuse interfacing to backside of fabric.


Press the piece of fabric in half, wrong sides together, down the entire length of the fabric piece.


Open the pressed seam and press both side edges to the newly created center seam, again continuing down the entire length of the fabric piece.


Fold lengthwise and press one more time, creating a 4-layer thick 3/8" wide by 18-20" long piece of fabric.


Sew along the open edge with a minimal seam allowance, about 1/16-1/8". Leave the ends as is - raw (they'll get tucked in soon)


Attach a slide to one end of the long fabric strap, trimming, if necessary, and turning the end under first, and stitch.


Attach one buckle end by threading the strap first through the buckle and then through the slide. When this step is complete it should look like the picture below, with the slide showing on top of the strap.

Attache the remaining buckle piece to the open end, again trimming and folding the open end in first.


That's it. See, simple.

Attach to cat and admire your hard work.

I was able to reuse the buckle and slide from Lucy's original collar. If that's not an option break-away collar hardware can be purchased at Etsy for between $.30 and $1.50 per set, depending on the quantity you need.

First of all, don't forget to enter to win the Purex No Sort!


Hippo, as always, wanted to be the middle of things while I was taking new tie pictures. This wasn't what he had in mind, but he wears it well.


Lucy just kind of got stuck playing dress-up. At 7 months old she's definitely not as accommodating as Hippo ... and she sure doesn't sit still as long!

FYI - Yes, the ties do fit cats, I'd go with the toddler size (these are child sized and the neckband works but was made as small as possible). For dogs I'd get the child size tie. If the pet already has a collar the neckband can be taken off and the tie attached directly onto their collar.