Sick Ziggy

Ziggy got beat up pretty badly by something the other day. When she came in Friday night for dinner, she was all sorts of messed up. Her eye, especially, was pretty gross, but she also had bloody spots all over her ear as well... She wasn't acting herself and didn't want to eat. And she wasn't yelling at any of us (very not herself!).

We think it may have been a "Mockingbird" that attacked her, but we're not sure. Ziggy likes to climb trees and there have been a lot of those birds around lately (and they've been making nests). Those birds have been known to be pretty vicious to cats in the past, especially when their nests are threatened, so it seems fairly likely. Also, we interrogated the other cats in the area about the incident and since none of them were scuffed up, we think they're in the clear. If Ziggy had been in a fight with another cat, she would have messed them up too, you know?

We've been trying to treat Ziggy's eye with an antibacterial cat eye ointment that we got. We think it's helping a little. The swelling has gone down and she's no longer pussing green out her eye. We've been trying our best to keep the area clean. It's still very sore-looking and she's still very squinty (as you can see from the pic above) and it's still leaky (but clear fluids now!), but it isn't all swollen and totally nasty any more.

However, her appetite is still down (though she did eat a little more today than she did Friday or Saturday) and she's been very cold. She's also been making a burbling sound and has a very "wet" cough. We weren't sure she was going to make it through the night last night. We've been keeping her inside and have been trying our best to make sure she gets a little water & wet food into her and we even wrapped her in a towel to try to keep her body-heat up.

Our vet is closed on the weekends, so we've been having to wait it out a bit. We're going to call tomorrow and see if they can squeeze her in. They were very helpful when Robert was ill last October. Fortunately, my parents were kind enough to give me an advance on the money I earn from fixing their bathroom (which is looking great, by the way; Ramiro saw it in person for the first time today and was impressed). I just hope it's enough. :( I accept PayPal donations...

Please pray for our baby girl.
Hopefully I'll have happy updates soon.

--Lauren*

Moms & Babies

Hey, Everyone!

We've been seeing Ziggy's Mom around a lot lately. She's looking really good! Actually, she looks the best she ever has. Not having kittens every other week seems to be agreeing with her.We've also seen Robert's Mom hanging around a lot more lately too. Like I said in my last post, her nips are all stretched out, so she's obviously had that last batch of kittens somewhere. Anyway, she's been hanging out a lot lately and she's looking a bit "plump" again. *groan* We're hoping we can catch her and take her to FixNation sometime soon. Anyway, here's a picture of what she looks like. It's from August of last year. Robert's in the picture too, as you can see. He was such a silly kitten.
Robert and Ziggy are both doing well too. We bought them new collars. This is Robert's third collar and Ziggy's second. We were getting them the cheap collars and they kept breaking and getting lost, so we finally shelled out a couple bucks more and got them something a little nicer ($6.99 each). So far, so good. We also got them tags. They have their names on one side and Ramiro & my phone numbers on the other. They look very nice. We had a little trouble with fraying at first because we had to cut the collars to fit (which is what they told us to do at the pet store), but once we lit the ends on fire (OFF of the cats, of course!!!) the fraying stopped. :)They look a bit like a yin-yang when they sleep together, don't they? And Ringo has been doing pretty well too, for the most part. He's been sleeping a little more in this hot weather, but it has also made him a bit more mellow. He's usually a bit grumpy, especially when it comes to Robert (Robert's rambunctious antics tend to bother the old man), but today he let Robert sleep on the bed with him. I wasn't there at the time, but Ramiro took this picture for me to see:And where was I, you ask, when cute cat sleeping things were going on? Well, I was at my parents' house working on their bathroom again. And, while I was there, a lil baby birdie flew into their glass door. Here's a picture of my mom holding him/her:The birdie splatted into the window and then landed right in front of Dorian. Dor-Dor was about to eat him, but Mom was right there and scooped him up. The poor bird was pretty addled, but Mom took care of it until it calmed down and then she let it loose again. It flew away, so I guess it must have been all right.

Anyway, I have to go cook dinner now.

Until next time!

--Lauren*

More Work In Progress

Hey, Everyone!

Those of you who read my last entry know that I've been picking up some food money (in my never-ending search for a "real" job) from my parents by re-doing their bathroom. Well, you lucky lucky people!--I have more pictures of the work in progress:Painting the area directly behind the toilet was really difficult. Also, please forgive my cell phone pictures, yet again. I tried to take some close-ups so you guys could see some of the textures though:A lighter section.A darker section.

I'm nearly finished painting the green parts of the bathroom. I just have to do the rest of the ceiling. I need to get more paints before I can do that. So, in the meantime, I've moved on to re-doing the pink cupboards/borders. My mom wants them to be white/wood with just "a little of the old pink to tie in the knobs & tile."
Here's what I've got so far:I've been using a razor to scrape off layers and layers of paint. There's the pink layer, a white layer, another pink, a cream... The pink areas in the bathroom are all very "thick." I think that my parents cupboards & drawers will probably close a bit better than they used to now that I'm stripping away all those layers.
While I'm working, I also get visitors coming in and out (mostly for their water bowl):Wolfgang and, of course:My darling Dorian.

Also, my pet rose-knee tarantula, Sabu, shed his/her skin the other day. He/she is still too young for me to sex (I'm sure a professional could, but I'm still unsure. I have my best educated guess...). I had to leave Sabu behind when I abruptly moved last December and so my mom's been taking care of him/her for me. She was very surprised/worried when she saw him/her shedding. haha. But doesn't he/she look gorgeous now???
Sabu is my second tarantula. I had a female rose-hair tarantula named Harriet when I was 5 years old until I was out of high school. She was nearly fully grown when I got her.

ON THE HOME FRONT

Back at home, things have been going fairly well. Ramiro and I are fine (knock wood!) and so are the cats. Robert's mom finally showed up again. Her nipples are all stretched out, so we know she had the kittens somewhere but we don't know where. We'll have to restart our efforts to capture her for neutering.

Lately, Ringo spends most of his time looking out the window (for hours!!) at the birds flying around outside. Ziggy was sick the other day when it was extra hot & gross, but has been just fine ever since. She's been alternating between running around & yelling at us and taking naps. And Robert has been enjoying coming in from the heat to get lots of loving and enjoy the air-conditioning.Unfortunately, the cats aren't the only "critters" who like to come in out of the heat...
Eww.

Oh, summertime...

Until next time.

--Lauren*

During...

Hey, Everyone!

Those of you who follow my Twitter know that I've been re-painting my parents' bathroom. And that I promised pics!

For those of you who just tuned in, I still have no job. My parents were nice enough to offer to pay me to paint their bathroom. So, for about 2 days a week for the past couple weeks, I've been painting their bathroom 4 different shades of green (my mom had done a small patch, trying to start this project, a couple years ago). These are the tools I've been using:I've been painting the walls with Liquitex paint. Due to the nature of acrylic paint, and also due to the bathroom being a hot box in the warmer weather, the paints dry very quickly, so I have to apply the paint in extremely small patches (which is part of why I'm using an itty-bitty half-inch brush instead of a "real" paintbrush for painting rooms). My process pretty much goes like this:

1. I apply a smallish area with paint, darker in the center and then fanning out lighter (so that the next green applied will have a little of this green underneath it).
2. I take a paper towel and blot most of the paint back off before it dries completely, and also make it look "cool." The paper towels, depending on how you do it, leave some fun textures.
   
3. I take the paper towel that I just blotted with, and use it to "stipple" paint onto other areas of green so that they too have that green in them. So they all sort of "blend."
4. Repeat

Here are some pictures of my work in progress:I'm going to have to redo parts of this wall, this was before I started to get my stride. This next picture is more what it's really going to look like:Please forgive my cell-phone pictures. You can't really see all the fun textures... I'm hoping that when the room is done I can get someone with a "real" camera to take some glamour shots for me.

I'm also going to be redoing the cupboards & borders in some way. They're pink right now and that doesn't really go with the green too well. My mom was thinking that maybe white with some of the wood showing through might look good.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a paint sealant?

In other news, here's Ringo playing in a paper bag:Until next time!

--Lauren*