Ophelia Harper Kingsbury ~ 1998 – February 26, 2013
Goodbye, my sweet.
Ophy
Category Archives: Cats Dogs Plants Animals
Ah, vacation…
We had a great vacation – relaxing, refreshing, and fun. Here are a few highlights:
Ophy
Ophy, my furry soulmate and Jim’s feline best friend, isn’t feeling so well these days. We’re pretty worried about her, so please keep your fingers (and paws) crossed that she gets better. 🙁
Man in the Moon
Last Sunday, to assuage my guilt at wasting time watching the Olympics, I decided to multitask and make a necklace while observing other people being active (which always makes me feel woefully chubby and out of shape). The necklace is one I’ve been wanting to make for a long time – not a design of my own, but a combination of two projects (handmade chain and a single earring, used as a pendant) from Jodi Bombadier’s book Weave, Wrap, Coil.
I LOVE this necklace, and I’ve been wearing it all week. It’s just so bright and shiny, and looks great with a scoop neck black shirt. I had dinner with my dad last night, and showed it off to him. As he examined it, he kindly remarked that it looked professionally done (aw, gee, shucks), and then asked me if it was the Man in the Moon. What an absolutely perfect name. I love it.
I’ve put a photo of my new favorite Man in the Moon necklace below, as well as some photos that transferred from my camera to my computer automatically when I retrieved the necklace photo. Not being much of a photo bug, there are some old-new photos that I just rediscovered, and I included three of my favorites below: two of the Concord Independent Battery horses in the Patriots’ Day parade – look carefully at the brown horse; a photo of my sweet little Ophy cat, who currently isn’t feeling too great – hopefully she’ll get better soon; and a picture of the sun lighting up one of our glass doorknobs.
Cats
There’s no better feeling than to shuffle out of bed in the morning into the kitchen, only to be greeted by feline adoration. Ophy looks anxiously through the French door, pawing impatiently at the door as I walk towards and through it, then wraps herself around my ankles while purring like crazy. Pippa stands on top of the cat perch, chirping her morning greeting to me while leaning out as far as she can, bobbing up and down to get a head rub. Then a big >thunk< as Pippa hits the floor and runs towards me so that I can give equal attention to both madly purring cats.
Like I said, a pretty great way to start each day.
Resident Rodent
Though we’ve always had mice living in the attic and basement of our one-story home, there has only been one mouse dumb enough to venture into the living space – and a younger Pippa quickly and proudly killed that mouse. Until two weeks ago, when the world’s dumbest mouse moved in to cohabit with us and our two cats. At least, I thought the mouse was the world’s dumbest when he first showed himself, running around fully exposed and unprotected in our dining room as Ophy chased him with what looked like bloodlust in her eyes. But we soon learned that Ophy doesn’t have the faintest idea how to kill a mouse, and frequently loses sight of the mouse when she’s tracking him. If the mouse pops behind the living room door for a second, Ophy will spend a half hour back there trying to find him again, while the mouse has moved on to safety in other parts of our house. Then there was the classic moment of the mouse sitting in the middle our porch, munching happily on Ophy’s regurgitated kibble breakfast while Ophy sat a foot away watching him.
And Pippa? Well, at age fifteen-ish, Pippa has looked me directly in the eyes and communicated via her best cat Jedi mental telepathy the following statement, “Look, Abby, I know you’d like me to catch that mouse, but, honey, I’m old, I’ve done a lot of hunting in my day, and right now I’m really enjoying sitting in your lap doing nothing. I’m retired. Deal with it.” One doesn’t argue with Pippa.
So we’ve been living with this damn mouse in our living area for two weeks. We can’t put out mouse traps anywhere the cats go, because we know what would happen if we did. And I worry that if we put a mouse trap in our very small bedroom, one of us is going to walk right into it with a bare toe in the middle of the night.
Part of me thinks that I should be the Creative Children’s Librarian and turn this situation into the next great piece of juvenile fiction. Maybe Ophy and Pippa could become allies with Fred the mouse and together the three of them will defeat the evil beagle next door named Bridget. Or maybe the mouse works his clever rodent magic to trick, fool, and otherwise confound those two lazy house cats. Or maybe the two cats, formerly rather antagonistic roommates, will bond and become best friends as they work out a plan to catch the mouse that is so annoying their beloved people. Or maybe the two people of the house will go completely stir crazy from the stress of worrying about the stupid rodent running over their bed in the middle of the night, be hauled away by the folks from the insane asylum, and the cats and the mouse will glory in their new-found independence and hold a huge and raucous party, with lots of catnip and cheese. Wait, that might be the young adult novel version of the story…
Pippa
The vet came by yesterday for another check of Pippa, our fifteen-ish year old tuxedo cat. At her annual exam in February, Dr. Reiner told us that Pippa now has old-age kidney problems, and gave us a prescription to try the special kidney health food made by Science Diet. We filled the prescription, presented it to Pippa with fanfare, and…Pippa does NOT like the food. The least picky cat in the world has decided to be picky about the food that could keep her healthy. In the month and a half since we started her on the food, she’s lost weight and developed an even shabbier looking coat and skin than she had before, and she’s become a heat-seeker, lying on the hot air vents if the woodstove isn’t running.
So yesterday Dr. Reiner examined Pippa to see if she had an abdominal tumor (thankfully she does not), and also examined Ophy to see if she could get a urine sample to try to solve the mystery of why Ophy is pulling out the glorious long fur at the base of her tail (but she couldn’t feel Ophy’s bladder through the layer of fat that Ophy has put on from eating Pippa’s uneaten food). Jim was at home yesterday with Dr. Reiner, and he called me on my lunch break to let me talk to her. I pussy-footed around asking what I wanted to know, which is: how much longer do we have with Pippa? And of course there’s no real answer to that question.
But it’s clear that Pippa’s time is short now. Dr. Reiner told us to put Pippa back on regular food, since she’s obviously on hunger strike because she doesn’t like the kidney food. And we need to be sure that Pippa is getting enough water, which at the moment she does on her own, but in the future we may need to give her fluids under her skin (not quite sure how that would work). I asked Dr. Reiner what we should look for as signs that it was time to call her back in again to, um, see Pippa; the signs are vomiting, weight loss, and something else that I promptly forgot.
My goal these days is to have as much quality time with Pippa as possible. I spend time every morning brushing her, since she doesn’t groom herself as well anymore, and she loves that. And then we play together, sometimes twice a day, and for our short play sessions she’s as frisky as a kitten (until she gets tired, but she is an old lady now). And until spring hits, the woodstove will be cranked so that Pippa can enjoy her favorite spot on the ottoman by the stove. And, of course, my lap is always available for snuggling and ear scratching when I’m home.
It’s all about making Pippa’s last days as enjoyable and as full of love as possible, and also ensuring that Pippa’s exit from this world is full of grace and dignity. When life becomes too much for her, when her body decides that it can’t keep things going anymore, then we’ll call Dr. Reiner and have Pippa put to sleep at home with all the love and tenderness that this former street cat from Maynard who fed her six kittens out of a dumpster deserves. She’s a good kitty, and we love her.
Spring!
The snow has finally receded, and the crocus are enjoying the sun:
Thank goodness for spring, especially after this winter…
My new word
Jim and I played Scrabble tonight – and I had a lousy combo of letters. Towards the end of the game, I was getting frustrated, and decided to see if I could get away with adding an “t” to an existing word, to create this word (and yes, I presented the definition with the word):
Mewt adj (myut): a cat that cannot meow
Strangely enough, Jim wouldn’t accept the word. But he did laugh. The cats, however, were not amused.
Week in review
It was a crazy busy week (my favorite kind), with lots of attendees at the three infant storytimes, some book ordering, the first fall meeting of the Teen Book Group, and a bit of light at the end of my work tunnel.
Attendance at the infant storytime (for which I use the Mother Goose on the Loose curriculum) continues to be very strong, which makes me happy. I love seeing my old friends who are growing up (some have even graduated to the Storytime for 2’s & 3’s) and also meeting all of the new friends who have found the storytime. On Tuesday we smashed a record: the youngest storytime attendee EVER! This baby girl, younger sibling to two storytime regulars, came for her first storytime at the tender age of five days old. That’s right, five days old. She is very, very cute, and her older siblings are sweet as ever and seem to be handling their new sister with great grace.
On Monday, we began the day with a sad note, as Susan and I arrived in the morning to find a dead bird lying on the ground next to the front door of the library. Joanne, our in-house intrepid animal patrol person (Joanne has NO fear – she blows me away with her fearlessness) wasn’t due in until the afternoon, so Susan and I looked at each other, and I said that I would take care of the bird. Using a snow shovel and a guide for voters, I scooped the bird up and placed it in the garden area behind the stone benches. It was a very, very pretty little bird, and not a species that I recognized. When Joanne came in for work later, we told her about the bird, and I took her out to see it. She thought it was a type of thrush, and ended up taking the bird’s body home to identify it. Turns out it was a Swainson’s Thrush, which Joanne told me are currently migrating. We figure it hit one of the large windows and died upon impact. Very sad, but what a pretty little bird.
On Tuesday, the Teen Book Group met, minus several members who had field hockey or soccer games, and discussed a book I chose for them, Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. Though it is a good book, it’s not a great book, and only one of the teens finished reading it (the rest of them read about half of the book). But there was a little bit of method in my madness of choosing this book: I had just read the book for my own edification, and decided I’d give myself a bit of a break by choosing a book to discuss that I’d actually already read; and, more importantly, I was hoping to inspire the teens to come up with some book suggestions of their own. My earlier email pleas for book suggestions had disappeared into the ether, with no response, so I figured that if I chose a fairly good book for the October meeting, but not a great book, that the teens would decide to help me out with some titles of books that they actually want to read and discuss. The trick was that the book had to be good enough to get them to come to the meeting, but not good enough for them to trust me to choose the books for the rest of the year. Sneaky, huh? It worked, too – we have enough book suggestions to last us through the summer. But I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading Mortal Engines, because it is a good read, best for a more mature reader (translation: adults will like this book more than teens) and for someone who really likes science fiction and is willing to try out a bit of steampunk.
The week was also successful in other ways, as I work to get caught up after being out for those many days. The Cultural Council grant application is finished, a bunch of books have made their way down to Susan for processing, and an order for new books has been placed. My desk is as clean as it gets, storytimes are planned out for the next four weeks, my first class visit has been scheduled, and the feeling of panic has subsided down to the usual stressed-but-ok feeling. Phew. And now, with a long weekend ahead, I’m planning to make some feltboard stories…and to enjoy the gorgeous weather that has finally arrived.