Nice weekend

We really enjoyed the weekend.  Janet and Mike came by on Saturday and Janet and I went furniture shopping (always great fun) while Mark and Mike hung out.  Mark made potato salad and got the chicken marinated and ready to grill when Janet and I showed back up.

Then Saturday evening, after Janet and Mike headed out to feed their horses, I spent the evening filling up feed containers for ours.  I like to measure out what they need to eat at each meal into containers so that if anything happens, someone else can feed them for me and I know they'll each get the right food and the right supplements.  But filling 20-some containers for each horse is quite a project.  We decided to go get one of those heavy duty metal shelving units about 18" deep, 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall on big commercial wheels to use to prepare the feed containers and then to store them on.  We figure we'll need it later in our own barn, so why not get it now and simplify our life at Al's place in the meantime. 

So today, I got busy running all the errands I've been putting off for who-knows-how-long.  I returned library books and picked up new CD books.  (I'm pretty much unable to drive ANYWHERE anymore without listening to a book on tape ... er, CD.)  Then I went over to Sam's and picked up that shelving unit for the barn, a wireless mouse for Dad's laptop, some of those 7-year lights for the recessed fixtures upstairs . .. oh, and lots of "junk food" for the flight to Ohio.  I don't know what it is about flying, but I absolutely MUST have candy, cookies, chips and trail mix to take along.  Oh - and those Crystal Light flavoring packets you dump in water.  So I picked up all that stuff and I'm all set now -- except for packing my clothes, of course.  But first things first.  Junk food, THEN clothes.

I've been doing laundry in between all the other stuff since Friday evening.  I've only got some dog blankets yet to go.  Speaking of which -- about 5 AM Saturday morning I thought I heard someone knock over the dogs' 5-gallon water container on the porch, but it turned out to be Niki.  The poor thing threw up an absolute gusher all over her blankets, the floor and herself in her sleep!  I've been giving her the Deramaxx when I give her her evening meal.  I thought as long as she ate immediately it would be fine.  But now I'm going to try giving her the food FIRST, then after a few minutes, the pill.  And I'm going to split it up and give her one in the AM and one at night.  If she still throws up, I guess we'll have to rethink her meds.  I hope that works, though, because she is obviously in much less pain already.  

She's been so much more active since she started taking the stuff.  Unfortunately, that means she has also injured her tail again.  She keeps banging it against things - something she wasn't doing when she didn't feel well and was staying in her bed.  But now that she's back to wagging it all the time, I guess I'm going to have to call Craig and schedule an amputation after all.   The poor thing can't even come inside right now because if she walks along a wall or the cabinets she leaves a blood trail right down the wall or doors.   And in fact even if she doesn't actually touch anything, as she wags the tail, blood drops fly everywhere.  I have to believe that sooner or later if we don't do something it's bound to get infected.  Poor Nik.

Of course for the last couple hours I've been up here in the office with the door shut because Li'l Guy has managed to catch TWO mice downstairs and I can't get him to take them outside or even to just go ahead and EAT them!  Oh, no . . . he INSISTS on playing with them.  Unfortunately, they manage to get away from him for a while sometimes when he does that, so I decided to come up here and just HOPE he manages to catch up with both of them again by the time I have to go back downstairs. 

Here he is trying to recapture one who managed to get away and run under the pedestal of the dining room table.

I'm telling you, for such a small cat who is declawed in front, he is one HECK of a mouser!

I always like to stay out of his way when he's after a mouse, actually.  Not long after we got him I was sick and had stayed home in bed.  The cats had a cat door at the time and could come and go at will.  Li'l Guy used to sleep either on my chest or on my pillow so I didn't think anything about it when I felt him climb up on top of me.  But when I opened my eyes, he was sitting there on my chest with a LIVE mouse wiggling in his mouth!  I just about came UNGLUED!   Like I said . . . NOW I stay out of his way when he hunts in case he once again feels the need to display his prowess.