A Night For Bells to Ring

Free Church Unitarian, a drawing by Hal Logan

This past Sunday night was our church's Christmas program & concert.  The whole nine yards - the choir has been working for months on special music, our Religious Education director had been rehearsing with the children their Shadow Puppet show, and our new minister, Rev. Marcia Stanard had prepared some wonderful readings. 

It was truly "A Night For Bells to Ring". (one of the songs the choir had practiced for so long, made a wonderful title for the program, don't you think?)

Then the unimaginable tragedy in Newtown, CT happened on Friday morning.  How could anyone celebrate when so many were grieving? 

So we allowed as how bells ring for sadness too -and remembered the victims by lighting 26 candles,  and went on with our service.  It was a nice evening and our choir? We did a great job for 10 voices. 

And in the back of our minds, we all wondered, why? 

In a dither

Hello Evefurry body -

Mummy is in a dither tonight because Georgie hasn't been around since last night.  He didn't come in for breakfast this morning and not for dinner tonight either.

There has also been this awful orange kitty who has come in to our house and made it stinky!  I hope he didn't chase George away!!

Mummy walked around for a long time tonight calling and whistling for him, but he has not showed up.

She is furry worried, and I am too,

Now it is raining out. I hope he comes home soon. 

Gracie

UPDATE - Mummy here - I went out and shook the treat can and called some more after I posted this and he came bounding up the back steps with a look on his face like, "I was just out huntin' - get a life Mom..."  Whew - good to have my little furry friend back home. 

We light a candle for our friend Al

It is a bitter sweet weekend here at the farm - we welcome new life and say good bye to our good friend and neighbor, Al..











This picture was taken in June 2007 at his 60th birthday party

A life cut way too short by the big C.

Rest in peace Al.

Fly Away Home

'Bye sweet girl - say hi to Jaxom & Neelix for us.

Thank you to everyone for your kind words of solace.

I can't believe how quiet and empty it is without her.

Oh, dear......

Sinda here - I haven't been feeling particularly well lately - so Mom stuffed me in the PTU (Prisoner Transport Unit) on Thursday and took me to see Dr. Perry.

"Mom" here - Sinda wouldn't eat ANYTHING I put out - stuff she has been eating for years - chicken baby food, which she loves - she just turned kind of queezy looking and walked away - then I realized that she wasn't drinking very much water either - and had gotten very dehydrated (which kind of caught me by surprise because I watched her so closely all summer to make sure that didn't happen) - yes, you who've been here before know that her kidney's are failing.

Todd said that when animals get dehydrated, they sense of smell and taste goes off and everything makes them queasy, in turn they don't eat and get worse. He suggested that they do a Sub-Q re - hydration - actually, that they do two - so I left my baby girl at the V.E.T.'s office and "with a heavy heart", went to work - They did blood tests before and after the re-hydration and the numbers changed so much that he was really encouraged - and when I got her home, after first using the kitty box, she acted very hungry - so I made up some ocean whitefish with tuna and she chowed down. same Friday and Saturday she ate some chicken & gravy - so I was encouraged - but today again, she won't eat and doesn't seem to be drinking much water either -

She's 21 1/2 years old - I can learn to do the sub-Q hydration - but will she stand for that every three days? I practically have to call out the National Guard to give her a pill -

My heart and mind are not on the same page with this - I thought I was prepared, but apparently not.....

Summer is back

Well, we are back to summer - the mosquitoes are so big they cast shadows on the wall and although it is no where near the heat that some have been having, it's too hot for me. It was, at least, blissfully cool this past weekend for the fair. And as I watched the raindrops fall onto the pond on Saturday morning after we buried Neelix, I could only think that Mother Nature was as sad as we were -

I will be posting some pictures and stories about our fair adventures in a couple of days. It doesn't seem appropriate just right now. And, I need to take a little break - It is still so hard - coming home from work, there was no fluffy buddy to meet me at the gate - when I went thru the cat food aisle at the grocery store tonight I got this wave of sadness - I had to do some deep breathing in order not to make a spectacle of myself!

We've had over 250 visitors in the last couple of days. The kind words from everyone who left comments are so appreciated and comforting. There is much sadness in The Cat Blogosphere right now as several kitties have crossed over the bridge recently and Monty Q's "bean sprout" Violette died as a result of a fall. As sad as we are over losing Neelix, I cannot help but think that the pain of losing such a sweet child would be incapacatingly immense...

Take care, all. T.