Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Right, then, spring. Verging on summer. Household update.

Can I blame the weather? Yesterday it was 77. This morning I removed a tick from my belly (how it managed to find a vein through all the fat....). The crocus are in bloom, although it cannot be for long. Peepers are peeping.

My bees did not make it through the winter. The past week I have been watching (and feeding) a bunch of honeybees going in and out of the hive, but it turns out that they were from somewhere else. The week of Hope and Belief have been very useful for rekindling my interest, which is either a good thing, since I have the infrastructure or a bad thing, because bees are at least as expensive a hobby as beads.

I have just tried to kill a tea-leaf. I hate ticks.

In cats and other housemates: Barb has moved into a condo she and Doug hope will one day be their home (it's in Connecticut, but he has not found a job nearby, so he is still here. I do not want him to leave, as a friend around and a thoughtful, hardworking housemate, as well as a tenant who pays rent are all things difficult to replace). Doug is moving a piece of furniture at a time. But in February he moved Mal and Wash, the former kittens whose sugar-daddy he has been since we got them. They seem to be doing well, not making Barb's life too much of a living hell despite not going outside. A week after they left here, there was an ad

(Interrogated mole on my arm. It looked like a terrorist tick.)

an ad, I was saying, about a brother and sister pair of cats whose previous staff had moved to Australia. The day I read the flyer was the day before the cats had an appointment with a shelter.  The person who put up the flyer did not want them to be separated. I caved. Now I have four cats, Marten and Willow , who have been here awhile, and Arthur and Sheba , who look a bit like I hired them to play Marten and Willow. Everyone is tabby. The males are swirly. If Arthur lost about seven pounds (the women who was fostering them said he had been even fatter) he would have lighter bones than Marten, but as it is he's just huge and makes Marten look svelte. The females are more evenly-marked, but where Willow looks like a Chinese demon (puggy, short, compact body, tense and hostile -- it's cold out there for a demon),



 Sheba looks like she had parents with money. She's quite lovely, and her fur is soft.



She also talks a lot and screams bloody murder (much louder than "I'm bein' oppressed") at times when Marten is NOT thinking about beating her up. Though he often is, and someone has bitten Arthur hard on one hip. We are hoping it will just heal up.

These are very nice cats, although not kittens, and the blended-family stress has been noticeable.