Bill Roper's Journal

Gretchen noticed the other day that the kibble in the bowl for Sunshine the Cat looked a bit larger than it should. Further investigation showed that the pitcher of cat food had been inaccurately filled with dog food, which explains why Sunshine has been looking grumpy.

This was fixed yesterday. The dog food was consigned to Ruby the Dog who was happy to consume it, Sunshine's bowl and pitcher now contain cat food, and Sunshine still looks grumpy.

On the other hand, I just woke her up.

Gretchen suggested that I should mention that it is two years since Sunshine came to live with us, as she does not get talked about nearly as much as Ruby the Dog. Sunshine has gotten used to the dog -- not *thrilled* about the dog, mind you, but we've arrived at peaceful coexistence. (Except for Ruby's occasional tendency to scarf down Sunshine's food when we aren't looking. Sunshine does not care for that *at all*.)

And Sunshine is more Julie's cat than anyone else's. She is usually found in the morning sleeping near Julie, sometimes on her chest. And that's a good thing too.

So this fellow was driving along and saw a kitten looking lost by the side of the road. After a bit of thought, he decided that he really needed to turn around and go rescue the kitty.

And then there was a happy, if chaotic, ending. So it's safe to click on the link below:

The rest of the story...

As long as I'm clearing things off the queue, Gary asked about how Sunshine the Cat is doing, so let's cover the feline half of the animal population of the household today.

Sunshine is doing well. She has settled into the household, although she is still wary of Ruby the Dog, so she spends very little time in the family room. Since this is where Gretchen and I usually are in the early evening, we don't see much of her until we go up to watch a bit of TV in the bedroom before going to bed. At that time, Sunshine leaps upon the bed and demands that her head be scritched and her chin chucked. This is the chin-chuckingest cat I have ever had, but it makes her happy and only takes one hand, so we can make this work. :)

When downstairs, Sunshine is most often found in the living room, which is where Julie has been hanging out. She also hangs out in Julie's bedroom upstairs.

A week or so ago, everyone else was out of the house except me. Sunshine the Cat was in the hallway just outside of Julie's bedroom door; Ruby the Dog was in the hallway between me and Sunshine. No actual attempts at investigation or combat were observed.

This is good.

Sunshine now comes upstairs to visit us in the evening on a pretty regular basis. If we close the door of the bedroom when we go to bed, we will frequently hear a cat batting at it in the middle of the night.

This is encouraging.

We still need to move her litterbox and food upstairs, but the task keeps ending up at the bottom of the list every weekend. Maybe *next* weekend...

Collected bits and pieces from a lazy Boxing Day:

Sunshine came up to join us in bed last night while we watched TV. This got her a lot of head scritches, which seemed to make her happy. She headed out before we went to sleep, but this is progress. (Not the first time that she's joined us upstairs briefly, but she seemed a good bit less nervous this time.)

Julie wanted chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, so Gretchen ran out to get drinks while I picked up the pancakes at Gail's. When she returned, I discovered that Julie's hot chocolate was a coffee with eight cream and eight sugar. We swapped it out for the correct drink after Gretchen and I went out for lunch and dropped off a box of clothing at Goodwill.

I assembled the new, sturdier (and thoroughly non-portable) music stand that I got for Christmas. I expect this one will not be prone to falling over.

We made pecan sandies this afternoon, which meant that I needed to locate the powdered sugar for the recipe. I cleaned out the cabinet that contained it and we are *still* throwing out various expired foodstuffs found within. Some of them are waiting on the counter for further inspection -- otherwise known as "How does this smell and/or taste?"

K requested pizza for dinner, so we ordered carryout and will work on Christmas leftovers tomorrow.

There is plenty that needs to be done still, but a relative day off was clearly in order. :)

We continue to work on introducing Sunshine to Ruby. This is a slow process, because Sunshine looks at the big dog (even outside the back door) and wonders what the heck is going on here.

But Ruby has gone to her kennel for the evening, so we have opened the door to the library to let Sunshine explore. She has come to join us upstairs and has wandered through my office to see what I'm doing.

In other news, remember my vacation? Got to about 4 PM this afternoon before Slack started going off in urgent fashion...

Thanks for all the lovely anniversary wishes. It was a good day.

The weather forecast today being good, I've tried moving Buddy's litter pan outside in the hope that it might help him find his way home. We'll see how this works. Fingers crossed.

It's been a while since I've given everyone an update on Skeezix/Buddy, so here we go:

He is no longer confined to the library for most of the time. In fact, he has moved upstairs, while Ruby the Dog spends most of her time downstairs, which Buddy finds to be an admirable arrangement. He still does not like the dog and will growl and defend his territory. Ruby finds this perplexing, as she would rather be a friend at this point, but we will take the progress.

The litter box has been moved into the hallway and sits in the kneehole of the desk there. This keeps it from being an attractive centerpiece in any room while giving Buddy full access to it, which improves the chances of it actually being used. That had started to be a problem when it was in the library downstairs, as Buddy didn't always want to take a chance on encountering Ruby. Not a problem now.

Meanwhile, the girls were off at a sleepover last night, so we left the bedroom door open so Buddy could come in. He did. This was not our best idea, as his idea of fun was to jump onto the bed in the middle of the night and attack feet. We will probably not repeat this particular experiment. :)

But things are much mellower in Buddy's life and that is a good thing.

As part of our continuing effort to convince Skeezix (or maybe "Buddy", which is starting to look like a suitable name for the kitty) that he would like to learn to tolerate the dog as the price of joining the rest of the family, we took advantage of the good weather today. Gretchen took Ruby the Dog out to the back yard and spent some substantial time throwing the ball, while we opened the door to the library and let the cat walk out and explore.

It did not take long for the cat to find the stairs and come up to see what was up here. Then he vanished into Julie's room. Then he just vanished.

Eventually, this became a problem, because Gretchen *really* needed to come in, but the cat could not be found and we didn't really want to abandon Ruby outside. But necessity is a mother (or something like that), so Ruby was locked in her kennel until Skeezix/Buddy decided to wander back out of Julie's room where he could be corralled and returned to the library.

He is a *very* sweet kitty.

So far, so good.

(And we are looking for a pet gate for the library door.)