The Chronicles of Nani - Emotional Support Pets

 I've been looking forward to finishing and posting this one for a while!

There is a difference between assistance animals and therapy pets. This week we're talking about emotional support pets, therapy pets. If you have a chronic illness, or if you're recovering from an illness or injury, your pets can be the comfort you need to recover or make it another day. Even if you're not dealing with an illness or something you're recovering from, if it's just been a bad day or a frustrating day, if you're just sad about something that's happened, your pets, furry, feathered, scaled or swimming, can calm you and make everything okay. Pets give love unconditionally and all they really want is to make you feel good.

Angel and Devil Break

Another fun week in Blogland is drawing to a close. I’ve gotten pretty good with checking in, even just for a meme and a moment, daily. I wanted to do that for a while and I hope I can keep it up when my house project is done. We won’t have to worry about that for a while. But scrapping and blogging do a great job of getting me a good rest when I need it during the day and keeping me away from food! The exception being that the fruit basket and my laptop share space in the dining room. But the fruit is a good thing! Better than overdosing on M&Ms!

Right now I’m taking a rest between jobs for the day and the big bag of pretzel M&Ms and my last Ambrosia apple are fighting for my attention. The M&Ms are on my right and the apple is on my left which is totally skewed from the classic devil/angel scenario. I didn’t have milk stuff at breakfast because I cooked hot breakfast, eggs and sausage. I should probably have yogurt. I don’t have enough shoulders!

I decided last night that since I’m just stronger and more coordinated in the beginning of the day, I’d assemble the bookshelf during the day. It’s never going to be upright before it’s finished (I assembled the other one just like it upstairs a few years ago) I could sit on the floor and assemble it. That’s what I’m doing next. David said to assemble what I can and he’ll finish it when he gets home tonight. I hope all he’ll have to do is upright it and put it in the annex. We’ll see how much I can finish before another break-time!

Before I get working on the bookshelf, I want to do this week’s Friday Fill-Ins.


Follow Friday Four Fill-Ins




Every Friday, Hilary at Feeling Beachie posts four fill-in statements. It’s fun to read everyone’s answers and see how different they all are! I copy the statements and answer before I read Hilary’s. It’s not a meme that requires lots of time to participate and it’s fun! Stop on over and join in!

This week’s statements:
1. Nothing is better than.____
2. I ___my ___ in ___but never ____
3. Those _____ that are always _____ make me want to ___________
4. My favorite _________________ is when __________________________.

1.. Nothing is better than the feeling of accomplishment when a project is complete.


 2. I love my furry slippers in the morning but never find they’re quite warm enough at night. :(

 

3. Those Humane Society commercials that are always so sad make me want to adopt about 6 more cats! Scotty already refers to David and me as “That couple with the cats” because we had four at one time. We had all four cats for a while at each of our houses, but never as a permanent residence. Three has been, and is planned on being again, the highest number actually living with us.

4. My favorite coffee time is when I meet friends for coffee and we have no plans for after.

Photoblog Wednesday

Grandma

This is the earliest picture of Grandma I’ve found, so far, in the treasure box of old photos from her garage. I’m guessing it would be maybe Spring or summer of 1926. She looks to be around a year, non?


Photoblog extended

Notice the tabby cat Grandma is holding in the photo. I have another, blurrier, picture of Grandma standing up holding that cat. She’s a little older and the cat is too. In that photo, the cat looks to be around 3-6 months. I’m comparing to photos of Kaline here. In the blurrier one, the kitty is almost as tall as Grandma is, and very tolerant of being girl-handled by a toddler!

I only knew Grandma to have one pet, Aunt Brandy. They had parakeets while Mom was growing up, but a parakeet isn’t a pet in the same way that a dog or cat is. Birds don’t cuddle!

Aunt Brandy was a toy poodle. Grandma and Papa had a very good friend who was Aunt Brandy’s Mom and who spoiled Aunt Brandy like crazy. When she passed away Grandma and Papa adopted her dog. I should mention that Aunt Brandy was “Aunt” to me, not them. They called her Brandy! When Mom started referring to her as “my furry sister,” I started calling her “Aunt.”

Grandma and Papa adapted their travelling style to include frequent stops and finding pet-friendly hotels. When they came to visit, Aunt Brandy was always in tow. She and our collie, Missy, got along well.

I remember when Aunt Brandy met my cat, Ritchie, for the first time. Ritchie seemed to like dogs, but dislike other cats. I imagined that because he was a runt, the scar on his ear when I found him may very well have been from a scuffle with another cat. If the dogs in the alley around Noni’s house were kind to him, or even just left him alone, that would explain it. The only dogs he knew were the big dogs from the alley and his full-grown collie sister at home. Then he was introduced to Aunt Brandy, a dog he stood nose to nose with. He just sniffed her all over with the oddest look, like he’d never seen a cat-sized dog before. It was a source of giggles for everyone!

When Aunt Brandy died, she was cremated. Grandma said she didn’t want another pet because they traveled too much. Grandma and Papa kept her urn until 1994, when Papa passed. Aunt Brandy’s remains were buried with Papa.

When we were cleaning up at Grandma’s house, Rina saw a painting of a dog in the bedroom and started thinking of dog-fans that might want it because it was a pretty painting. I stopped her there, “No, I want that one.” Rina was surprised because I’m a cat-person! I had to explain to her that it wasn’t just a dog painting, I knew that dog.

Seeing the very young pictures of Grandma with the tabby explains a lot, though. Grandma started the habit of Christmas gifts for pets when we got “Inky,” which was what she called Ritchie because he was “black as ink,” save for a few single white hairs on his chest. There were treats for Missy from Grandma too, but it started when we got Ritchie. We have kitty afghans. Grandma made one for Azzie when she starts crocheting again and she started making Kaline’s as soon as she saw Kaline’s picture on my blog!

When she came to visit us, Grandma always put extra milk in her breakfast cereal. Azzie would lay on the couch next to her while she ate breakfast and she saved a couple spoons of milk in her bowl that she put on her lap and Azzie would sit on her lap and drink. She definitely fawned over Kaline when she first met her too!

Growing up, we had three different dogs. When we first moved to the suburbs, we had Mesa, a German Shepherd/Toy Collie mix, then Gent (Regentitano), a purebred English Pointer, and then Missy (Melissa Mesa of Meadowbrook), our papered Collie. But my first pet was Chinker, the cat who knew just how far to stay away that she could watch the baby without getting grabbed by the baby in the playpen, but Chinker did watch and protect me! I don’t recall being told the whole story in detail, but Chinker was gone before we left Detroit. Dave was a baby when we moved and I think he never knew Chinker, his first pet was Mesa. He’s a dog-person, I’m a cat-person. Hmm…

You may get over your first crush and move on to find happiness and love with another, but that first pet will shape your admiration of the domestic animal world forever!

International Furbaby Weekend

It’s snowing. It’s been snowing all day. I’ll repeat that last part with the correct emphasis; ALL DAY!

::sigh:: I am sick to death of all of this snow. I mean, it’s the end of February. Opening Day is less than six weeks away! Curse the Ground Hog! Note to Buckeye Chuck and all his furry buds – USE YOUR TEETH! When your slumber is disturbed on as chilly morning because the sunlight is shining in your eyes and you see a hand reaching to grab you BITE IT! You go back to sleep without seeing your shadow and we all do a happy dance because spring is coming sooner rather than later. To allow yourself to be pulled out of bed to see your shadow when God gave you teeth to fend off the intruders is just a flagrant abuse of power.

Actually, this year it would have been kinder to bite that hand and send the shadow to Vancouver so they wouldn’t have had slush issues during the beginning of the Olympics. Selfish ground hogs.


But this blog entry is not to grouse about the ground hogs. As an optimist, I may hate the snow that’s been taunting me all day, but it’s keeping the people who clean the snow employed. Food delivery services make more when the weather is icky too and the drivers get tipped better when it’s a snowy day. I will remind the delivery people to drive safer in the bad weather and to the people ordering - tip like you didn't want to go our and drive in it!

But this blog is about an important holiday weekend! This weekend is International Furbaby Weekend! It’s a holiday I just created to get over the snowy day blues. This holiday is all about showing off your Furkids! In honor of the holiday weekend, I want you to leave a comment telling us about your furbaby, linking to pictures of your four-legged domestic companions or to your blog post about your pets and this holiday!

Here are our kids. I just did a page for each of them for my 2010 scrapbook with recent photos, so it works to be just in time for the Holiday!

Baggle is our senior cat, the retired alpha who retains his rule at the food bowl!

Credits: Papers from Black and White Birthday by Kris Myers,
other elements from Lily May by Kitty Cat Designs,
Red Gel Alpha by Marie at freedigitalscrapbooking

Kaline is the Queen. She’s kind to Baggle in letting him remain “Lord of the Food” and kind to Carla too, most of the time.

Credits: Papers – Creamsicle by Wenchd Grafix ,
Elements from Flowers Blooming collab by the designers at Scrap Bird,
alpha – Puddles of Sunshine by EvaK Designs

Carla is the baby of the family. She’ll be 2 in September. Don’t let her adult build fool you! She still has a lot of kitten left in her and she is always starving for attention!

Credits: Neon Funk by Creations by Rachel,
Live, Laugh, Love alpha by Kimberkatt Scraps

Your Present!

Now, what would a holiday be without presents? To get you in the mood for National Furbabies Weekend, here is some appropriate word art for tour scrapbook pages or for your blog!


Click on preview for download page
Password is purrrr

Don’t forget to leave your links to your furkids or tell us all a little about them in comments. Aw! Thinking about all our great Furbabues is making me feel happier and warmer already!

Turkey Soup For The Soul

Star from Christmas Evening by Jodiann Cates

I’m taking a break in this busy Saturday to check-in. Oh, I’m, really just giving myself a break because my head isn’t in the school zone right now. I’m not in panic mode. The project isn’t due until a week from Monday. I’m really in okay shape if I take the rest of the weekend off and get to finishing my rough draft Monday morning. My study goal is to have everything done and turned in Friday night.

Dinner tonight is planned to be easy – Thanksgiving in review! We split the leftovers with Pop and Aunt Judy, so it gives us a great (and easy) dinner for tonight. Of course, I’ll get to wash all the dishes the leftovers came in, but dinner will be worth it!

David is out railfanning without me today. To be honest, I felt just awful this morning and that awful stayed with me into the afternoon. Around noon I took a couple of Advil and a B12. Golly B12 is wonderful stuff. It helps the brain and nervous system and in the formation of healthy blood. It really does help reenergize me and it clears my head, helps me focus. It just helps make everything feel better. I have a pretty full plate of life right now with the challenges and responsibilities I’ve had added with Grandma and losing John, which I wasn’t prepared for. I’m hoping that once my project is complete and thus, school is done for the semester, it will help. Of course the cat adjustment situation weighs heavy on me.

Carla is better from the respiratory infection, just a little weeping from her eyes still, but a lot less than she had! She goes in for a check-up Monday. She’s adjusting to the house and other cats now, although she is balanced by extremes. She either walks slowly and tentatively near either of them afraid to get them agitated or she is having so much fun playing she runs right into them and a hissing fit and fight ensues.

Baggle seems to be adjusting the best of the incumbent cats, but he adjusted to Kaline better than Chester did when they all first met too. He still will hiss or swipe a paw at her when she is being rambunctious too near to him, but he tolerant. Last night Carla was sitting on David’s lap and Baggle was next to him with no growling!

Kaline is really the last holdout. This is breaking my heart. She hasn’t been coming in to sleep with us and seems a little mistrusting, even of me. I just can’t stand that! She does sit next to me during the day and often plops down on the table behind the laptop, but she’s just not comfortable a lot of the time. She spends a lot of her awake hours watching or looking out for Carla. Now, that being said, earlier today she was sitting up on my desk upstairs and Carla jumped up onto the scanner, just a couple feet away. She growled at Carla. I growled at her. I matched her moan for moan and growl for growl that she gave Carla and she calmed down. I know that sounds silly, but it’s always worked with Kaline. If I “speak” to her as an angry Momma cat, she stops whatever she’s doing and gives me that “I’m growling at you in my mind” look. It helped get her through growling at Azreal when they met and through hissing at both Chester and Baggle when the girls met them.

Kaline has to revisit the vet about her tummy problems. To be honest, we really haven’t been able to administer the medicine for it, but she hasn’t been throwing up any more since the shot she got at the vet. The medicine is supposed to help her calm down and help her tummy. If she goes nuts and gets all worked up when we try to give her the medicine, how is that helping her? So David and I decided that the medicine would be there if she started having issues again, but we wouldn’t add to her problems by hogtieing her and shoving icky tasting liquid in her throat.

I want to share a link to a website/blog, I discovered! Simple Scrapper just started a six-week program yesterday that is fabulous for scrapping the holidays! I’ve downloaded the workbook and first template. The program is called Capture The Season and this week’s layout is about the things you’re thankful for. You’ll get prompts, ideas, templates and tips to make your pages better and quicker! There’s even a link for journaling tips too. I know a lot of people say they would like tips on doing that! I’ll definitely be showing off my first layout when it’s done, so if you don’t download the free workbook and template for week one today, be prepared to be tempted again!

::Deep Breath:: Mmmmm!

One of the best gifts I get from Thanksgiving is the turkey carcass! We used to have Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s and Mom would get the turkey carcass in the soup pot and make the stock Thanksgiving night. On Black Friday, instead of the outlet malls, Mom and I would go holiday shopping in Tawas, MI. Black Friday in a small lakeshore town is like being there in the summer. Small town means, just enough people for it to feel festive, but few enough fellow shoppers to talk to people and be greeted sincerely by shop owners. I loved that!

Now, there is a Walmart that’s killed a number of the businesses and what Walmart didn’t destroy the economy has really pressured. I don’t make a secret out of my dislike for “The Evil Empire.” Walmart is bad for local economies. It’s nice to save a little money, but I don’t think it’s worth seeing my next door neighbor stocking shelves at Walmart for minimum wage after his store was driven out of business. Kinda kills the Christmas spirit for me.

But back in the pre-Walmart invasion in that area, it was a wonderful day free from the sales hounds to really get in the holiday spirit. It was usually cold, sometimes gently snowing, but always fun in a classic Christmas way. When we got back to Grandma’s for dinner, we set up the turkey congee with that homemade broth and leftovers. It was just ambrosia, food of the gods! Now tomorrow, I’ll try a congee light-style for us. David isn’t a fan of the heavy veggie and meat soups I do. He likes a simpler brothy noodle soup. Cool thing is, congee can easily be both, so that’s the plan for tomorrow!

Okay, need to go stir the soup and adjust the seasoning. I do know the smell of that soup just washes over me with the holiday spirit and makes me feel good! Whatever part of the holiday season you partake in, in the face of the economical woes and the state of so much of the world, let the joy and peace of this season consume you. Happiness is contagious and we should do all we can to make it spread!

Links:

Simple Scrapper

Turkey Congee Recipe

And now for some news briefs…

Cat Piller - a bit of genius!

See the picture? That’s a Piller, it is a pill plunger that shorts pills down a cat’s throat. It is the coolest thing, as cool to a human as a can opener is to a cat. Poor Carla has to take two pills in the morning and two at night for her respiratory infection. We’ve been fighting with her tooth and claw for almost a week. She is so good at figuring out innovative cat ways to spit them out. This morning she bit her tongue fighting us and it was bleeding. That was enough for David and me.

The vet’s office where we took Carla last week is in Sylvania, nearly in Michigan, but that’s where her records were and where we had a free visit after adopting her. David was home today and he and I went to visit Grandma, so we stopped at the vet on the way. We were hoping to trade in the pills for some kind of liquid equivalent. They can’t take pills back once they leave the office, so we’d have to buy all new liquid meds or try the Piller. The Piller was less than $4, at the Vet’s office, so we gave it a try.

First try, ack, plunge, remove – the pill went in the cat, no fuss, no stress. Carla didn’t even leave her Daddy’s lap afterwards. If you have to medicate you pet, this is such a small investment to save a ton of hassle!

The kids have been blogging up a storm! Check out Behind Orange Eyes for Kaline’s first impressions of her new sister and the column at that site, written by Baggle, Behind Green Eyes, for his point of view.

Grandma was happy to see us today. She looked great, good color in her face and she was in a very upbeat mood. I’d promised her I’d bring some more Snickers bites and I found a bag of holiday wrapped ones on sale plus a cute green square bowl with snowmen on it to keep them in. She had a candy basket for Halloween, but needed a seasonal update! She’s always happy to get Snickers! She’s looking forward to the family coming there to have Thanksgiving dinner at one of the “Party Rooms,” which have full kitchen facilities. Dad is making the dinner plans, so I’m not sure on what side of traditional we’ll be this year. I’ll be chatting with him tomorrow to see what we need to organize.

Glad We Make Our Own!

In the news, Kellogg’s, makers of Eggo Waffles has an Eggo shortage right now! Between a shut down of their Atlanta plant due to flooding earlier this year and some major repairs being done on equipment at their largest bakery in Rossville, TN, there will be a scarcity of Eggos for a while. They don’t expect to return to pre-shut down levels in stores until mid-2010.

I’m so glad I married into a waffle iron and David married into my flour canister! Together we make beautiful waffles at home! I admit, on waffle days, David makes breakfast, but he couldn’t do it without the flour in my canister set!

Links:

Behind Orange Eyes - Kaline and Baggle

Where to buy a Piller

Eggo Waffle Story

Finding Your Next Best Friend

Petango.com - Adopt a dog today!

Growing up our family had a tri-colored collie, Missy. She was an awesome dog! She was the epitome of the char4act5eristics of her breed. Collies are smart, loyal, protective of their families and homes and big enough to be intimidating if they need to be, yet gentle enough to play with the kids and not hurt anyone.

I’d like to introduce you to the boy whose picture is on top of this post. His name is Conner. Conner is a neutered 9-year-old brown and white rough collie. He lives in Temperance, Michigan…in a shelter. He’s one of the many pets in this country that is without a home.

There are lots of reasons pets end up in shelters looking for homes. In this economy, people have had to give up beloved pets because they plain can’t afford to feed them or because they lose their homes and end up having to move to someplace they can’t have pets. There are many cases too, where they pet is the companion of a sick or elderly person who passes. Can you imagine grieving the loss of your master and then being sent out to a shelter to live in a cage? And believe me, pets do grieve. I remember watching Azzie for a week after Mom passed. She really missed her.

Conner has a chance at least. He’s listed on Petango, an Internet search site where you can find and adopt a pet. I found Connor’s profile at Petango. I guess, even as a cat person, I’ll always have a soft spot for Collies after Missy. Adult pets, when adopted, of course will need a little adjustment time, but they have the experience of having lived with a family before. They are already familiar with people-rules and already know how to get to know you and get to love you.

Of course another reason to visit Petango.com - Adopt a cat!! I was hoping our local cat shelter was one of the shelters listed there in our area and I think I’ll mention Petango to them when David and I attend the fundraiser poker tournament next month. Petango posts pictures when they can and tells you all about the cats, dogs and other pets in need of homes in your area.

If you have room in your home and heart for a faithful companion, a furry someone who will be ever grateful for rescuing them from life in a cage, please consider checking out Petango to find those in need near you.