February Adventures

Felis catus stalks the wild leaf

Blue hinge on a grey day:

Searching for our next adventure (prey?):

Galoshes galumphing:

Aha! A graveyard of hazelnut shells.

How many can our little hands hold?

Voodoo magic

Perhaps watching The Princess and the Frog with Lucy was a bad idea. She's been acting awfully weird recently.... I mean, just look at this face.

And I'm pretty sure she was trying to use some voodoo magic on dada here. Perhaps in an effort to get more milk? Or at least, some clothing.

Either way it was enough to send this cat up a tree.

Things we are grateful for:

Baby pushing a basket around her room filled with an irritated but stubborn cat.

Backyard adventures on a sunny day in February

These eyes:

Laughter and squeals as she's thrown up in the air:

Unrequited Love

Whiskey never had much interest in Lucy. But now that our baby crawls, kitty's attitude toward her has gone from vague disinterest to utter loathing.

When Lucy sees Whiskey, her first response is to squeal in delight. If she's in my arms, she starts kicking her legs and flapping her arms in an attempt to project herself onto Whiskey. If Lucy's on the floor, she makes a beeline for the cat.

Her petting is not gentle. It also doesn't help that the most coveted portion of kitty kitty is her whiskers. Whiskey rues the day God made her whiskers so irresistible to infant fingers.

So now the only time that Whiskey lets Lucy within three feet of her is when a wall of glass separates them. Even then, she likes to pretend like Lucy isn't there.

Lucy starts off with a wave. Usually in the grocery store this attracts anyone in the near vicinity to her like a magnet. But with Whiskey? Nothing.

Then Lucy crawls up to Whiskey and taps on the glass. Kitty kitty? Whiskey pretends there is something infinitely interesting on the floor.

Lastly Lucy pulls out all the stops. She gets up onto her knees. It's a big accomplishment for her and one that usually evokes oohs and aahs from her audience.

But Whiskey will have none of it. Maybe she thinks that if she ignores the problem then it will just disappear. Maybe she's plotting a great revenge (probably not). Maybe she's just bitter. Will we ever know? Probably not.

My best friend

Okay maybe this isn't my best friend EVER, but it's pretty close. I don't know how I survived three years of marriage without my dutch oven. I think I use it at least once a week, if not twice.



Where else can you take this (yes those are chipotle peppers on top, yum!):



And then six hours in the oven come up with this:

Which then gets shredded into this:

And served up like this (sorry this pic is rotated for some reason blogger insisted on rotating it every time I tried to upload it):

Delicious! And I submit that if I had made it in a slow-cooker it wouldn't have tasted nearly as good. Although I have no good argument for why that would be except for that my slow-cooker burns all my big cuts of meats. So that was our dinner last night, and it took maybe 15 minutes of my time to prep. The recipe is called Spicy Dr. Pepper shredded pork and is on my new favorite food blog here.

Oh, and Whiskey wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter. She likes Lucy's plastic eggs almost as much as Lu does.

Memoirs of a Kitty

I was talking on the phone with my sis a while back and I mentioned something about Whiskey. And her response was, "Wait, Whiskey's in Eugene with you guys? I thought you left her in Moscow?" I have to admit I felt a little bit guilty about that. Apparently I haven't written a single post about our furry feline since Lucy was born. So here is proof that Whiskey is, in fact, still alive and living with us in Eugene: In Whiskey's opinion, her life took a turn for the worse about 5 and a half months ago, and has been spiraling downwards ever since. First there was the arrival of the noisy, hairless second pet on October 15th. Suddenly our laps and attentions were occupied by someone other than her, and that was disconcerting enough. But then, to make matters worse, one day we shoved her into the back of a car (her least favorite place on earth), drove 10 hours, and dumped her in a completely unfamiliar place, announcing it was her new "home". Gone were the days of going in and out of the house whenever she wanted. She is now stuck on the second floor of an apartment complex, with only a small balcony as her access to the outside world. Are you feeling sorry for our kitty yet? I hope so, this post is my cathartic way of getting all my guilt out there in the open. I'm certainly feeling a lot better now that other people can feel her pain. But there has been a bright spot in these dark days. There is no longer a constant fear in the back of her mind that she's going to get shanked by my parent's cat in her sleep. And in Whiskey's mind, that is a decent trade-off. So while Lucy may have taken center-stage, Whiskey will always be our favorite little kitten.

Baby Whiskey

I think a certain somekitty is starting to feel insecure about her place in our family. She's realizing that I didn't convert the study into a beautiful retreat for her, and it's rubbing her the wrong way. Which is probably why, when I left the nursery door open for all of ten minutes, I came in to find this (on my freshly laundered sheets, nonetheles):

A post about Whiskey

Mom insists that once baby kumquat arrives our affections for Whiskey will go entirely by the wayside. I have even caught her whispering soothingly to her, "Don't worry Whiskers. When the baby comes I will still love you."
And while I imagine our attention will turn towards the baby and away from the kitty, I'm pretty sure this is a change she will welcome gladly. Less of me picking her up and cradling her like the infant I've been dying to have, less of Joel suddenly grabbing her by the skull and shaking her head back and forth in what he insists is a gesture of affection. In fact this first picture just might be the result of a little too much head-shaking.



Actually she's just enjoying our spring sun. It was hidden away for so long, we were all going a little crazy. Here's another picture of our adorable kitten, just so you all know that we still love her. I took the liberty of editing it so she wouldn't be embarrassed.

Picture time!

Here are our top two favorite pictures from the past week. First, our newest Christmas ornament. I love the world-within-an-ornament ornaments, so I was tickled to find this one.

As I'm sure I've already mentioned, our cat Whiskey and our parent's cat Sammy are not exactly on agreeable terms. In fact, it has become a daily tradition for Sammy to come around to our outside door and stare in at Whiskey. A hissing-fest naturally ensues. I finally took a picture of their strange routine:

My skunk story

Last night I went searching for my cat. She frequently goes adventuring down at the bottom of the hill and out in the fields past the road. So, I grabbed a flash-light and thought that by shining the light I could hopefully detect her gleaming little eyes and be able to bring her in for the night.

In the fields past the road there is a marsh-like area which during the day resounds with the noise of hundreds of little birds happily taking baths. But at 11 at night, the only sound I could hear was rustling. A lot of rustling in fact, which made me think that perhaps my cat was down there. I got to the edge of the marsh and shone my flashlight. Instead of a cute little tabby cat, I discovered a whole family of skunks, rooting around in the tall grass. None of them seemed terribly disturbed by my presence, so I decided to give them a wide berth and look for kitten elsewhere. I shone my light and saw a gleam of kitten eyes around the other side of the marsh, so I started to head that way.

Apparently, however, there were more skunks than I had anticipated. And apparently I got too close to an over-protective mama skunk. As I was walking, I suddenly heard a very loud rustling to my left, followed by a SHRIEK! CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER and this animal comes bounding out of the marsh towards me. I'm not scared of little night creatures, but when they possess the ability to spray you with one of the most terrible smells ever invented, I run like my life depended on it. This was a persistent skunk, and it chased me all the way back to the road, chewing me out in skunk speech the whole way.

I decided against searching for Whiskey any more that night, although as I left I swept my flashlight across the fields one more time, and I could see those gleaming kitten eyes still in the distance. I could have sworn they looked amused.

In case you're wondering what a mad skunk sounds like, here is a good representation.

A Tale of Two Kitties

We've settled in nicely to our parent's basement apartment; our cat, however, has been a different story. Despite my mother and my fervent prayers that Whiskey and Sammy would get along, they continue to regard each other as mortal enemies. That translates into a lot of hissing, stalking, and general silent glaring whenever they encounter each other. So much for my image of them sleeping curled up together and stalking field-mice side by side. Oh well.

A few morning's ago Joel and I found Whiskey in a fair bit of pain and flinching whenever we touched her left side. A visit to the doctor and one very expensive radiograph later found no internal bleeding or broken bones (which would have suggested an encounter with a car), but they did discover a small puncture wound on her left side. It looks like she got into a fight. We're all trying to be very open-minded about this and give Sammy the benefit of the doubt (she's still refusing to confess, although I do remember her looking particularly smug the morning of the accident). Anyway, Whiskey's healing up just fine, and has even discovered a new favorite place to sleep.

The Cohen Zoo

Yesterday was an exciting day at the Cohen petting zoo. It began around 1 when I received a call from Joel.
"Umm, Christine?"
"Yes, dear?"
"There is a bird in our house."
"Is it alive?"
"Oh yes, it's hopping around shedding feathers left and right."
"Where is Whiskey?"
"Well, she's chasing it."

After advising Joel to lock Whiskey outside, I came home to survey the damage. Joel hadn't lied, a torrent of feathers lay strewed around our house. In the midst of the carnage a very scared looking Robin crouched under our piano stool. I did the eco-friendly thing and rescued the poor bird. Elissa, you would be proud. While I didn't attempt to set its broken leg myself, I did stick it in a shoebox and transport it to the nearest wildlife rehabilitation center. We were fast friends by the end of the trip, I'd even considered naming him.

Whiskey has a habit of bringing her trophies inside and depositing them in her food-bowl. This would explain how the Robin found itself unhappily trapped in our house. It would also explain the appearance of our second guest of the day. While I was making dinner, Joel's voice came from the other room.

"Umm, babe?"
"Yeah?"
"There's a mouse in the house."
"Is it alive?"
"Well, yeah..."

And so the story repeated itself. Me chasing the little furry rodent around and finally managing to trap it under a teacup. Unlike the robin, the mouse didn't get to go to a comfy animal hospital. In fact it met a somewhat more depressing end (children, leave the room now). Despite my pleas to let it go free, Joel remained firm. He wanted Whiskey to learn how to kill mice. So we marched the poor rodent outside and stuck it in the grass next to our cat. Whiskey, however, while she makes a charming house-pet, is a failure as a mouser. She stared in fascination at the mouse, following it around and occasionally knocking it off its feet. The claws never came out, the teeth remained firmly shut. In fact, she was so un-intimidating that the mouse soon considered her a friend, and tried several times to snuggle up against her. This was too much for Whiskey, who was able to maintain at least some shred of dignity and backed away from her admirer in confusion. After several hours of inaction on the part of our cat, Joel took matters into his own hand and sent the mouse sailing into the next life with the help of a mouse-trap. I voted pro-life, but my husband, ever the practical one, voted anti-hantavirus. And that was the end of the Cohen zoo.

What are we doing, you ask?

We've been keeping busy. And here I naively thought that summer would slow things down... it's really only changed what it is that keeps us so busy. Joel, in addition to working two jobs, has been fixing up our house for the renters who are going to move in in either late July or early August. We were so thrilled to find friends who wanted to rent the house for a year. Wonderful. He has now painted all our interior doors white, our front door red, and is working on building trim for the windows. He is also playing softball for a city league (Go Whammers! No, the name hasn't changed...).
I'm working 25 hours at Hall Closet, also doing work around the house, and finding my time very filled up with being the new senior editor for Thought Meadow magazine. Thought Meadow is a Christian women's magazine that was started last year by friends of mine for the "edification of souls and sharpening of minds." We're working on our third issue now, and I just love doing all the administrative chores that go into making each issue come out. You can check it out at: thoughtmeadow.com/blog.
Whiskey, the most productive member of our family, has been doing her favorite summer activity: sleeping.

Sometimes it's the little things in life...

...that make you the happiest. Take for instance these canisters.



I have waited a very long time for them, which perhaps is the reason I was so excited to get them. They are from IKEA and since the closest IKEA store is Seattle, I had to wait until either we made it over there or a friend could bring them back for us. Many times I was tempted to buy more expensive and less durable versions of these jars, but I held off, and now I'm thrilled that I did. The glass is thick and sturdy and the rubber seal keeps oxygen out, which is especially important for my coffee beans. I also bought a large thin one for spaghetti noodles that is not in the picture. Perhaps you find this to be one of the more boring blog posts from the Cohens, and so as a hecatomb I'll end it with a picture of our silly kitten.

She misses the summer sun as much as we do.

Exercising Whiskey

Hopefully this video isn't too dark, but we managed to capture some of Whiskey's finer gymnastic feats.

Nap Time and Horrible Paint

Our downstairs bathroom is slowly but surely coming together. Right now Joel and Father Ditton are downstairs tiling the floor, yay! These past two weeks I have (slowly) primed the walls and painted them. Wait, before you look at the picture right below this and think "She chose THAT color??", let me explain. I knew I wanted to do green, and I knew I wanted it to be bright and cheery. Unfortunately, that was all I knew, and so my decision at the paint store was rather uninformed, which resulted in this color being chosen...



Don't worry. I'm just as convinced of its ugliness as you are. I don't even think this picture quite does its ugliness justice. Dr. Seuss came to mind first, followed by plug-in neon beer signs, and a plethora of other non-complimentary images. So that was primed over and I went with a much nicer color. I haven't posted a picture yet because I'm waiting until the tile is put in so you can see the whole effect. It's really quite nice.

This next picture is up here simply because I thought it was adorable. Napping is something Joel (and I) wish he could do more of and Kitten does far too much of.

She's only like this before a lunar eclipse

I started to wonder if kitten had gone crazy after coming into the room and finding her like this...

€

She tried to extricate herself from her position, only to discover that one claw would not come unhooked from the chair top



By the time were-kitten managed to free herself, she had reached the brink of insanity



After several rounds of tummy-rubbing from her patient master, Whiskey slowly started to remember who she was.... a cute, cuddly house-pet and not a vicious were-kitten



And so she relaxed back on the chair in a normal cat position.... her vacant, exhausted eyes were the only signs of the terrible battle that had waged within.




The End.

Hard Providence

We found out on Saturday that our cute kitten Whiskey has leukemia. She had been throwing up every day for a good long time, and so we knew something had to be wrong. The vets really have no time-frame for how long she'll live, it could be 2 years or 8. Right now there is a very small chance that she could develop an immunity to it. We've been praying in that direction.

It's strange to me how quickly you can become attached to an animal; we've only had Whiskey for 9-10 months, but I cried a good deal when I heard the news. Part of what makes me so sad is that she's not allowed to go outside anymore because she could infect other cats. She had gotten so used to being let outside all the time. So I've been praying that she wouldn't be constantly begging to go outside because it makes me so sad to have to say no. And God, as always, has been good and she really doesn't meow to go outside as much as she used to.

Having a cat also has made me think more about pets on the new earth. It seems strange to think that God would give us pets to love now, and then when he re-makes this earth those same pets wouldn't be there to entertain us. God gives out so many bountiful blessings, I imagine restoring our pets to us will be one of them. So when I'm sad that Whiskey can't go outside, I imagine being on this glorified earth in the next life, watching her pounce at imaginary shadows in the tall grass, and laughing as she wriggles around on her back in the shade.

God really blessed humans with pets. They keep us company, make us laugh, and are ever so huggable.