One Sheep for Amy Singer

So yesterday I went and met Amy Singer at Purlescence Yarns in Sunnyvale for her No Sheep For You book signing. It was a nice event, we even got time to hang out with her in the shop. The best part I think was getting to take her to Tapioca Express to get some boba. No, wait, I'm wrong. The BEST part? Easily this (baw chicka baw baw): Yes, Hannah, you really are putting on THE costume again. Oh yeah baby, it's sheep time! After dressing in the back of the store, she headed into the back to say hello to Amy: (Tell me Amy didn't turn to Emy and say "What the hell, who let the sheep in?!") (Oh, and check out Jeni taking pics with her sexy iPhone to my right!) As with many Hannah events, there was much laughter that ensued. There was even a sheep hugging by the sheep free knitter: I eventually remembered that I was there for a book signing, so I got my book signed and got my picture taken with Amy: (I swear it's a bad angle, I'm much thinner in real life.)

Nathania was having a good time playing with my new Canon SD800 is camera, she snapped this deer-in-the-headlights pic of Amy:

But I avenged Amy's bad pic with a goofy one of my own, caught when I bobbled the camera trying to take a pic of Nathania:


The awesome end to my day? Winning some Claudia Hand Painted Linen Yarn in the raffle drawing:

Yay free stuff! (That pic is the reason this post has been on ice for a week, it is now liberated. Woot.)

Great day over all. I finished my day off with some time at a luau at another Bobaknitter's house that was loads of fun. But that requires more pics to be uploaded, so maybe I will do that tomorrow!

Happy Days Are Here Again

After our traumatic 6 days, our house and hearts were so empty and so broken. At first I had no desire to wait for some time before we got more. (I knew that I would have more, there was no way I wouldn't)

Towards the end of last week, I started talking to both my hubby and the OCK and I started softening towards the idea that maybe we should get more cats sooner rather than later. So we started looking at sites like Petfinder.com to see what animals they had available. We visited a couple of Petsmarts on Friday night (there were some adoption fairs going on and we couldn't look at the Humane Society's animals they had available because it was too late in the day) but we didn't see any that looked like kittens we were interested in.

So we went home and did some more looking around and saw some we were interested in so we found the Petsmart that they would possibly be at on Saturday. We headed out Saturday afternoon, first to the Cupertino Petsmart, then to the Campbell Petsmart (where we saw a beautiful calico that I wanted very much but we had an issue with the group that was running that location's fair) and then we went back to the Humane Society. They had some alright kittens, but there were none that were really what we were looking for. On our way out, they asked us if we had found any that we were interested in meeting and we told them no, we'd be back another day.

The gal helping us asked us if we'd been to the other shelters in the area. When we said no, we asked if they had a map because we weren't sure where the other shelter was in Santa Clara. So we hurried out the door (it was getting close to 5pm and the shelter was only open until like 6pm) and headed across the freeway to the SVACA. We took a look at their kittens and saw a couple that were interesting so one of their employees got us into a room and brought in the couple we wanted to look at. While we were checking those kittens out, some of the people who were out at adoption fairs that day returned to the shelter with the kittens and cats they had taken out to a site in San Jose. We were getting ready to leave and the gal helping us asked if we wanted to see if there were any of the returning cats that we were interested in.

We went back to one of the rooms where they had added kittens to and we discovered that two of the medium haired kittens that were sisters we had seen photos of on the door had come back! So we asked to see them. They had great personalities so we scheduled an appointment the following day to do a final meeting with them. We returned on Sunday for our 12:15 appointment with our paperwork we needed to provide, and in just over an hour we came home with two new bundles of joy.

This is Xi Xi, which is Chinese for happiness:

She really doesn't like the ceiling fan. When my hubby first picked her up when they got home, he turned her so she caught a glimpse of the ceiling fan and she hissed at it. Ever since then, she periodically will stop what she's doing and will look up at the fan twirling around (as you can see in this next pic):

We also brought home her sister, Saylor:

Since they are sisters, they sure like each other a whole lot better than Bratty liked the Chubbo! They don't stop moving much now that they are getting settled in, so I think it will be some time before I end up being able to get a good snuggle picture of them. Until then, this picture will have to do:

They had been fed a mixed diet of crunchy and soft food while they were in foster care, so we bought some canned food for them. I wasn't sure if they would like the flavor the store had, so we only bought 2 cans of it. I was wrong for doubting they would like it, they come running when I even move their dishes to take them to fill them!! Here they are enjoying their first meal of wet food:
So there the two furballs are. They have brought us much needed happiness since they came home. I am so happy that we didn't wait any longer, these two are truly the kitties we were meant to have. They are very sweet, happy, rumbly kittens that I am looking forward to having many long years with them.

I swear my next post will have knitting content. It is getting slightly easier to carry on, so I will be able to focus enough to blog my recent knitting adventures. I promise!!

A Beautiful Resting Place

So this cost a lot of money, but when I got it I definitely found it to be money well spent. My beautiful girl has a beautiful river rock that she can call home.

My Watermelon Girl

My sweet Chubbo enjoying a bit of my watermelon. If you turn the volume up, you can hear her licking it. My hubby's voice appears about 2/3rds of the way through, so don't turn it up too loud. (I have no idea what it is he's saying, but it was just jibberjabber.)

I filmed this last October and found it when I was digging through my folders of digital photos. What a lovely treat to find.

RIP Chubbo 03.22.1998 - 07.17.2007

I am stunned that in less than 6 days I have lost both of my beloved cats. My heart is so broken.

I had hoped to have you for a few more years, my sweet Chubbo. Your time with us was entirely too short. We were supposed to be able to give you more love and work through our grief with you. Now we are grieving for you.

You were by far the dumbest cat I have ever had. But you were also the most charismatic I have ever had. We were so blessed to have our naughty little Chubbo.

I don't have a lot of eloquent things to say about you the way I did about Bratty. That's not because I didn't love you as much, you just weren't the graceful type. I can remember Angie coming over and saying "HOLY COW! Look at how big she is! She's like the size of 3 cats!!" and then she would draw lines down your belly with her hand, carving out the size of 3 normal sized cats. I love how annoyed you look in this picture. You look as if you are saying "Hey assholes, could you at least get me a bed that fits me?!"

We joked often that you called us assholes. I don't think we were too far from being right with that:
You so could not clean your bottom. At least your attempts at preening were visually amusing to us:
I can talk for some time about the things you loved.

Oh how you loved water. Back when you were light enough to still jump up to the bathroom sink, you loved to sleep in the sink while you waited for someone to come turn on the faucet so you could drink out of it.

You loved to lick the water off of my washed fruit when I was eating it for breakfast:

And oh my god did you love watermelon. I couldn't eat watermelon with you in the room without hearing your squeaky little voice wanting to have at my watermelon. There was no discussion as to whether or not you could lick my watermelon. You simply took it into your own hands to lick it.


We were so amused with the evidence that was left after you were done eating. Here is melon chin with Chubbo attitude:

You loved lying on my purses too, I love this photo with melon chin in it:

You loved lounging on Mike. I have many shots of this:

You loved the sunshine. I love this photo, I get both a belly shot as well as you basking in the sunshine in the dining room:

I love Chubbo belly shots so much.

We love you so much Chubbo. We miss you terribly. Our home is so empty now.

Say hello to Bratty in heaven for us.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto

Man, I didn't think it was possible for my crappy week to get even crappier.

In a nutshell, 4 days after we put Bratty to sleep, we had to take the Chubbo to the emergency vet for care today. She has a spinal issue that is causing her to not be able to walk on her right rear leg. She has an elevated white blood cell count so she is on antibiotics. And her kidneys aren't working very well right now so she is having fluids injected (the same thing we were doing for Bratty for the past month or so).

This really is a knitting blog still. I'm just having too much heartbreak right now to get my brain together enough to blog about knitting.

Hopefully I'll be back with a healthy Chubbo in no time at all and I can go on with my life more normally.

RIP Bratty 01.01.1989-07.11.2007

When I brought you home on March 1, 1989, I had no idea the length of time that you would be in my life. You were just 8 weeks old, a small kitten that I was so afraid of squishing the first few nights you were around. My mom and I got you from the pet store in a mall in Austin. I remember carrying you out in my arms, this tiny little thing. I remember very clearly the first time you purred the night I brought you home. I was amazed at this big crackling purr coming from your tiny body.

We had good times together in Austin at 6700 Shiner Street. I remember so much about these years with you there. Like the day we searched and searched for you because you had disappeared eventually finding you burrowed in the basket of warm laundry. Or the first time you saw yourself in the mirrored closet doors in my parents bathroom, your back arched and your hair standing straight up while you hissed at the calico in the mirror. Or getting you wound up so that you would chase after me, tearing up the stairway to the second floor while I stayed at the bottom until you figured out I hadn't come up after you.

Always so mischievous you were. You did the common kitten things like pulling the toilet paper off the roll. But I remember leaving new packages of toilet paper on the stairway only to hear you a few hours later attacking the paper, each roll in the package missing paper from it and having huge teeth marks in the rolls. Or getting out of the shower and coming back into the bedroom to get dressed and finding my socks had gone missing because you dragged them off the bed to play with them. (This led to me "giving" you a pair of beige socks of your own to play with so that mine would stick around so that I could find them after my shower where I left them.) Of course there was the time that I had my betta fish in a cup while I was cleaning out the fish bowl and you shoved the glass bowl off the sink in the bathroom. You loved to splash the water at the top of the bowl. I did not love picking up the broken glass and fishbowl gravel out of the carpet.

My favorite memories of you have to be of your purring. You purred easily and often purred without much attention, content to just be sitting next to me. I loved being able to get you so blissed out that you would open your mouth and purr very loudly. I remember being in the recliner at the front of the living room and my mom being able to hear you in the dining room. You also loved to burrow in my hair. You nuzzled my neck and kneaded me relentlessly as you blissed out in my hair. Whenever I would go on vacation, you would relent after a few days and get your attention from my mom. Though with her short hair, there was none to nuzzle so you would nuzzle her armpit instead.

You hated when I was gone from home for a few days. I can remember coming home and you would start yelling at me when you saw me on the driveway out the windows by the front door. Your little sides would expand as you took in a big breath and they would compress as you exhaled. You loved to give me hell for being gone.

You were definitely never a great bounty hunter. I remember you discovering spiders on the carpet and your attack method was to pat your paw in the vicinity of the spider and then take off running. You also would sit and stare at the wood roaches in Texas. I would come into the kitchen and see your head tilted to the side and I would know you were staring at a roach on the floor.

You lived on Shiner Street with me while I finished high school and went off to college. In my junior year, you moved with me into my first apartment. You had an alright time that first year with all the assorted people that came through that apartment. My senior year in college I moved into the apartment with just Jennifer. You took to Jennifer very well. She was really the first person you loved like you loved me. You would even nuzzle her hair, I was reminded of this tonight when I found a picture of you and Jennifer snuggling. (And back to the roaches.. you were sitting on the coffee table while I was on the phone with Mike and again your head was cocked to the side as you stared up at the wall at the roach climbing there.. such an awesome huntress you were.)

I graduated and stayed in that apartment until my lease was up. I moved out of there and moved to California that very same day. What a traumatic day that was. You were originally going to come with me on the plane, but in the drama that was that day, you stayed behind. Mike came and got you a few weeks later. I was so thrilled to see you again, how much I had missed you. We started our new life together in California.

I remember the first time in your life you were really sick when I lived in Daly City. I remember walking in the door and you barely lifted your head to acknowledge I had entered. I took you to the vet and you stayed there a few days while you got treated. I can remember picking you up after that stay, and having one of the veterinary technicians saying to me "She IS a brat!!". You were never big on being poked and prodded, that's for sure.

We moved to Redwood City and got the Chubbo while we lived there. Oh how mad you were. You had been my queen bee for 9 years and then we brought in the house this naughty youngster that just wanted to play with you. And man did you not want anything to do with her! You were so glad when we had taken her to the vet to be declawed and spayed. You so thought that she was gone. And oh man how mad you were all over again when she came back. You never did get very friendly with her, you would tolerate her but you never really got to liking her much. You would whap the sides of her face whenever she was naughty and started pawing at you. I laughed at her dumb look on her face because she wasn't smart enough to understand what the hell was going on.

You lived in Redwood City.. then Menlo Park.. and finally to Sunnyvale. You were pretty old by the time we got to Sunnyvale, I guess you were 13 or 14. There was the one night where I hadn't quite closed the front door behind me and you snuck out the open front door. I didn't realize you had gotten out until the next morning. I was panicking when you were nowhere to be found inside and I was running through the yard calling for you. I finally heard you answering me, meowing from under the neighbors car. Oh how scared I was. But you were alright, you just smelled oily from sleeping under the car on the asphalt driveway. You got a bath for that, something I know you didn't really like!

You always have been MY cat. Everyone else was just a useful minion, but I was the center of your universe. You were never really a clingy cat when you were younger (although you did love to sleep in the back of my knees under the blanket, an awesome thing to do in Texas..), but lately you had become much more clingy. I went to sleep with you perched on my side, staring at me as I fell asleep. You stalked me as I walked through the bedroom, followed me into the bathroom and demanded I pick you up and hold you. You would stand up with your front paws on my knees and stare at me pathetically, whining at me to pick you up and hold you. I did oblige, I could not resist your wily ways.

You never got to be a very large cat, you were just 9ish lbs at your heaviest in your youth. Every so often some sickness would cause you to lose some weight and some more weight. In recent days, your weight diminished even more as you shrunk down to 4.3 lbs last Saturday. The kidney disease took its toll on you. But you were healthy for so long, so rarely did you get sick. I was so blessed to have you be so healthy for so long.

I had been praying that I would not have to make the decision on whether or not to continue treating you for your ailments. I hoped your body would make the decision for me. I knew it would be impossibly difficult to make the decision, but I knew you well enough that I had faith that you would tell me when it was your time to go even if your body didn't quit. I was thinking of trying to combat your dehydration enough so that you could possibly start eating again. And then I realized how unfair that would be to you, my sweet girl. You slept in my arms the past few nights. I will treasure those times.

For 6,706 days you were a part of my life. You have been with me for over half of my life. I was just 16 when we got you in 1989 and now in 2007 when you have left me I am 35. I miss you so much already and it has only been 6 hours since you left. Thank you for all your love.

Sweet dreams, my good girl.