Stay Warm

Lassie on heater, probably spring 2011

Doesn't she look grumpy? And she is looking down. I think someone might have been there to dispute the possession of the heater with her.  She is glaring "Don't you push me off!"

This is probably the kittens' first year, spring or early summer 2011. She doesn't have her adult color green eyes yet. And that year they were kept in the bathroom with a heater, separate from Rex. That was the year that they were all on my lap in the chair, and we were enjoying a fire in the woodstove - on June 2nd!

We had a dry December this year - bad news in case we go back to drought conditions without fully recovering from the last one. We haven't had snow yet here, but back east they are having feet of snow in a winter cyclone, and record low temperatures.

I recently asked myself, "what do you do when the power goes off?"

And the answers I immediately came up with:

What do I do when the power goes out?
I get a fire started in the wood stove, (and if it happened today I’d be cursing myself while I cleared away the clutter in front of the stove) and be sure to cook dinner over the stove before dark. And go bring in more firewood before dark. Before it rains. Or snows.
Or dye some fabric, or take a bath, or wash the dishes with the last warm water in the water heater.
Or put extra blankets on the bed, and curl up in the dark and call my mother, whose phone number was the one I knew in the dark.

Seriously. There are lots of things to do to take advantage of/survive the situation. Those with a live-in lover have another option. Why they have lots of births 9 months later in cities.

Those answers are in reverse order, most recent to oldest, of things I have actually done over the years. It depends a little on what time of year, and time of day it is. But the latest wisdom I learned several years ago, when my power was out for more than 3 days.

[That is common enough here that it is necessary to have another source of heat and cooking, and lights, handy for when it happens. The bus driver, a few blocks away, had his power out for 2 separate weeks that year.]

That time, after a couple of days I had used most of the wood I had inside, and was wading through a foot of snow carrying firewood. And the lights I had were not bright enough to see what I was doing if I had to cook dinner after dark.

I learned to bake bread the summer I turned 16, at the cabin in Northern Idaho. In a woodstove. And the little woodstove heaters don't channel heat to the top the way a cookstove does. Much harder to cook over.


The next time the power went out that year, it came on only a few hours later. But by that time I had started a fire, and heated some leftover soup, and was having dinner.


2020 Last October, 2019, PGE turned the power off 6 times -- more than 10 days off total! We all, including grocery stores, lost freezers-full of food. There wasn't any rain all month, some wind -- not necessarily where the power was off. They were doing planned maintenance.

Rex plays Oct. 21 2011

Rexie is playing, Oct 21, 2011, 10am. Just a little over a year old.

Pictures taken Oct. 21 2011. Originally Written Feb. 28, 2014. First posted with pics Oct. 19, 2016.

Here's Rex on our new bedcover, a denim quilt which was my mother's, that we just got in August 2011. Not my colors, but it goes with Rex...

Without the flash, you can see his rich color

He is looking so wild, and having a great deal of fun, playing with a favorite toy....

What is he playing with? 

 What is he playing with?

Yep, the ring that comes off the lid of some milk jugs.

 Oh, Rexie is wild!

The kittens like to bring their toys up on to the bed.

Happy Kitten Day Sept 7 2016

Just found this original kitten photo, Nov 2010

 One of the kittens has a ball. The other grey kitten has a toy mouse. But Spot and Rex are watching the ball, ready to run out and play Kitten Soccer.

Some of my kittens from long ago, when I lived in the basement, used to play kitten soccer, in one of the rooms Grandpa had poured cement into when he was 80. He shored up the foundations, and poured concrete in most of the areas that had had just dirt floors originally. (He had been a mining engineer.) That floor had a wave and a half in it, so the ball would turn and go off in unexpected directions. Very exciting kitten soccer.

Kitten Soccer Nov. 2010

 My darling kittens were so cute when they were little. Now they are beautiful, except for one funny-looking one (Lassie). Rex/Rexie fell off the balcony this summer, the night a coyote howled in the orchard. He was gone by 3:00am, the coyote was howling at 3:30.

 I think he was on the roof in the midday, while I was looking all around for him, and calling. I could hear him, or someone, calling, and it was louder near the fireplace. But by the time I went up onto the roof, he wasn't there. (I waited for someone else to come home before I went up there.)

But after a night and a day and a night, he found his way into the open main floor. I was out on the balcony at 5:15 in the morning, not calling just listening, trying to decide where to look for him. And at 5:30am he started calling me loudly from the living room window under my feet.

Light and reflection Nov 2010

Meanwhile, almost unnoticed in the corner, is one of these fantastic reflections of light off a plant pot. The reflection has to fall against a relatively dark patch of floor or wall to be visible. Just like car bumper or hubcap reflections, which also make interesting patterns.

Enjoy the kittens, but notice the light. 

Kittens have forts - who knew?

Rex in his fort. Written Feb 11, 2014 3:21 PM  Originally posted Aug 26 2016.

I was going to try to pick-up the floor, and get a cleaned-up staged photo of this, and never got it done. Luckily, though I didn't remember it, I had taken a pic of the real thing. This is Rex in his fort.

They made the forts by tipping over the (sorted) boxes, and dumping the contents out, all over the floor. (When I say randomizing the contents of my room, I'm not kidding...)

The short stairwell down to the door to downstairs makes a good fort too.

And of course, forts are for ambushing your sisters from - leaping out onto them from where you're crouched hiding behind the boxes. Crouch, wiggle, leap!

Kittens on bench Dec. 7, 2010

Spot and Lassie

Photo from Dec. 7 2010. Written Mar. 15, 2011.First published Jan 24, 2014.

That is Spot in the front, the friendliest kitten, and her sister Lassie (I think, Lassie and Grey Mouse are very similar) behind her.

Spot could have been named after the grey spot on her nose, but actually she has a tan spotted spot on her stomach.

(The names? Well, once I had decided the little kitten was Rex, Spot and Lassie became irresistible.)

Kittens in box Dec. 2, 2010

Lassie, Grey Mouse, and Spot in box

Photo from Dec. 2 2010. First published Jan. 21, 2014.

This cute photo is a little misleading - the kittens were in this box in the cupboard with the door closed. I had just opened the door and discovered where my missing kittens were.

To get here, they had to jump (or be carried?) into the shelf visible above this cupboard, that I had taken the drawer out of, and jump down off the side of it into the bottom cupboard.

Why had they, or their Mama, done this? Well, at the beginning of the week, I had chased their father into the cold out on the porch again for a night so he would go into the carrier and I could catch him to be fixed. Then he was isolated in the bathroom for a few days.

So apparently this was scary, because everybody was hiding.


Disclosure - I did Photoshop some printing off the box, which distracted from the image.

Kittens in chair November 26, 2010

Grey Mouse and Rex in chair

Photo from Nov. 26, 2010. Written Mar. 15 2011. (First published Jan 10, 2014)

Rex is on the right, and his sister Grey Mouse is behind on the left.

Grey Mouse is the cool gray colored kitten, her sister, the other light tabby, has a buff underside and undertone to her gray.

(A kitten named Grey Mouse? Well, partly because of her father Sugar Mouse. And partly because she has the most receding-chin, under-bite, rodent-profile face of them all.)

PS My equal opportunity spelling of the word grey/gray? Early exposure to British English has left me totally confused as to which is the American spelling. I can keep straight words like color/colour, but not the greys. The kitten's name seems to have turned out British - not unreasonable, since a sugar mouse is (was?) a British thing.

Happy Kitten Day Sept. 7

Little Kitten who will be Rex, October 2010

I can't resist posting this cute picture, from when the kittens were little, now, even though it's not October yet. Written October 8, 2011. First published Friday, May 31, 2013. Moved to Sept. 7, 2013.

I was thinking that Kitten Day (the day the kittens were born), was Oct.7, but when I checked my calendar, they were born in September. But before getting up on the morning of Oct.7, I kept telling Rex "Happy Kitten Day" - and he kept purring, kneading my neck, and putting his nose on my face.

This picture was taken when I was feeding the Little Kitten supplemental kitten formula, when he was just a few weeks old, and not getting enough to eat. After eating his tablespoon or 2 of formula out of a teaspoon, he would climb up on my shoulder and go to sleep.

After a couple of weeks, when he was almost this small, I named him Rex.

King of my heart.

Every day is Happy Kitten Day here.

Sat. Sept. 7, 2013 This morning Rexie had small puffs of spiderwebs decorating both his/her eyebrows. It looked very cute. We had some Happy Kitten Day purring and cuddling.

Mom's Applesauce Cake 12/10/2011

batik furoshiki from Japan

No, this isn't applesauce cake. This is a gorgeous hand-painted batik furoshiki she bought the year we were in Japan. I've always loved it, from long before I ever tried to do any batik.

Her applesauce cake recipe was in her old hand-written cook book, with notes for instance on how she cooked the turkey each year when I was a kid. She knew right where it was on a shelf when I asked her, and I made the cake the first week I was there, when she could still enjoy it.

The unfamiliar ingredient in this recipe is cornstarch. What is cornstarch doing in a cake recipe? Well, I think it is like putting it in apple pie; the cake can have lots of applesauce in it, and be moist, without falling apart. This recipe is from long before things like carrot cake and zucchini bread.

In fact, her cookbook says her mother got the recipe from Mom's godmother Mrs Dorsey Ridge.


Mom's Applesauce Cake      ( from Mrs. Dorsey Ridge, approx 1920)

Put in large bowl, then sift together:

2 cup flour
2/3 c sugar
1 tsp soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves or allspice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3 Tablespoons powdered chocolate (or cocoa is ok) (Kelvin doubles this)
1 T cornstarch
(pinch non-refined sea salt?)  (Her recipe did not call for any, but it seemed a little bland last time.)

Add and mix in:

1 c nuts  (she used walnuts) optional
1 c raisins

Add and stir in:

1 1/2 - 2 c sweetened applesauce  (1 1/2 may be more like she made, she said.)
1/3 c oil or melted butter  (Or I substitute yogurt sometimes.)

Turn into a buttered loaf pan.
Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes to 1 hour
until toothpick comes out clean.
Maybe cover with aluminum foil at the end, if it is getting too dark before the inside is done.

When I was a kid, she kept a canister of 6 times the dry ingredients mixed up. Then she could quickly take 3 cups of that mix to make a loaf.

Great toasted with butter for breakfast.


After Thanksgiving, when she was in the hospital bed, and had stopped eating solid food, I was heating in the microwave a piece of this cake I had made for my brothers' visit, and I heard her call loudly from the bedroom "Cut the bread! Cut the bread!"  I took a piece in there, and broke off a small corner to put in her mouth - and she smiled... so beatifically.


Dec 11, 2011
Just got the oven fixed, after more than a year when I couldn't bake. And the first thing I made, to take to the last day of class, was this applesauce cake. She always used to make it during the holidays, for my sister's and brothers' birthdays. 

Yesterday it was 2 years since she died. Just since the end of summer am I starting to get things done again.


July 13, 2013
I just made applesauce cake again last night. It's funny, I follow the recipe, but it isn't the same as her dense, dark cake. I even put in walnuts this time, like she did. Maybe it's the type of chocolate/cocoa. (I have Guittard, I think she had Hershey's in her cupboard.) And maybe she used her home-made applesauce. . .

The cake keeps well and stays moist.

Now that I've posted a sun halo, I guess I should show a sundog

picture from fall 2011

This picture is of a sundog, related to the halo. Often they come in pairs; this one was single. Called sundogs because they follow the sun around. There can be one on each side of it, at 22 degrees.

Since I learned that they exist, I've been seeing them 3 or 4 times a year. Before that, I never saw them, even during the years I worked outdoors, until the end when I knew about them.

This is the best one I've seen.

Update: for best sky pics, especially without a polarizing filter, try lowering your exposure by a stop or even 2 stops. Or, of course, do that afterwards in Photoshop by adjusting the exposure setting.

Aligned hexagonal ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. This one shows the prism-effect of spectral colors too.

It wasn't supposed to get to 100 degrees F the first week in June

June 8, 2013 sunset

But this year it did.*


Two years ago, the kittens and I were enjoying fires in the woodstove the first week of June. 

*Not here at this house among tall trees, on the brow of a hill, where it only got to the mid-90s. But in the neighboring town it did. Record-breaking heat for the whole of Northern California.

It wasn't supposed to snow this month… (5/17/11)

Broken oak

This oak tree lost its main upright top in the previous unseasonal storm, when the leaves were still on the trees, in November. The little bit of snow in this picture highlights the break and the giant branch on the ground. The branch that would have someday sheltered the house from late-afternoon, late-summer sun...

It snowed more than this though.

photo from May 15, 2011

Or I guess I could call this post "Iris squashed each spring". 

But not every spring...

It wasn't supposed to snow this month. . . . Friday the 13th at work? (from May15 2011)

Photo May 15, 2011

It hasn't yet this year, but that year it did.

It was Sunday morning, May 15th, that it snowed. This picture is from Monday morning, with patches of snow still, including this South side balcony, and the irises down below it.

But it never pays to count ones irises (before they're hatched). I didn't have a chance to make it to the quilt show either. Or to Empire Mine park to see the irises....

I have a superstition about that, honestly come by. Grandpa used to say "God willing and the creek don't rise."

For many years I have caught the bus to the nearby grocery store, and had 20 minutes to run in, get groceries, and back out to the bus stop before it comes back. (Although with the cutbacks in bus services the last several years, I now have a 15 minute walk uphill with the groceries, instead of  a level walk past 2 houses and down the driveway.)

And I usually say "With luck, I'll catch you on your way back" to let the driver know to look for me. But every time I have said instead "I'll catch you on your way back" I have missed the bus. Every time!


So I try not to assume anything will work out, just hope.

Here's the clouds from Friday the 13th, 2 days before the snow. They mean a storm is on the way in about 2 days, I think.

Rain on the roses

Wild roses April-May 2012

Not in this picture, which was taken last year. (I turned it in for the Digital Photography class. There's a tiny spider…) But the last few days have been some of the very few "precipitation events" we have had this year since the beginning of January. At least it helped to contain several early fires.

This week the air has been very soft and moist, with full clouds and intermittent rain. Warmish down in the valley, coolish here in the foothills. And rain on these naturalized old-fashioned roses, which bloom earlier than the modern types, the end of April usually, I think, and part of May.*

This year it did snow and close down campus one day. And it took the prof an hour to get out of the parking lot! I had walked home by then. It's only a 50-minute walk.

That's compared to a couple of years ago, when we lost several Thursdays of classes to snow, and the kittens and I were enjoying fires in the wood-stove in the first week of June.

Raindrops on dogwood May 7, 2013

 The regular dogwoods, the eastern one, had already finished blooming for quite some time before these started. I think these little trees may be fairly new - I don't remember seeing them blooming before.

 *I don't know what variety the roses are. They get no water and reliably bloom each year. Don't seem susceptible to powdery mildew, like the similar naturalized one up the hill by the house, that has climbed a small tree and taken it over.

Looking In October 25, 2010

Sugar Mouse out on porch, Oct. 25, 2010 9am

What is he looking at?

The kittens have escaped! They knocked over their kitten gate.
(shown in The Kitten Gate http://wrwcolors.blogspot.com/2011/04/kitten-gate.html)

I came down into this dining room, next to their pantry, and 3 kittens were exploring this room. As I looked for Little Kitten (Rex), one by one they started exploring through the glass door into the living room on the wall to the right. Spot was climbing the pile of firewood, and had to be grabbed before she started an avalanche.

And still no Rex.

Finally, I went into the living room, which was the room I fed him in. And in the chair all the way across the room, by the window, was the blanket we usually curled up in.

And in the blanket...

That little kitten, half the size of the others, had gone twice as far, to where he knew was a warm comfortable blanket, and climbed up the blanket into the chair!

And wriggled in under the blanket, making himself a warm nest.

Rex in blanket Oct 25, 2010 10am

That's my Rex-kitten.

A Mischief of Kittens 2013-2feb20

Photo taken Nov 1, 2010

Collective nouns. Traditionally there were many in English, mostly neglected or forgotten now. You may have heard of a murder of crows. Or, of course, a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep (or geese), a covey of quail.

The traditional collective noun for cats was clowder - a clowder of cats. Which happens to translate to clutter. And a clutter of cats is very appropriate as they lie around everywhere… in the bookcases, on the books… On top of my head!**

Although, going for walks with a bunch of cats, I always thought a covey of cats was appropriate for the way they eddied around my feet.

But for kittens, awake, lively kittens, boxing, or chasing each other or a bug, or busily randomizing the contents of my bedroom, (dumping over sorted boxes of papers and making a fort!) I do think a mischief of kittens is very right. (These names may not be original to me, I might have read them somewhere.)

And for innocent sweet sleeping kittens, certainly a clowder of kittens might work.

But for them all in a pile together, or next to my sides, or under my chin - a cuddle of kittens…

photo taken 2011

**Rex who still thinks he's a kitten, my kitten, insisted on sleeping on top of my head last night! (Update 2/21 — the last 2 nights.) He usually sleeps on my shoulder, leaning against the side of my face. Or under the covers next to me. But last night Buddy was with us inside for the first time, so the door to the room with the woodstove could be open. And Rex did not like Buddy's being on the bed (judging from the growling).

I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt. And part sitting up against the pillows. And Rex went up on top of my head, next to the pillow, and slept there for a long time. I think it might have been a sort of King of the Castle thing, but mostly "Mine - grrr".

Fraidy-cat Rexie

This is Rex's hiding place. 

All one summer, his first summer, he was afraid of the floor. He would walk very warily, looking everywhere for things that might be coming after him, or jump and run quickly across the dangerous crossings…

His sisters were locked up separately. And it took me a while to realize, but it was fan season. And any little bit of paper or dust bunny might jump out and chase him!

As soon as the fans were out of the windows he started calming down. And when his sisters were out with him, they weren't scared, just rambunctious.

And then he went into heat, and had other things to think of.

And the sisters could be with him all the time, since he was a she after all. So he pretty much got over it, and last summer wasn't much afraid of the floor at all.

But for awhile there, I was dust-mopping the bedroom and hall floors every day.

I usually came and went by the interior stairs, not the door out to the upstairs porch.

But once I came in that way, and found him up here hiding behind the closet door to the left. I think it was the first time he had been up on top of this eye-level bookcase.

There might have been a scary doorbell, and I might have been wearing large clumpy shoes.

Usually the closet door is not open, and this is not very hidden.

But it is still his hiding place.

Why I think of myself as a designer, not an artist - written July 15, 2011

 

Midnight Garden virtual batik - my fabric design at Spoonflower

 

Because one design inspiration gets used many times, in many forms, rather than being a one-of-a-kind artistic piece.

For instance, I did a stylized cat drawing in the '70s as letter paper. Then in the '80s, it became a silver pierced cat pin for my mother, then I did one for myself. Then later a smaller version to have cast, for my sister. Then in about 2002 I drew around it to make a fabric-type design to use in a color-theory class exercise. Just recently I finally scanned that and did a vector drawing, and a couple of different fabric designs at Spoonflower to go with the black-and-white fabric in a previous post. And this week, colored it as a virtual batik as one of several fabrics in a skirt design.

In the fabric above, the flowers are from a batik stamp I bought. It went through a couple of fabric-design versions. Then, for a limited palette contest a few months ago, I did this virtual-batik look with this new repeat. (Not these colors.)

I liked it, but wasn't quite happy with it. Now I know why. The flowers were lonely, They needed butterflies.

(That is, variations in scale, texture, and color. The butterflies, by their orientation, also add an effect of movement to the design.)

The butterflies were inspired by a butterfly picture outline, but I redesigned all the interior lines. I drew them in Photoshop to go with my fabric collection done from antique Japanese fabric stamps. The fine detail goes with the finely carved details in the stamps.

I did this fabric design with butterflies added for another limited-palette contest (although I left out the hot pink and orange and chartreuse). This contest was for butterfly designs. I intended to use several different butterfly drawings, but once I added this one, it was perfect.

And it just got 11th place in the contest!  My record. Lots of other people liked it too.

To see it as fabric, click the link in the title. It should be available for sale soon; I'm ordering a swatch. (2013 - now available.)

Remembering Tigrr (Musketeer) written June 15, 2011 8pm

Tiger (Musketeer) on my jacket - afternoon Dec 10 2009

This is Tiger in Mom's house, after I had come back from a long picture-taking session down at the beach, and a walk.

When she took him from me (1996), I had named him Musketeer, because of his gorgeous Puss-in-Boots coloring. (And he was an exhibit in my list of cat-names-as-self-fulfilling-disasters, since as he grew older he started beating up on everyone.)

I had picked him up (literally) at the feral cat feeding station, behind where I worked, after he'd been there a couple of weeks. Clearly he wasn't wild. Mom had driven down here; I offered him, but she had turned him down. And I was glad, because I was quite fond of him.

But on the day she was leaving, after I had left for work, he jumped up into her arms - and she just took him. Didn't even leave me a note. Took my cat carrier too, although I eventually, years later, got it back.

She sent a couple of pictures of him - all ruffled after the 2-day drive, and calmed down later. And a note written from his point of view.

When I got up to her place in fall 2009, her favorite cat had had to be put down, and Tiger was coming out and sitting on laps and being friendly. He spent a lot of time on her lap at the table, and then on the bed with her. She said "Tiger is trying to help". She also said, looking at her array of pills on the table"I don't know whether I'm supposed to take these pills, or give them to the cat"... Then he started losing weight, and his eyes became totally dilated, but he apparently could still see.

The vets up there and down here did not figure out what was wrong with him, but it may have been a version of the FIP that probably killed Sugar Mouse. It has been amazing that he lasted so long, as skinny as he was. He was eating a can or more of cat food a day, or when he stopped eating that sometimes, baby food.

This week was supposed to be a trip again to Camano, but it got put off. Good thing, because I needed to be here.

Once he stopped being able to walk around, and stopped eating for the last time, I locked the others out on the balcony, put a clean t-shirt on his reflective warm pad on the kitchen floor near the heater, and tried to spend as much time in the chair nearby as I could. School over for the spring, and unemployed. I slept in the chair mostly - and came to really hate that chair. (When I'm tired I get very crabby, and that thing would easily go into an uncomfortable position, but only with great difficulty into a comfortable one - and then it wouldn't stay there.)

He was mostly asleep, but the first several days, he would wake up every couple of hours, and could drink some water put into his mouth with a syringe. Then he slept for over a day, but did wake up one final time and take a little water, the morning of the day he died.

Over all it lasted about 6 days. I wasn't there when he died, but away for a couple of hours.

We should all be so lucky, going quietly and peacefully, in our own home, not thirsty, and with company nearby.

Saying Goodbye to Tiger & Pandora

Tiger (Musketeer) and Pandora in chair (with Bob pillow) - taken Dec 30, 2010

Usually I have been good about posting these. This time not.

Pandora died last summer, July 17, 2012. Although she had been going downhill, and I was trying to get her to eat canned food, at the end it only was 2 days or so. I put her in the tub, with a warm pad, to have the water drip available, since she wasn't able to hold her head up to drink out of the dish. And one morning, I put her in the room with this chair, and after her sunny spot went away, she crawled across the room. So I put her out on the balcony to get a little more sun. Buddy came over and said hello/goodby. He misses his friend. She was 20, I think.

Tiger (Tigrr, Musketeer) died at the beginning of the previous summer, June 14, 2011. It was hard to believe he could last so long, a year and a half of so unbelievably skinny - and eating a can or 2 of cat food a day. Then at the end (luckily a trip I was supposed to take was rescheduled), after he stopped being able to move around, I put him on the warm pad on the kitchen floor, near this chair in the next room. For the first 4 days or so, he woke up every couple of hours, and took a little water from a syringe in his mouth. Then he was out for 1½ or 2 days, and then on his last day, woke up again and took a little water.

I spent 6 days in this chair, to be near him, but he died while I was away. I hate this chair.