Sleeping Baxter

This is Baxter after I leave for work in the morning. He takes my spot in bed, and he sleeps like a human with his head on the pillow. Please note that we did not put him in this position. We just put the sheet over him to keep him from getting too cold.

If he can't get comfortable in bed, he finds other interesting places to sleep. Like this bucket. He is a little too big to fit comfortably.

Baby Cat

Baby cat got sick last week. On Thursday night we were up almost all night because she was throwing up! So we went to the vet on Friday. She had some kind of intestinal sickness...she got a shot to help stop the throwing up and some amoxicillin for the infection. Poor baby. Today she is finally back to normal. But in the time she was sick, she spent a lot of days just sleeping and occasionally throwing up. She didn't even eat for a while. And giving her the medicine was impossible!

We were supposed to give her a whole dropper full of medicine...1 ml...two times a day. First of all it took both of us. One to hold her still and the other to try to put the medicine in her mouth. Second, we tried bundling her up in blankets so she couldn't scratch us, but her arms always got out. We have some nasty scratches. Third, holding her still was impossible. She is super squirmy. All arms and legs and tail. And she moved her head around a lot so most of the medicine ended up all over her face or on her neck and chest. She was sick enough that she didn't bathe herself for a while and had pink medicine caked into her fur for a few days. Lastly, whatever medicine did make it into her mouth was not swallowed. She did NOT want to swallow it, so she would just hold it in her mouth. She drooled a lot and the medicine just drooled out of her mouth. Arg.

What I really don't understand is this: if she was too sick to eat or drink or bathe, how come she had enough strength and energy to fight us so hard during medicine time?

Here's Baxter

Our New Home

Here are some pictures of our new place. Beatrice is in the window on one of the pictures. Can you find Baxter?

Work Room


Bedroom





Living Room


Dining Room


Kitchen

Guest Room

Baxter is King of the Fridge

Here you can see Baxter defending his castle while two villians seek to put grafiti on his newly found home.

This might look like a picture of Baxter, but it is really a picture of the pillows I made. Crafty, huh.

Congratulations, Baxter!

Baxter (pictured here) is half way to his weight loss goal. His veterinarian put him on a diet: In August, he weighed 18 pounds. He has been eating diet cat food, and is now a slimmer 15 pounds. (We went to the vet on Friday.) He still has 3 pounds to go; the vet says 12 pounds would be healthy for a cat his size (big boned).

For those who are interested, he has been on the cat version of the Atkins diet. It actually works for cats because they are carnivores and their bodies aren't made to process grains. Most cat food, the vet told us, are made mostly of corn or wheat grain, and since cats can't process corn and grain, they gain weight. The "diet" cat food is made from meat stuff, which cats' bodies can process, so they lose weight. Interesting, huh.

This has an interesting lesson: Diet by eating foods that are appropriate for your body and your metabolism, instead of jumping on dieting fads or weirdo diet pills.




On the other hand, Beatrice (pictured above) has gained 2 pounds since we moved here. She is also eating the diet cat food, but doesn't get as much exercise as she used to. In our Provo house, we had stairs and lots of space for her to run and jump and do cat stuff. This apartment is too small for running and jumping. She is also bored now and gets into lots of trouble. She opens cupboards and takes the stuff out. She scratches the furniture. She pushes stuff off shelves.

This has two valuable lessons:

1. Diet alone isn't good enough. Combine diet with exercise.
2. Boredom = Mischief. True with cats. True with Ben. Probably true for everyone.

Here are the cats taking a nap with Ben. He is in the bed, and they are on the couch next to the bed.












Here the cats are looking out the front door. We have kind of like 1/2 French doors, and the cats like to look out at the world. Sometimes people walk by, and sometimes crickets come in underneath the door. It doesn't reach all the way to the ground. They like to play with the crickets. Baxter hisses as them a lot. I don't like them to play with the crickets because they don't kill them right away. They play with it and somehow pull all the legs off. I try to catch them before that happens and release the cricket back out into the wild.

Baxter the Baby

Some of you know that Baxter was sick. He wouldn't drink so we had to feed him. Here are some pics.