Okay, we quilters know that any quilt is the cat’s quilt if and whenever he wants it and can get to it to decorate it with his fur, but sometimes they do have their own quilts as well. Shadow has his up on top of the shelf unit that serves as my computer desk. It’s nice and warm up there, and he can see the world, or make plans to pounce on Patches when he comes in the room:

This particular quilt really is a cat quilt, since the pattern is pieced kitties and flowers. I made this years ago, way back in the beginning of the whole quilting addiction. It wasn’t always meant to be the cats’ quilt, but somehow along the way it became one. Our old kitty CB used it daily until she passed away, and then it sat in a bag for a bit until GuitarGirl would let me wash it. She was quite attached to CB, and was adamant that I not wash the quilt after CB went to kitty heaven. Now Shadow uses it almost daily.

I quilted it with some decorative machine stitches that were on my Pfaff 955 that I had back then. I had no clue what I was doing, and I couldn’t figure out how else to quilt it. The binding is a bit on the sad side (had no idea how to do that either at the time), and now it’s coming undone in the bargain. I’d take a picture of the actual quilt (once he gets done with his snooze), but it’s likely so covered with cat hair that it wouldn’t actually be worth it! I dug the pattern out of the closet and scanned the font of it:

Even back then, I couldn’t just make the pattern like it’s shown; I had to make things complicated and do a black background, and then some of the flowers were too dark, and I think that added to the whole “how do I quilt this” quandary. The pattern even had suggested quilting designs in it, but that was also before I knew how to free motion machine quilt, there were too many curves in the quilting patterns, and I wasn’t doing it by hand for sure!

Being the packrat that I am, I’m keeping the pattern around. It’s not available anymore as far as I can tell, and you never know when you might need something like this for whatever reason. (I use that reasoning for a LOT of things which is why my house is too small. Note that I don’t have too much stuff, it’s the house that’s too small!) I don’t think I’d ever make it again, but maybe one of my kids will someday. It doesn’t take up much space in the overall scheme of things.

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Today was one of those days where I despair of getting anything done at all. Poor Patches had to spend part of the morning at the veterinarian’s office for an exploratory teeth cleaning. The vet decided to remove two of this teeth, and when I picked him up he wasn’t doing too well. I spent the day either driving back and forth to the vet (three hours total, in two chunks), or keeping cats separated.

Shadow is still young enough that when I brought Patches home all groggy from the vet, I thought it would be best to keep them apart, since the last thing Patches needed was to have Shadow jumping all over him. Patches seems to be feeling better now, though he’s starving and I can’t feed him yet because of his teeth. And other than that, he hates me because I’m the bad mommy who stuck him in the cage and took him to the bad place that made him hurt. I hate it when I have to be the bad mommy.

Now the vet is recommending a special prescription diet for him because it’s official: he’s obese. Yeah, so he weighs 18+ pounds, but he’s just a big cat. Or so I keep telling myself, and anyone else who inquires as to his fitness level. When he came to live here, we think he was 8-9 months old, and he weighed 12 pounds, which was already pretty big. Neutering and an indoor life have taken it’s toll on his girlish figure, leaving him a bit, shall we say, portly? Good thing he’s not much of a lap cat.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to make him skinny. I’ve been buying Science Diet Adult Light for years, to little or no effect. He never gets table scraps, and he always seems hungry. I try to play with him, but he’s lazy (maybe because he’s so fat?!?), and he doesn’t climb the cat tree anymore since it fell out from under him twice a couple of years ago when ITMan didn’t get it solidly installed between the floor and ceiling. I’m sure you’ve seen those pics of kitties hanging from tree branches that say “Hang in there baby” right? That was poor Patches, hanging from the cat tree as it swayed. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m not sure what the deal is with cats and sitting in or on whatever you’re working with. Every cat I’ve ever had or heard of has issues like this, so it must be an attention thing. “Mom’s paying too much attention to those papers, that fabric, the quilt, this book, so I shall sit on it.” It’s just life with a cat. I’ve been decluttering a bit around the house, so Shadow decided to try out the Longaberger Bread Basket that I’d emptied of it’s previous contents and left at the back of my cutting table:

This basket fascination continued off and on all day long once he’d discovered the spot. He made himself even more comfortable toward the end of the day. Since it probably really is an attention thing and maybe what he really wants is to be famous, we submitted one of the other pics to I Can Has Cheezburger?:

moar funny pictures

If you’re not familiar with the LOLcats, check out the I Can Has Cheezburger? site for more funny captioned cat pictures (and the occasional non-feline participant). Bad spelling and grammar in giant white letters is the norm there. I don’t visit too often, because I can spend (read: waste) quite a lot of time just laughing at the pictures and funny captions which isn’t too great for productivity! If you’re so inclined, you can click the captioned photo above to go to the page where you can vote on Shadow’s picture. With enough votes, maybe the attention seeker will make it to the front page of the site!

Then this morning, the little twerp was cuter yet as he made himself more comfortably at home, with a pose and look even more suited to the caption I put on the previous photo:

Now you know the answer: yes, an 11.5lb cat can fit in a Longaberger Bread Basket, just in case you ever really need to know. He’s been in and out of the thing more times than I can count today. He doesn’t just stay in there because if I get up and leave the room, he simply must be on my tail until I come back. I wonder how long this basket fixation will go on?? Maybe I should find him a bigger one…

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