This is our oldest furry baby, Tabby. She is 8 years old and the most gentle and timid cat I know. Although she's an indoor cat, she has taken a fancy to the outside world lately. She loves to hang out in the backyard with the doxies. Perhaps I indulged in her fancy too much because... One night last week, I woke up at 3am to let one of the doxie outside, and Tabby jumped out the door before I could stopped her. After 5 minutes of playing tease-n-chase with her... her teasing and I'm chasing, I decided that she's not ready to go back inside and that John could let her back in when he's up in an hour. I was not worried that she would leave the yard because she doesn't.
Well, the doxie and I went back to bed.... only to be awaken after 40 minutes by an awful howling noise. It only took me a couple seconds to realize that it was Tabby's. I was out of bed in a heartbeat and ran downstairs. John said that he's never seen me bolted out of bed and moved so quickly... he he... we can laugh about it now...
Anyway, Tabby was still crying when I got to the door. I opened the door; she flew in from the side of the house. Clearly, she was shaken by something because she ran upstairs and hid in my closet. John went outside, both front and back yards, to see what's out there but didn't see anything... except for the neighbors' dogs were barking... probably from Tabby's cry.
Things calmed down, and Tabby finally came out of the closet for me to take a closer look at her. Upon close inspection, I found a patch of hair missing and scratches on her back. So an appointment with the vet was in order. Her injury seemed superficial with a little bit of swelling and pus forming due to the sores. We walked away with medication for the infection and hopeful that she will not need surgery 'cause we caught it early. After a couple days with medication, Tabby is back to herself or so we thought...
Here we are a week later and a revisit to the vet. Tabby's swollenness didn't get bigger but it didn't go away neither and now needed surgery to drain the build up fluid.
As it turn out, her injury is a lot deeper than we thought including the doctor. Whatever that tried to get her had claws. We concluded that it must have been an owl because of the sizes of the scratch marks on her, we heard owl screeches before, and John had seen the actual owl.
Here she is after the surgery... shaved back and drain tubes. Those tubes and stitches will come out on Saturday or Monday.
Despite her discomfort, Tabby is a true trooper; she is still sweet and gentle as ever.
I think her outside escapades will end here though. But I'm concern that if an owl tried to pick up an 11+ lbs. cat, will it able to pick up the little doxies? :-[
It was a blast making these string blocks, not to mention that it was also mindless sewing. I like to do them when I need not to think but just power sew.... just pick up one string and sew to the foundation, then add another string, then another string, then another string...
The funny thing about this quilt top is that while I was piecing the blocks for the last row, I ran out of dryer sheets! I couldn't believe that I actually ran out of sheets! Do you know how many loads of laundry a family of five need to do a week?!! A lot! But here I am with no dryer sheets, so I was constantly looking for a laundry load to do. As it turned out, the kiddos forgot to save them for me and have been throwing out the sheets when they do laundry. Then I was constantly reminding them to not throw it out, hence, the name Don't Throw It Out! :-)
