WHO’S A BAD BLOGGER?

I know, I know, it's me! My apologies to my ‘fans’ (I know you’re out there, somewhere). The past two weeks have been a little crazy between school work and SD being away (he’s back now – yeah!). How do you folks with children manage to get so much done when I only had myself and the pets to care for??? High achievers, I figure…

My trip to Toronto to IIDEX was great! The girls and I really enjoyed ourselves. How can you not like Toronto when they have chocolate bars this big???

My apologies to Renee for not staying in the city longer to go on a yarn crawl. I will take a rain check on that idea though, my dear!

The other reason things have been crazy is partially due to this little creature. Remember I said that we were going to wait to get another cat?!? Meet Checkers. She is from the Ottawa Humane Society and we have only had her living with us since Sunday when I picked her up from the Kanata Super Pet. SD may have reason to be a little concerned about other new pets moving into the house the next time he’s away!

The Humane Society here has some of their animals housed at local pet store adoption centres so that they get more ‘face time’ with the public. Her adoption is still through the Humane Society despite the fact that Checkers was located at a Super Pet. Her Humane Society name was ‘Obsidian’ (I think they were getting low on coming up with new pet names) so I decided to change it. The name ‘Checkers’ may not be original but it seems to fit her. She is in solitary confinement in our office (thus, she is currently around my feet) for two weeks. Two weeks is suggested because of the risk of transmission of disease from her to Para and Tobi. After that, we try the introduction with our other cat and dog. I am not really worried about Para meeting Checkers as she has lived with cats ever since we’ve had her. I am more concerned about Tobi as introducing female cats is sometimes a long term problem but have my fingers crossed that this will work out.

Checkers is about two years old and has already earned the title ‘Chubby Checkers’ from SD! She isn’t really tubby, actually. She saw the vet yesterday and they said that her weight was fine. Most cats are heavier than our Tobi who is our baseline for cat weight.

Checkers does, however, have some bad sores around her mouth that the vet attributed to an allergic reaction to either plastic dishes (she used those at the pet store but we use stainless steel) or her food. We are slowly changing her food to a hypoallergenic brand and she also received an allergy shot yesterday that should last about 2 months and help the swelling and itchiness around her mouth go down so that the sores can heal up.

And, with all the excitement, where’s my knitting? Certainly not to be found in the same room as Checkers. I think our new little cat will find yarn more exciting than I’m comfortable with! Here’s my wee bit of progress on the mystery project. Believe it or not, this is real progress. I'm afraid it's been SSCd (that means 'Second Sleeve Cursed'). I know this pattern, I've already knit it once, and I cannot tell you how many times I've frogged and tinked it back in the first 2 inches! Argh! However, tomorrow's another day...