StrangeRanger

A Memorial Day Weekend

It's a long weekend for us, here at ChezRanger.  The weather is lovely, we're in modestly good health and the cat is, as always, magnificent.

Thank you!

We are spending some time thinking about friends and family in the military who have given their time, their efforts and their blood (and, in one case, the hearing in one ear) to our nation.  For what it is worth, we are humbly grateful for your sacrifices.  

Since the weather has been so nice, our neighbor Ed has been out with Matilda, letting her roam about.  Matilda likes to have her walkabouts and often ends up on our porch.  If our door is open, she checks out what we're doing and asks to come in.

Hi Guys!  Open the door whydoncha?!?  Looks like you're having fun!  Can I come in and play?!?

Poor girl doesn't understand that we're doing her a favor by keeping her out.

Damn Skippy you are!  

Seriously.  Once when I was a bit careless at the front door, Maddie got out and chased Matilda off our porch, off our property and off our neighbor's property.  I think it's for the best that these two never meet face to face again.

Oh poo.

We hope you all have a good week.  Think kindly, if you will, of those out there doing their duty in the military.  

Nonplussed

From the first of our relationship LadyRanger has had a coffee table that was given to her by her parents.  It was one of the first pieces they bought as newlyweds back in the 1950s.  It's a lovely, simple piece of birch, plainly finished and, I think, quite elegant.  It's been the centerpiece of a working living room for over 50 years and had absorbed a moderate amount of punishment, as well as the usual wear and tear.  I believe there's a story about it almost claiming the life of my future bride when she was a wee beast, but it's been on its best behavior since.

We decided to refinish the old thing.  It was looking pretty rough, as I'm sure you've seen in my pictures if you've looked past the very lovely Maine Coon cat. 

Stripped the old finish, sanded a bit and applied Tung Oil.  Easy peasy.  The result?  Lovely, I think. Though no professional would claim the job, I think we did quite well.

Of course, there's been one problem.

Aw, jeez guys!  I'd just gotten it smelling right.  Had it all set up just the way I like it, too.

Maddie's been avoiding the table since we put it back in its spot.  I'm sure she'll ge used to it pretty soon.  Maybe.

I'm going to have to think about this, you know.  Initial indications are not good, either.

Update:  she sat on it.  It has been accepted.  All is well.

Easter Sunday

I wish you all a Happy Easter Sunday.

Oddly, the suggestion of an early morning easter-egg hunt was not greeted with enthusiasm here.

Nah.  I'm good.  Thanks though.

Really?  Don't want to wander through the nice, cool, dew-ey grass?

Do I look like I want that?  Look...when there's eggs stuffed with turkey and Laughing Cow cheese, come get me. Otherwise?  Not so much.  K?

In the face of such indifference, what could I do?  I did happen to glance out over the sunny yard, though, and what do you think I saw?  Matilda (otherwise known as Puddin') the neighbor cat!  Some of you might remember that Matilda is the local relative of the Cheshire Cat, given to appearing and disappearing via tesseract.  I barely managed to catch a pic of her popping into this reality, obviously looking to score an easter egg!

(please note:  I'm pretty sure that the space/time distortions evident in this remarkable photo are due to the "cheshire effect" oft commented upon by Professor Hawking and *not* by the 77 year-old window glass this photo was taken through)

I casually mentioned this remarkable phenomenon to Maddie, then having a wash on the bed.  Her response?

What?!?  Another CAT is bogarting MY eggs?!?  In MY yard?!?  Let's go!!!

Typical, really.

Have a joyous Easter everyone.

Nurse Maddie

For the last nine days, Chez Ranger has been stricken with sinus/bronch-itis.  I've felt like mud and LadyRanger's been under the weather.  Even Nurse Maddie has been hit by rapid-fire feline sneezing fits.  I  seem to be ever so slowly on the mend (thanks to a kind doctor and modern pharmacology) but I worry that LR is about to descend into the depths of the funk.  No.  Fun.  Nurse Maddie's duty roster just grows larger.  She's been doing the classic nurse "thing".

She wakes us up several times a night to check on us.  There's nothing like being awoken at 2:00 a.m. with a familiar furry face carefully sniffing your breath.  We call it, of course, the "CAT scan".

<sigh>  Of course you do.  I was hoping for a better joke, but clearly the recent illness has addled your brain.  Is it *all* snot up in there?

I hope you all will forgive my lameness, and enjoy the vintage picture.

Tax Day

Early every February, on a Saturday, ChezRanger does its taxes.  Saturdays afternoons are usually restful around here.  We get our chores and workouts done and chill to the afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera.  I'm not a huge fan of opera, or a serious serious opera maven like my sister-in-law, but I do enjoy most of what's been broadcast, and the intermission commentary always teaches me something.  I find that I like the more lyrical operas.  I really enjoyed La Fille du Regiment and Le Comte Ory, which I hadn't ever heard all the way through (or, if I'm to be honest, even heard of...).  There are the biggies, like La Boheme, Tosca and others which have delighted me.  A View from a Bridge I just couldn't listen to. 

Anyways, there we were at the dining table, all set up, papers in order, pencils and wits sharpened, ready to compute.  Maddie sat at the table with us, ready to check our math.

Subtract!  Borrow from the tens place!  Carry the eleventy!  Bring down the six!  If you clowns don't do the math right there'll be no money for treats and turkey!  Subtract!

She was most helpful.

We had the radio on.  What was the opera?

Gotterdammerung.

 

Yep.  Wagners Twilight of the Gods.  Not a Good Omen for tax-time.

Gotterdammerung.  Egads.

Well, it did all turn out well in the end. 

The taxes, not the opera.  Didn't owe, getting a small refund.  All is well.

Siegfried and Brunhilda, though.....not so much.

Maddie?  She enjoys Wagner.  She sat in my lap and purred through the last 2 hours, then decided to re-enact the opera for us.

I am ded.  Sing pretty to me.  Then feed me!

Not sure that last part is in the opera, but okay.  Consider it done.

 

Good Times

Enjoying some good times here at Chez Ranger.  The sinus infection has been chased away at last, which allowed me to actually enjoy celebrating LadyRangers birthday!  (w00t!)  We've had a very mild winter so far.  Mid 60's this last part of January and projected into February, so the garden is starting to look a bit like spring.  Just in time for the inevitable big freeze to kill everything.  Been lazy on the new pic-taking, but here's a vision of Maddie doing what she loves to do every spring (or spring-like winter)...

Yep, looking out the window at the newness.

Happy New Year and some happenings at the Winter Palace

Happy New Year to all and sundry on the 'Net!  We hope you've had an excellent start to 2012, and that the year to come lives up to it's promise for all of you.

Just got back from the Winter Palace.  We had a lovely visit with LadyRanger's parents and sister.  The star attraction was, of course, their cat Tabby.

She's still a bit skittish around people, but I'm sure that you can see that she is quite the sweetie.  And a wonderful athlete!  This is a cat that could play goalie for *any* team in the NHL.  As long as they were shooting paper balls or mylar crinkles.  Nothing gets by this cat.  I wish I could have gotten some video, but she's shy around technology combined with strangers.  Did have a chance to hand out some head pats though, and was grateful for the chance.

Grateful?  And well you should be.

And how did Maddie fare? you ask.  She had the usual annoying trip up and back in her carrier, but she weathered it well.  She was mostly confined to our bedroom, since we did not want the two combative cats to come face to face.  LR's parents confined Tabby in the rec room downstairs a few times so that Maddie could come out and wander about.  Maddie had a good time sniffing around the tree.  What did Maddie do the rest of the time?  Read, mostly.  Here's a shot of Maddie bogarting *my new Patrick O'Brian novel*!

Oh that Lucky Jack Aubrey is *so* dreamy!  A man's man!  I wonder if he needs a ship's cat!  And I'd bet that Maturin would be a good vet, if I got too sea-sick!  <sigh>

Okay, I'm not as wild about them as Maddie is, but they are roaring good books.  About the only novel I read at this point.

I'd like to leave you with a pic with a special meaning to me.  One that will go about half unexplained, but hey, no harm done really.

May you have your loved ones about you all the year in one way or another.  May you prosper.  May you find both contentment and growth. 

Happy New Year.

A Time of Tumult

It has been one heck of a week here at Chez Ranger.  We took Maddie in to the Veterinary Surgeon last Tuesday.  After looking at the x-rays (and the cat) she told us that Maddie was probably in consistent discomfort from the knee, if not also the hips.  She told us that the surgery would improve Maddie's quality of life and that she was confident that it would work.  Since post-op care involves confining Maddie and doing some rehab (knee-hab) we decided to go ahead and have the surgery done that day so that we could have the initial (and most involving) stages of post-op done before I have to go back to school in three weeks and can be home to help LadyRanger manage.  Not easy leaving Maddie at the vet and driving off, but we believe it was for the best.

We got her back on Wednesday.  The operation was a success.  The doc deepened the groove in the femur that the patella and the patellar ligament track in (actually, really *created* the groove, since Maddie didn't have one.) and relocated the ligament's anchor point on the tibia to the spot it's supposed to be.  Maddie now has pins in her tibia.  The best news is that the arthritis in the knee is not nearly as bad as our two vets had supposed.  Only "mild to moderate arthritis".  The knee had to be rebuilt to keep it that way, but Maddie is in better shape that we had a right to expect.  Anyway...they glued her up, gave her some pain-killer that ends in "-orphine" and sent her home with us. 

Hmmm...I don't remember any tequila....but, by the look of things, there was a lot of it...I hope I had fun.  I must have.... I wake up shaved, sutured and sore in a Tiajuana jail...yep, there was tequila involved.....

Poor Girl.  Actuall, there are no stiches.  They put her back together with the veterinary variation of Super Glue.  How cool is that?  Here's the incision:

 
See?  Not icky at all.  We were going to try to not use the collar on her, but as soon as we got home she started licking the wound.  Maddie's always been a fanatical groomer, so we think the collar will have to stay on for another week or so, 'til the skin heals up.

The hardest part of this, for all of us, is confinement.  The vet is recommending 8 weeks of cage-time.  We've got her in a 2.5 by 4 foot cage with an extra space under our desk for the litter box.  The vet does *NOT* want Maddie free to roam about on her reconstructed knee, and if she's confined, she'll most likely just lie around.

 

Yeah, like there's *anything* else to to in here.  Jerks.
 

We're calling her cage the "Mewlag"  (rhymes with Gulag).  Sometimes she drags her plastic collar back and forth across the bars, demanding to see her PETA lawyer...  We were told that we could take her out and have unlimited lap time as long as she didn't go walkies or jump.  We're trying to give her a decent amount of time outside.

Here she is on one of her parole visits to the bed.  Went over as much as possible with her favorite brush, since she really can't groom right now.  Big purrs.  She sits on the couch to watch movies with us, too, but she is frustrated that she isn't allowed to walk where and when she wants.  only 7 more weeks...

Maddie does not seem to be in great discomfort, and she's walking, albeit a bit unsteadily, on the leg.  She's using the litterbox fine, though she doesn't like the new, vet-recommended litter (it doesn't stick to incisions).  Thursday night I had the door of the Mewlag open and was lying in it giving her pats and treats after her dose of -orphine.  She jumped right over me to get out.  We got her back in immediately.  No harm seems to have been done.  Whew!

She does not seem to mind having the bald spots.  They even had to shave a spot on each fore-leg for I-V's.

 

Maddie's such a big cat that it's kind of a shock to realize her legs are so delicate.

Well, send Maddie your well-wishes.  We've a follow-up appointment in a week or so to see how things are going.  We'll keep you all up on the news.  Thanks!
 

 

 

 

Enthusiasm...

...the lilacs have it!

As does the redbud tree.

The cat?  Not so much.

Lilacs?  Whee.  Tell you what...you let me know when the turkey blooms and I promise I'll be properly ecstatic.

I've Said It Before....

...and I'll say it again:  I'm amazed that a micro-organism can make such a mockery of my place in the food chain.  Sinus infection = ick.  Maddie is being a wonderful Nurse-Kitty.  Gotta get her a little paper nurse hat.  Enjoy the pic of a lovely cat.