Weekend Fun

Now for the rest of my weekend:

I left you reading about the Oak Harbor tree lighting and the annual Holiday Stroll. Our stroll began at 4:00pm and the first place we went to was Paint Your World pottery shop, which has become my newest addiction. After 2 ladies nights at this store, I have decided that I love it, and love painting pottery, and I had a mission this time to paint something in remembrance of a special animal in my life.

Last Christmas, I was traumatized by the death of my beautiful, 8 month old kitten. Cledus had feline leukemia, which he had previously tested negative for, so we didn't know that he was sick. 5 days after Christmas, we were in the emergency vet's office, crying hysterically, and saying goodbye to the greatest pet that I have ever known. I still don't know what it was about Cledus, but he was truly a light in my life, and meant more to me than any of my other pets ever have. Its amazing how a tiny, sick little kitten had the ability to effect my life so much, but he did. Its because of Cledus that we have gone into our own version of animal rescue. I often find myself wondering if he was meant to come into our lives for a reason, and only for a short time period of 7 months. The cats we have now, wouldn't be in our lives if it wasn't for him, and for that I am grateful to him. When he died, Mr. V and I educated ourselves on feline leukemia, and began trapping and spaying/neutering outdoor feral cats. Cats that are spayed/neutered are not as likely to contract FeLv, so in the aftermath of Cledus' death, I set out on a "Save the cats of the world from feline leukemia" mission. We currently have another 8 month old kitten in our lives. He was born to a feral mother who tried to abandon him the moment he was born. I look back and realize that if Cledus hadn't died, we never would have trapped Velvet (who has been rehomed into another loving home.). Velvet would have given birth to Meepers outside in the swamps of Florida, and Meepers would have died within days, if not hours, of his birth. Instead, Meepers was born in our bathtub, and we bottle fed him to supplement the feedings that his mother wasn't giving him. Now we have a healthy, vibrant kitten living in our house, and I often think about the fact that he wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Cledus. Thoughts like that are what prevent me from crying, when I look back and think about Cledus and the shock of his death.

So back to pottery...
I had painted a cat ornament of my kitten Meepers, a few weeks ago. I wanted to go back and paint an ornament to remember Cledus by, especially now, when remembering his death has been taking its toll on me again. I remember his death being so close to Christmas, so it has been on my mind a lot in recent days. I ended up not painting an ornament of him, but a small bank instead. The bank is a small kitten, that I painted to resemble him in the best way that I could. It won't hold a lot of money, but we decided to put spare change into the bank, and when the bank is full, count the change and add it to an emergency animal fund, for future use. Mr. V wasn't going to sit there and just watch me paint my kitten bank, so he found himself a large moose holding a "welcome" sign and set out to paint that. The moose is so big, that it is still at the pottery shop, waiting for him to come back and finish painting it. I laughed at him for painting it, but I think it will be a nice addition to our home, especially here in the Northwest!

We ate dinner that night at a really good Thai restaurant in town and then came back home. Since I have been taking a quilting class I've become obsessed with fabric and quilts and now I want to make a quilt for every season and every event. Quilt making is very time consuming though, since many, many small pieces have to be sewn together to fit perfectly. On Black Friday, we went shopping at Joann's and I found this REALLY cute Christmas cats fabric. Its a very busy fabric, filled with several different cats. Since I decided that several of the cats on the fabric look similar to my own, I bought 7 1/2 yards of the fabric and decided to make a blanket, not a quilt with it. I thought I would just sew the 3 large pieces of fabric together, then add the batting and a backing fabric and I would have a blanket. Apparently, that is easier said than done. I mistakenly assumed that sewing 3 pieces of fabric together would be much easier and faster than sewing a bunch of small pieces of fabric together. However, I accounted for the fact that I would have to line up the design perfectly in order for the blanket to look good. What I didn't account for is the fact that that is easier said than done. After over an hour of pinning and re-pinning the fabric, I set out to sew it together. I made it about 1/4 of the way down the fabric before everything went wrong. Somehow I managed to keep the fabric lined up for the beginning of the sewing, but I managed to pull the fabric in several different random directions, leaving me with 2 pieces of fabric sewed partially correct, and the rest sewn like I just threw some fabric into the sewing machine and just stitched it up wherever I felt like it. Right now, the 2 rectangular pieces of fabric don't even resemble a rectangle or a square right now. Obviously this is going to be a much harder project than I thought it would be.

On Sunday, I woke up feeling pretty sick, which is when I realized that I must have been getting sick for a few days. I still managed to drag myself out of bed and get ready for our anual cat pictures with Santa!! Yes. I take the cats for pictures with Santa every year. Petsmart takes $5 of every picture purchased and donates it to local animal shelters, so my argument for harassing the cats is that its for a good cause. We packed up 8 of the 9 cats (cat #9 still won't come near us voluntarily), and headed off to Burlington. Usually, we just let Santa hold a cat and we stay out of the picture, but since we have aquired many more cats this year, Mr. V and I got in the picture with them, in an attempt to take only 3 pictures instead of 8, and save some money. Here is a link to my google picture site with a scanned version of the Santa pictures: (they are grainy but its the best I could do with low quality pictures and a scanner)
Petsmart Christmas 2008

And that brings me to the end of my weekend :-).