One Year

July came and went, all to quickly, it feels like. A year ago, mid-July, I was at my daughter's for a visit and the annual Spectacular Death meet-up. If you remember, I returned home with memories and a new fur baby.

How could it be a year now, that Hamlet's lived with us? I almost don't remember what it was like to have only 2 cats. He plays chase with Pilchard and, occasionally, Mija. He's a fount of energy. He's adapted to life with us or maybe we've adapted to him; who really knows.

The big change is Hamlet himself.

He takes up a lot more real estate than in July 2016.

I also note that, because he's more of a lover than the other two ever were, they are starting to demand lap time to curl up and sleep. Pilchard used to sit, for at least 2 hours or until the feeling started leaving my knees and I'd have to move her. Then, with Hamlet demanding attention, she quit sitting in my lap. She's back to that now, although not as long as before he came here. Mija just recently started wanting my lap when I'm sitting down with my feet up.

And there's the lying on mom when she's trying to sleep. I get that he was probably dumped too soon and I'm mom cat, but 1:30 in morning is not a good time to climb up my chest and lie down. Because he does it, Mija's been doing it. I don't want to have to shut them out of the bedroom, but I need a full night's sleep.

I'm trying an experiment this month with Feliway. Around the 10th of every month, I've been replacing the bottle because it's run out and I notice more antagonism between the cats. This month, things seems to be quieter so I have not replaced the empty bottle with fresh. So far, knock on wood, we are doing okay. I'd rather they just learned to live together and not have to rely on pheromones to do so. Maybe we've reached that point. We'll see.

Love my boy. I still call him "kitten britches", although he's hardly a kitten anymore. I was worried about adding another cat into the household, but rescue makes you do strange things, like rub the belly of a lap sleeping cat because, at 15 pounds, he's slowly cutting off the circulation to my feet.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Costuming

I don't get invited to parties. That's not an "Oh woe is me" statement. I'm always uncomfortable at a party, anyway, unless I know people willing to let me hang around with them. I don't do the wander up and commence speaking very well. I can hold my own in a conversation, but initiating it is not something I'm remotely comfortable doing. Plus, as I've aged, the idea of a party where the entertainment is standing around talking while eating and drinking, is not appealing. I far prefer parties where we play games. And, I don't have friends in the area who do parties where I feel comfortable.

So, I read of others' Halloween parties and am happy for them it was well attended and happy for me that I stayed home. But, I'm going to Disney World in October and part of the trip is to attend Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. I'm looking forward to it.

One of the things you can do is come in costume. That's something of a conundrum for me. I did a minion costume years ago because I had a rheumatology appointment on Halloween, but I haven't dressed up since. I still have all the pieces to do that costume. Then, my friend, Meredith sent me to JoAnn Fabrics by showing me pajamas in minion designs at Wal*Mart. Remember, I came home with two fabrics and a pattern for a shirt. I could wear the minion hat and one of the two shirts I intend to make, maybe get some white gloves. I could keep a crib sheet with me which has "minion speak" on it and reply to comments with minion-ese. All it would cost is the money and time to make the shirts.

In order to get to the shirts, I needed to finish the jacket I cut out last year but never sewed. I'm notorious for grand ideas which never get finished, but I've simply told myself no minion shirt until the jacket is done. I've actually made steady progress on the jacket. I have help.

Every outfit must have cat hair on it.

It goes together fairly quickly, with long seams joining front to back.

The hard part is the trim. It's a wide band which can be in the same color, but is shown with a different color. I decided on black satin. I'm very pleased with the result.

The trim has to be lined. I am used to fusible interfacing; which is easy to apply. But I worried satin wouldn't take very well to the heat and steam needed to properly fuse the interfacing to the stain. I worried that I'd wind up with very distinct iron imprints in the satin. A friend who actually makes costumes said that wouldn't be the main problem. Satin would pucker as the interfacing cooled. So, it was sew-in interfacing.

This brought up another issue. Did I have any? I pulled out the box marked "Interfacing and sewing assists". There was a bit on top in the box, but not nearly enough to put interfacing in all the trim you see. Then, I spied a bag on the floor of the closet. Inside was more interfacing than I needed for a dozen jackets, including sew-in. I'd purchased interfacing to go with the minion shirts, but that's going at the bottom of the pile. I need to use up some of the other pieces I have. Oh the problem of accumulation in the life of a sewer. Do I or don't have have enough interfacing or the right color of thread. Better buy some just in case. I have to stop "just in casing".

I encountered an issue at the neck. I don't know if I didn't cut the right pattern piece or what, but the trim band at the neck was not large enough to go around the neck without making pleats in the jacket neckline. I dug out the pattern and I seem to have cut out the right piece. I tried pinning several different ways, but none of them worked. I decided I needed to cut a rectangle piece to pin across the back of the neck. Digging out the leftover satin, I discovered someone had peed on it. I have no idea when, but the odor was unmistakable. I cut two squares, tossed the rest in the wash, and hand washed the pieces I needed. I sliced the neck piece in half, sewed this extension into the trim and finished pinning the trim to the jacket. The other piece went into the facing of the trim since you use the same pieces for the facing. It fit fine with an additional 3 inches of fabric. With this being black satin, you won't suspect this piece wasn't supposed to be there to begin with.

The next step was to prepare the facing. I did the same thing with the facing as I did with the trim; added the additional 3 inches. I'm sitting in the recliner, Mija purring next to me, and I'm having problems getting the facing to match around the bottom of the jacket. Something is off. I unpin the facing and lay it flat on the table.

When I was pinning the facing pieces together, I twisted one side of the bottom facing when sewing the pieces together. I was quite frustrated and had to set the project aside. How could I have missed this? Taking a seam apart is a problem, but doing it on satin was double trouble. It's easy to make the satin look awful when you have to remove seams. I couldn't cut another piece because the fabric was in the middle of the laundry chute and I really don't know if I can adequately remove the smell. I'm hopeful because there's enough satin to do something else with if I can salvage it. What to do. What to do.

I finally decided to use fusible interfacing to save the piece. This is the facing. It won't be primarily visible. This is also along the bottom inside of the jacket. I'm not going for a prize here. I'm going for having it done. So, I cut the facing apart, took a hunk of fusible interfacing and "fused" the two pieces together, after making sure I had them untwisted. The fused pieces didn't pucker as much as I was expecting, thankfully, so they pinned nicely onto the trim.

Once the facing and the trim were sewn together, you need to understitch the facing to make sure it doesn't roll forward. I remember, from my high school sewing days, that understitching was recommended for all facings but you rarely see it in the instructions. This jacket has that step. I clipped the curves and decided the best thing to do would be to pin the facing to the seam to make understitching easier.

In doing this, I encountered another problem, my RA. July was a tough month for me. There were bouts of achy joints. I haven't had it cause problems with my cross-stitch or sewing until now. I would hold the facing to the left, smooth it, and with the right hand, pin it in the direction I was going to sew. The holding and smoothing put more stress on my left wrist than I was expecting. After pinning half of the facing, I couldn't do anymore. The pain was too great. I wound up pinning the rest of the facing over two days and understitching last night.

This is where the jacket is today.

I need to press the facing to the inside. I'm going to add gold braid at the junction of the trim and the jacket, because, why not. That will pick up the gold in the bow ties of the cats. I should be able to stitch down the facing at the same time I attach the braid. The hem on the sleeves is just a simple 5/8 inch hem, but I'm thinking of looking through my trim box to see if I have any black seam binding. I think that would look great. I need to sew a "Made by" label on the neck facing, too.

There's hard pinning upcoming with attaching the braid so I have to be mindful of how my wrists and fingers feel. I really wanted gold piping but that's not made anymore, at least JoAnn Fabrics didn't have gold piping. I didn't want to spend $20 in gas searching for something which didn't exist. I probably could have found it on the Internet, and given how long it's taken me to get this far, I wouldn't have been waiting on something to complete the jacket, but what I got is distinctive.

So now my costume for Mickey's party has changed. I was going to bring this jacket to Disney anyway. I could put a pink shirt under it and wear it with black jeans, which I was planning on packing anyway. Then, I could get black cat ears on a headband. The Halloween costume stores which spring up around the holiday should be opening soon and I'm positive I can get black cat ears.

I don't know what to do. Minion or black cat. Minion or black cat. I guess I see how quickly the minion shirt goes together and how it looks.

Almost done.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

It's Not IKEA

I think it was four years ago now, Carole and Larry gave me a cat tree they had which wasn't useful. The girls were, at first, intimidated by it, but Pilchard, in particular, grew fond of it. Then, one day, I was in my office and I heard a horrible crash in the living room. Racing there, I expected to find someone injured. Instead, I found two cowering cats and the top of the tower on the floor. Pilchard had tried to climb up onto that rung and the connection between it and the rung below, snapped.

It couldn't take the force of her jumping up onto the platform.

I couldn't see a way to fix it so I kept the top, as it had a dangle ball which was enticing, affixed to it.

This has served us well for some time.

Ironically, it's just the right height for me to lean on while sitting in my chair. It was close to the height of the table so a cat could walk across the table (in front of me, naturally), and take up a spot on the top of the tree; perfect height for ear scratches.

But, this year, it started getting wobbly. It looks sturdy, but when Pilchard would jump to the top shelf, the thing would wobble. Increasingly, I was worried she'd topple it and get injured. Flipping the thing over, I discovered this.

No wonder it was wobbly. I checked all my parts and bits and collected things and I had nothing to make this secure. I had been giving some thought to a new cat tree anyway. After a trip to the hardware store and coming home with a nut bolt combination which didn't work, I decided a new tree was in order. For the record, I was out 57 cents for the nut and bolt I bought. I've added them to the collection I maintain in the basement. You never know.

I ordered from Jet.com because I had a coupon. They bill themselves as an Amazon wanna-be. They don't have the huge inventory Amazon does, but their prices are reasonably competitive. I looked at my local pet store, as bringing it home same day is very appealing. But they didn't have the size I wanted for the price I could pay. Even with shipping, online was cheaper. So, I got one online.

It was a rather big box, since this is 28 inches tall, and there was assembly required.

Unlike the birdbath I assembled in May, all the companion pieces were in a bag I could clearly see.

Oh joy. Yet another hex key.

I should collect all of these just to see how many I have. They must be ridiculously easy to manufacture, since everything I've purchased which needs assembly, has one and doesn't assume you have the right size.

I sorted everything out and pulled out the instructions.

There's no "Step 1: Affix column A to slot A using the bolts marked 1." I had to figure out which column was A, B, C, and which platforms were D, E and F. The short column connectors were reasonably easy to discern from the bolts. Bolts were all the same size, thankfully. I dived in.

It assembled fairly easily.

The problem was, without a corresponding mark on the bottom platform, I got posts in the wrong place, which I didn't find out until I was ready to assemble the middle platform.

I had to disassemble what I'd completed and put the posts in the right places, which weren't completely clear. The hex screws did make taking the thing apart easier, I have to grant that. I have much more leverage to make sure they are screwed in tightly, so important to prevent posts from loosening with repeated jumping on by cats.

I liked this tree because of the sisal insert. An added benefit is the soft carpet on the levels. The posts are all covered with sisal.

This lone upright post holds a bed which is, realistically, too small for anyone to be comfortable for any length of time. Pilchard has started to use it when she sits next to me if I'm on the computer. The top level is the same height as the old tree, so it sits next to my chair and I rest my elbow on it when I'm gaming. It's the same height as the table so, when I'm paying bills, I use it for sorting.

I removed the ball from the old tree and stapled it to the top edge of this one. No one seems to care. I took the other tree out to the street, thinking someone might be willing to cannibalize it for parts for their cats. If no one took it, I'd just toss it in my garbage. I saw several people slow down to look at it, but they all moved on and I wound up tossing it.

Mija and Hamlet don't lie on this at all. Pilchard, on the other hand, is thrilled.

It had been up 24 hours and I came into the living room to see her climbing all over the thing and attacking the posts. She climbs the levels to sit beside me for scratches. I'm a touch disappointed the other two aren't interested, but Pilchard's use makes this a good buy. The stability is wonderful and, for me, the ease of assembly was a great plus. I feel we'll get quite a few years worth of use out of this.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

Vultures

This is what happens when I go to Subway on a weekend. They start circling.

I don't know what it is about Subway's turkey but the kids love it. The deli turkey I bring home from the store doesn't have the same appeal. I'm a creature of habit with my Subway sandwiches; turkey and provolone, topped with lettuce, spinach and green pepper. Add a line of yellow mustard and I'm good.

Hamlet will try anything I have, but Mija and Pilchard are more picky. I'm very okay with picky. Yet bring in a Subway sandwich and I have to share my turkey.

Vultures.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast tea

Deb

Sewing

I'm "blaming" my friend, Meredith Carney, for a spur-of-the moment purchase at the beginning of the month. In case you don't know, the movie "Despicable Me 3" is now in movie theaters. The minions are back and with them, product tie-ins, of course. She was shopping at Wal*Mart, a place I won't go, and sent me photos of some minion clothing. "Hmmmm," thinks I. "Is there minion fabric?" Well duh.

JoAnn Fabrics might have just a few choices. There are also some prints available online only, but I need to see the fabric to decide what print to get and then, what to make of said print.

Yes, yes. I know what's going through your head. We will not talk about the boxes of fabric in the closet. We will agree to just nod in that general direction. Look! Minions! I did not have to go to JoAnn Fabrics for anything. I went because of minions and Meredith showing me clothing at Wal*Mart. What's the aphorism? "I can resist anything except temptation"?

I came home with these.

The Disney World trip is less than 100 days away now. I was going to do something crazy and make capes for all the guild members, and family members, attending the event. But, about April, I realized I'd bitten off way more than I could chew so I abandoned that before I spent $$$ on fabric I won't get fashioned into things. But I could get a shirt done before October.

I opted to buy a new pattern. I usually don't buy Vogue patterns because they assume you are more than an intermediate sewer, but I like this one and it's fairly simple. I'm going to make the shirt at the lower right corner. It's two fabrics. I will make a mostly yellow with a white block and then a mostly white with a yellow block. The shirt has a 9 inch zipper in the front to facilitate putting it on. It's stitched in the "invisible zipper" style, something I haven't done in a very long time. We'll see. Since this is a strictly humorous shirt, I don't, necessarily, care if it's visible or invisible. The zipper is not the point of the shirt.

I get these home and feel the desire to sew rising. In order to do that, I had to clear a path to the ironing board and deal with the stuff I had stacked on the ironing board. Then, I've spent the last week clearing off the kitchen table. I'm so bad about just dropping stuff there in the "I'll deal with it later" mode, and there it sits. The urge to just move stuff to another pile was strong, but I resisted and actually cleared off the table, putting things away, dealing with them.

In the process of cleaning, I found the pieces to a lightweight jacket I was going to make last year, to wear to Carole's for my birthday.

(There's the cape pattern I bought. Not sure what I'll do with it now, but you never know when a pattern will come in handy.)

The jacket is not complicated.

I cut out the pattern back in early October of last year.

And then it sat. I got busy and just lost the desire to work on it, even with a self-imposed deadline. When the table was cleared and all the pieces liberated, I felt like I couldn't sew the two shirts without finishing this jacket. I didn't have, handy, thread matching the pink. I have, instead, a dark mauve-ish color which actually works better. One day's worth of sewing and viola.

The next step is to prepare the trim. I'm using a black satin for the trim around the jacket and sleeves. I bought more interfacing for the shirts, which was a good thing because it appears I never cut interfacing for the trim. But I got to thinking. I haven't sewn satin in years and I have concerns about fusing interfacing to satin. Would the iron leave marks as I was fusing? Asking my seamstress friends, they said to use sew-in interfacing because satin will pucker with fusible. Hadn't thought about puckering. The next issue is, do I have enough non-fusible interfacing? I haven't a clue, so I will have to find the box with the interfacing, and, tonight, take a look. At least there is still a sale at JoAnn's so if I need interfacing, it will be on sale. I don't use non-fusible if I can help it, but I know I have a stash, just how much is the question.

So, here we go. Once the interfacing issue is resolved, this will go together very quickly. Then I can work on the minion shirts. Sewing makes me feel good. Finishing projects makes me feel double good. It's win/win. And, my "helper" likes to supervise when I sit in the recliner as I pin seams.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

It Only Took Two Months

I have some interesting friends. One of them posted a silly horoscope to her Facebook page. I responded by writing something totally off the cuff. She challenged me to write the whole story to go with that sentence.

Immediately, work got crazy. I was traveling every week, sometimes three to four days out of that work week. In so doing, I figured out where the nearest Panera was to my travels.

I printed out the horoscope and pasted it into this journal I was going to use for the collection of quotes from the books I read. (I have abandoned that idea in favor of post-its because I don't want to stop, copy a quote, and read on. It breaks the rhythm. I have the post-its handy for ripping off a sheet and slapping it into the book where it marks the lines I liked.) When I had time to kill, Panera was great. I could get lunch and work on the story and they didn't mind. Around me, people were hooked up to the internet, doing whatever they needed to. I had my journal and my gel pens and I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I was very proud of myself when, after a couple weeks of this, I'd reached paged 23.

No, the journal pages are not numbered. I have to do that myself, but that simple task delivered a great feeling of accomplishment. How far in advance should I number them? Was 30 enough? No. Not even close. 50? I might be half-way through. I'm not sure. I settled on 100.

I wrote in various fragments of time; at the doctor's office at the end of May; at the office when burning CDs or processing data tied up my computer for long stretches. May was cold and damp and I felt the words struggle to flow through my pen onto the pages. Some days, I could barely manage a page. Other days, three and four pages of text seemed to sprint onto the lines. I went through one pack of gel pens and had to buy another.

And then life caught up and all these things I needed/wanted to do called to me and the journal was set aside for a time. I knew exactly how the story would end. I knew the characters. I knew, mostly, the dialog. It was getting it committed to the pages of the journal. I wasn't feeling inspired.

Then, last Saturday, a glorious day of moderate temperatures and warm sunshine, I got the deck into sitting mode.

All the plants are planted, although I need another marigold for one which didn't make it. The statuary is out. There is a table for a drink and supplies, and there is the comfort of flowers.

The geraniums, as I've said, are rather spindly and will be cut back in the next week. This space is inviting now. I don't feel like it needs more than the usual deadheading of flowers. I can sit out here and work on whatever project I have in front of me, be it a book, a cross-stitch, or a story. Of course, my flow gets interrupted by "Hamlet! Deck! Now!" He was so good but has since regressed, although he comes when I call. He's timid, as the girls are, so I probably could let him loose while I finished a chapter or a line of stitching, but I worry and that not good for concentration.

Anyway, Sunday, finally, after two months of off and on writing, I could write "The End".

It's 82 pages in the journal which might type up to 40 pages on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. I changed verb tenses in the last quarter of the story, preferring the ending tenses to the beginning. It made more sense. I'm probably the worst editor of my stuff. I agonize over punctuation placement and whether this word is exactly what I want to use. I didn't do much editing of the raw product but it was hard, when I had to go backwards a few pages to remember where the story was and where it needed to go. Oh gee. That's not the right wording there, and out comes the editor in me.

The next step is to type this up so my friend can read it. After that, I have no idea what I'll do with this, other than mark something complete and move on to the next idea. She mentioned, while driving in the rain one day, seeing a book, pages flapping in the wind, in the median of the road she was on. Did someone leave it on the top of their car and drive off? Or did they heave it out the window during a rainstorm, on purpose? If so, why would you do that to a book? She never specifies the size of the book. So many ideas.

This is a great victory for me. I got the deck set up for a summer of relaxation AND I finished something I'd started. On to the next project!

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Is That Hamlet?

Remember this little face?

In May of 2016, my friend, Becky, rescued this kitten from a storm drain where he had gone during a pouring rain to stay dry. He joined my family in July of last year when three homes fell through for him.

They grow kind of imperceptibly.

He's brought energy and giggles to the house.

He's my lover, particularly on a Sunday morning, when I sit down for breakfast and an hour of computer time before tackling the day's events.

He can be a pain when he wants attention but I want to play World of Warcraft. One of the best $50 I spent was for an impact case for my phone.

He turned a year old in April, so we had the obligatory vet visit.

At his first visit, he weighed 3 pounds. Let's add 10 to that. I was a bit horrified. Pilchard topped out at 13 and Mija was 12 and I worked to get them down to right around 10 pounds each. But the vet said she wasn't worried. He's a big cat; I mean look at that furrball on my table up there. Thirteen pounds on him is okay.

I still spend more time yelling, "Hamlet, no!" than I want to. He chases the girls and Mija really doesn't like it. Pilchard encourages it and will go looking for him. She will also growl at him if he wants to come inside and she's by the door. I realize this an exertion of dominance but I yell at her to knock it off.

He has learned to stay on the deck if I have the door open. That is a wonderful thing. The late spring gently warm days are wonderful if I can have the back door open. But, during the winter, when we'd go outside to sit in the sunshine, he'd go running off the deck. I rued being able to ever leave the door open again. The girls don't leave the deck if they come outside. They are skittish and usually don't go out even if I'm out there. I don't know what changed but he is usually very good now. If he leaves the deck, "Hamlet! Deck! House!" and he comes running.

For his birthday, I squirted some aerosol whipping cream onto a plate. Mija and Pilchard weren't quite sure what this stuff was so they didn't clean off their plates. He happily finished theirs. I don't feed him anything different than the other two. He thinks he wants people food and is always in my face when I sit down to eat, but then he sees what it is and realizes it's not for cats. He stuck his nose into my tea back in February and started drinking, which prompted a call to the vet to see if English Breakfast was acceptable. He did it only one other time and my vet said it was okay as long as he didn't drink it all the time.

He also loves catnip. The girls aren't that fond of it. They like it but he loves it.

So, yes, this is Hamlet, quite grown up. I never thought I wanted another cat but he's been the purrfect addition to the family.

Beverage:  Klarbrunn Black Cherry Seltzer

deb

September Progress

September afternoons were spent on the deck. I would come home from work, toss a load of wash in the machine, grab my stitching and go sit on the deck. The weekends were marvelous and this lead to a lot of progress with the beach picture. Of course fall is my favorite season so days spent on the deck are among the most pleasant.

I bought another table for the deck. Usually I would put everything on the plastic ottoman I have out there, but Pilchard likes to lie on that when there isn't another chair out there. I opted for just one chair last year, but I will have to put a second one out to accommodate everyone who wants to sit on something. I have a spot for all my supplies AND, most importantly, a mug of tea. On this particular day, I had washed bathroom rugs and draped them over the deck rail to dry.

That morning and afternoon saw the pants and seagull completed and the next item started.

On a roll, I stitched all week and was able to complete the swim goggles. A week later, the "floaties" were done.

Things don't look like much, particularly the seagull, because I've not done any outlining. The goal is to get the whole of the picture done and then add the outlines. It's coming along.

Beverage:  hot cocoa

Deb

Life Comes to a Halt

He drives me batty on occasion. He jumps the other two, particularly Mija, when they don't want to be jumped. His morning and evening energy leads to more, "Hamlet!" than I'd like. But when he wants loves, the world can take a hike.

The only problem with this position is that I'm holding him up and, after an hour of holding up a 9 pound cat, an arm can go to sleep. I also can't do much at the computer, so I put on some jazz and pulled up a matching game I could play one-handed. He purrs until he falls asleep and he insists upon his body touching my face.

On this particular day, he was sleeping until a stink bug awoke and buzzed about, hitting the window. He was instantly awake and stalking the bug.

He's become pretty good about killing them. He's figured out they don't taste very good but they do give him lots of play time and then he steps on them.

I'll take the demands for cuddles. The other two aren't really the cuddly kind. I hope he still does this in 3 years.

Beverage:  hot cocoa

Deb

Thank You, Mom.

I like plants indoors. I bring in my geraniums to overwinter. I have a zebra plant which I've had since my dad died in 1991. In my office, I have an aloe vera my sister gave me back in 2002 and a geranium I bought which I really didn't need on the deck. I might take that one home this spring. I'm not sure.

I also have an ancient spider plant. You know these; chlorophytum comosum. They have spindly leaves from a central hub and prefer to be pot bound. Eventually, they send out long branches on which is a small spider plant. This plant can be potted and grown. They also produce small white flowers.

The cats love to chew on it. In fact, this spring, when it's warm enough, I'm repotting this particular one into a smaller pot because the cats have chewed off one whole side. I have no idea how long I've had this plant, but it keeps going and going, enduring the chewing of its leaves. Hamlet is the worst.

Now cats eat grass. This is a known fact. It aids in digestion and a cat with an upset stomach will gravitate to grass as a means to sooth the tummy. That they turn around a couple hours later and regurgitate said grass onto the middle of the hallway floor is no matter. The tummy ache is gone. There are all sorts of grass products you can buy for this particular issue. The problem with additives to food is that I think there's a tactile pleasure derived from the chewing of grass and the leaves of my spider plant. Just providing "Greenies", for instance, a treat with grass in it, isn't going to solve the chew problem.

When I go get cat food, I have taken to buying a small container of oat grass. I got one over the weekend. Hamlet was beside himself.

I unpacked it from the bag, wiggled it in his face and set it on the desk. He promptly jumped up and knocked it off, jumping down to chew. So I moved it to my office chair.

He was overjoyed. He goes looking for this, although he still chews on the spider plant. He knows he's not supposed to chew the spider plant and I yell, "NO!" when he jumps up to chew, but that doesn't stop him. I still come home to leaves on the floor. I don't really have a place to put the spider plant where he wouldn't be able to get it, to let it recover. I do think repotting into a smaller container will help because the larger container is just too big for most "Hamlet-proof" spaces.

Mija used to chew but she's given up on that, at least I think she has. She used to do her chewing when she thought I didn't see. She'd jump up on the window sill and sneak in from the back side. After catching her a few times, she quit. I really do think Mija and Pilchard love to see Hamlet get yelled at. Mercifully, unlike other cats I've had who eat grass, he doesn't throw this stuff up

This batch will last until the middle of next week, when it will be brown and dried. I water it every day and keep it in indirect sunlight, but there is a finite amount of grass which can be produced. Somewhere, I have a container with oat seeds, which just needs water. I should find that and see if it will grow. The cost is minimal for one of these, but I don't have to go back to the store for food until the end of the month and I'd rather use the $5.99 for other things, like breakfast at Panera.

Beverage:  Water

Deb