Broken-hearted

The past week has been a major roller coaster of emotions for both me and D. Last Sunday afternoon, Mercury, our kitty, didn't come in after a rainstorm. Then she didn't come in for the night, and on Monday morning she still hadn't appeared at the back door crying to come in and eat. I tried not to panic and D searched the woods calling her name. I tried to be calm figuring she had just wandered into someone's open garage or shed to escape the rain and had gotten trapped. By Tuesday there was still no sign of her and D and I canvassed the neighborhood putting signs on all of the communal mailboxes.


By Wednesday there was still no sign of her. D rang doorbells on the street and handed out flyers. I had called animal control and the local shelters, plus a few of the local vets to alert them that she was missing. My hope really began to fade. On Thursday or Friday D was visited by a neighborhood boy who has made it his persponal mission to find Mercury. He's canvassing the neighborhood on his bike looking for the cat. He rang the bell on Sunday letting us know that he hadn't found her yet but was not going to give up. "I will not fail. I will find her and bring her back to you and you will live happily ever after" is what he said. If only everyone had such a dedicated cat hunter in their neighborhood. I should mention that the boy, I'll call him William, is probably about 13 and has an intellectual disability. He has such a drive to find our cat that we don't want him to feel like a failure if he can't find her...we want to make sure he knows it's not his fault and that we are so grateful for his help and drive to find her.



I try to remain positive and hope that the cat has wandered off and is enjoying the food at someone else's house for a little while, but the reality is that she has probably fallen prey to one of the bigger and more wild animals that live in the woods and wetlands around our house. We had been warned by the neighbors when we moved in that many cats had gone missing from our neighborhood, but Mercury's joy at being outside overruled the warnings. As a former city cat, it was like she had died and gone to heaven having mice to chase, bugs to eat, tall grass to play in, and a warm stoop to lie on. I couldn't deny her that pleasure.



I keep thinking I hear her cry, but it's always my imagination. I leave the basement door open for her just like I always have, and D leaves fresh food on the deck for her every morning. I pray that miraculously she will just show up on the back deck someday and it will be as if she never left. She's been my constant companion for 5 1/2 years and even though D says he didn't want a cat, she has come to be his co-worker in the past 8 months that he's been working from home. She loves our family snuggle time, and is my nightly reading buddy. I can't even express how much I miss her and worry that she is or was out there in the wild suffering.

Funny Cat

D is working from home today (in our very cold basement) and just sent me this email message:

"My typing started to fail - a sure sign my hands were cold - so I went upstairs for a few minutes to warm them up. With 'cold' on the mind I thought I'd look for the cat outside but didn't see her at the door. Then I remembered she was inside so I figured I'd take a look for her. Couldn't find her. She wasn't laying in the sun. Wasn't in the window in the bedroom. Where could she be? Then I saw a lump in the bed... How the hell did she do that? All on her own! We sure do have a strange cat. :)"

Kitty Photo of the Month

Cats in Sweaters!

One of my very favorite bloggers Crazy Aunt Purl just posted a Flickr set from her cat sweater contest. Mercury is featured on the first page (but she's not wearing a sweater). These pictures are so funny!

Swap projects almost done!

I'm almost finished with my projects for my fall swap partner. Last night I went to a scapbooking night for the newcomers' club I belong to and I was able to finish one part of my swap goodies. The other women at the event last night were terrific and I'm so happy to be meeting people who live in my town (up until now I only knew the people at the end of my cul de sac).

I've also been knitting quite a lot with the Red Sox games. If they win it in 6 or 7 as I predict, I'll be able to finish at least one more Christmas gift and some more "knitty kitties." The knitty kitties are easy little knit stuffed animals that I learned to make from a free pattern in the Knitting Daily newsletter. The first one I made using the candy corn colored yarn I purchased about a month ago. Here are my first 2 knitty kitties along with my real kitty.

How can you not love this face?

A Very Busy October! Part 1

It's been a very busy October at our house. First, we had a visit from D's sister and family up from New York. Andrea and David left the kids with D's parents on Saturday night so that we could have an adults night out. I was planning to cook a great dinner for them, but it was a crazy week at work and I just didn't have time. Instead we went to our new favorite restaurant, Belle's Bistro. Belle's is a tiny little place that has really fabulous food and is a gem in a town where the other dining options are pretty much limited to Chili's, The 99, Applebees, and some pizza places. I had the pan seared duck breast with pumpkin sage ravioli and roasted brussels spouts and cranberries. It was unbelieveably good!

Unfortunately, because we closed the restaurant down, we didn't have time for a Trivial Pursuit rematch. When we were in New York for Easter we played girls against guys and Andrea and I were victorious (of course). I get a little too in to Trivial Pursuit because it's a game I'm actually good at (as opposed to Monopoly which I don't play anymore since I used to throw a hissy fit everytime I lost to my sister and cousins when i was a kid--of course, they were all at least 3 years older, so it really wasn't a fair match up).

Sunday we hosted a family brunch before Andrea and David and the kids headed home. My in-laws brought the boys up to the house and we ate our first family meal on the new dining room table. I served home fries (from Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook), a monterey jack and french bread strata, bacon, maple glazed sausages, banana bread, and Mary's sticky buns.

After brunch we headed outside and the kids rode their bikes aound the cul de sac and then Avery and I went on an "apple hunt." Our neighbors have 2 apple trees that abut our property and each has tons of apples, but they haven't been treated with any pesticides and so the apples are riddled with bug and worm holes (next spring D and I are going to approach out neighbors about spraying with some sort of organic orchard pesticide). I gave Avery a bucket and had him pick up the dropped apples--we made a game out of lobbing them into the bucket.

With the apple hunting finished, Avery wanted to go on a kitty hunt. We called Mercury, but she didn't want to come out of the woods (she's terrified of unfamiliar people, especially kids). Aparently she came out of the woods eventually because Avery spied her under the deck. He was so happy to have seen her, but unfortunately Ethan didn't get a peek at her before she scooted back into the woods. I went into the swamp to try to lure her out, but to no avail. Instead, I came back with cat-a-nine tails for the kids. While they were no substitute for a real cat, the boys did enjoy using them as light sabers!

Eventually Mercury did come out of the woods and she and I had a nice time cuddling on the sofa for an afternoon nap! She also played with the new catnip mouse that the boys had brought for her...I'll post a picture of that...

Big Cats

Our little town has made the Sunday Boston Globe this week with an article about mountain lion and bobcat sightings. It was also featured in the Lowell Sun. There's some dispute about whether people have seen a Mountain Lion or a Bobcat (or both), but for sure there is a big cat in our midst! Of course, this is old news to residents of the town as the "Wildlife Sightings" section of the local weekly newspaper reported this news last Thursday!

In case you need to know what to do if you encounter a mountain lion....

3 Blind Moles... (actually, they're voles)

This morning Mercury was out in the backyard pouncing and prancing and having a grand time playing with something. I went to check it out, and there were two little dead voles and one that was still alive (barely) that she was actively playing with. She finished off the 3rd one and then proceeded to eat it. I have to say that I am actually proud of her....at least she finally ate something she killed instead of leaving it in the grass for me to pick up with a shovel and fling into the woods.
I know it's strange that I'm chronicling my cat's murders of innocent creatures....but it's less weird than my mom's friend Linda who kept a dead mole in her freezer for years...

Casualty Count

Mercury is definitely adapting well to life in the suburbs. She likes to spend as much time as possible outside, though we keep her in at night just in case there are any predators. On Tuesday night D didn't get much sleep as he woke up 3 times worried about the kitty who hadn't come in for the night.

One thing I don't like about Mercury being outside is her newly discovered instinct for hunting. So far she's gotten 2 mice, a vole, and an oriole. She just leaves them in the lawn for us to discover at a later time (which I guess is better than bringing them into the house). She has a jingle on her collar which should alert the wildlife that she's coming, but I guess it hasn't. I'm not that surprised at her ability to get the mice and vole, but the oriole was a shock! It must have been one dumb or slow bird. I guess that's how survival of the fittest works.

In Memory of Roy

I'm sure that those of you who know me are wracking your brains to figure out who "Roy" is. Well, he's no one I've ever met, and in fact, he's a cat. Everyday for over a year, I've been reading the blog Crazy Aunt Purl. "Purl" (aka Laurie) is a women who lives in the LA area who writes incredibly amusing and heartwarming posts on her blog. She has immense talent as a writer, and there are so many things she writes about that I can relate to. Today Laurie wrote a wonderful entry about her cat Roy who passed away last night. It's a story that will bring tears to all cat lovers' eyes...it certainly made me well up at work today. So, in memory of Roy, give your cat a big hug whether his/her name is Lancelot, Hunter, Siggy, Meow, Kitty, Mercury, or Roy.

This is Roy.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

Last Saturday D and I went to buy some fresh strawberries at a local farm so I could make strawberry shortcake for my dad's birthday. On the way back, we stopped at the farm's garden center so I could pick up an annual to fill the empty spot in my front flower bed. The register wasn't open yet, so we walked around and I decided to get some herbs for the container kitchen garden I've been wanting to plant. Unofrtunately they were out of basil, but I did get cilantro, 2 types of oregano, dill, peppermint, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme!

I potted up the rosemary and peppermint with a tall spiky annual I had purchased a few weeks ago.

The thyme and oreganos went in a window box with some pansies that had been in another container for a couple of months, but the bunnies kept eating all of the flowers.

The cilantro, dill, and parsley are all together in 1 planter, but the sage is all by itself since it was so big and I was running out of things to put with it. I think I need to get some alyssum or something to go in with the parsley, cilantro, and dill...right now it looks a little bare. Or, maybe some marigolds if I can find them...I'm not a big fan of marigolds, but they might work well in this case.

The flowers out front are coming along, but I didn't take any pictures this morning since I was in my nightgown! The daylilies in the back look beautiful though I take no credit for those...they were there when we moved in.

The cat has really taken to being outdoors and now scratches at the sliders to go in and out. She's not quite used to being an outdoor cat yet as she noticed 2 rabbits but then didn't realize they were still there once they were in "statue pose." She's also been eating grass which means she's been throwing up. I guess I haven't been feeding her enough lettuce and spinach lately!