Time has certainly gotten away from me. I promised myself this would not happen with this blog and here it has. What can I say?? Life happens and we adjust accordingly. I do however have several topics of interest to report on over the next several blogs, so here goes the first of these. One subject for all of you to look forward to is on the subject of slugs in Oregon. I could go on and on with this topic and will at some point. You all can look forward to it.
As most of you know, my sweet mama passed away last October. There were a few pieces of sentimental furniture and memorabilia that sister Sammi and I had been given by her. Our trip in October was a quick one with no time to gather these items and bring them to our homes. So last month, after Sammi moved to Oregon from Ohio, we made a trip down to the Sacramento area to collect these treasures from storage. We had a lovely visit with the California family, but it was a quick trip.
Some background, you will wonder how these stories relate, but let me assure you, they will. And also that this will need to have a follow up blog to give you final details of the finished project. We have a kitten named Lupin who has a cat tree that goes clear to the vaulted ceiling in our living room. I say she is a kitten, only because she always will be to us. She was adopted at the Florence animal shelter the first of the year 2 years ago, mostly to fill the whole in Gale’s heart where her buddy Leo had held a big spot. Lupin was a kitten who was given to the animal shelter with many health problems. She was parasite infested and very small for her age–she still is small-thus the kitten term or aka. “item”. But the manager of the shelter fostered her for a few months and got her back on track and we adopted her. She came to us with a junk food addiction. She loves popcorn, chips, anything salty and can hear a bag open when she is clear outside. A lot of the photos you see on this blog are her as she is so darn cute and photogenic.
We bought her a cat tree almost immediately when she came home. She loves the tree and her favorite thing to do is to launch herself at the tree and climb as far up as possible so that we have to stretch to “pound” on her and give her “scrubbings”. She almost turns inside out with the pleasure of getting attention on the top of that cat tree. It is covered in carpet, which she has all but shredded. We even dismantled the unit and installed a custom made “princess pad” for her. Sadly, it must be replaced.
So Gale has come up with the idea to build a perch for her out of either driftwood, a downed tree or something more organic than the Walmart special we have going now. We have been scouring the beach for the perfect tree to no avail. Sister Sammi had this bright idea. She remembered brother Jay had a forest of Manzanita trees on his property in California and was having to remove several to clear the land a bit. So we went to brother Jay’s place and picked out a few trees to haul home to help construct the new cat tree. Usually Manzanita is a bush in most places, but these are huge trees. We loaded the branches onto the back of the truck on top of the antique, tarped goods and away we went down the highway. We sure did get some peculiar looks. Some folks thought it was deer antlers–others just didnt know what to think but would grin at us anyway, shaking their heads as they passed. Here are some photos to show our load.
This is a huge big dooley truck that you almost need a step stool to get into. We were concerned with underpasses along the way home and also being stopped and questioned by the local law enforcement folks as to what our intentions were. Luckily for us all was well and we now have all four pieces resting in our driveway waiting for the assembling process to take place.
Our current cat tree is hooked into the ceiling and we were trying to figure out how to secure these branches to avoid toppling over when the kitten launches herself at the structure. We were in Yachat’s the other day, gallery hopping with Gale’s sister Sandy and came across the perfect idea. One shop, called Touchstone Gallery had a large tree with many branches in the middle of the gallery space. Folks had tied different colors and shapes of paper to the branches with well wishes for a more peaceful world. It was truly amazing and I hope to be able to take a photo and share it on this blog. They had poured cement into a large many gallon tree pot and inserted the branches from a Camilla tree into the pot and let the cement set up. They said it weighed more than 240 lbs, so we are thinking that would be the ticket for the kitten. Surely she would not be able to jump and dump over anything that was inserted into that much weight?? We will keep you posted.
It has now taken 4 days to complete this short blog–I am thinking my life is very busy with no end in sight. Still having fun and definitely not boring. More to come. Grins