Hi. I’m Hannah.
Things have been just crazy here at Casa Mother of Cats. Like, it has been the week from hell and I haven’t been getting as many outings (and cookies) as usual. It suddenly got really hot again. There is smoke in the air and the Mother of Cats won’t let us go out in the daytime. It is so hot it is hard to sleep! The Mother of Cats has been making lots of trips out of the house, and when she gets home, she just lays around and refuses to play with us. Sometimes she plays with her knitting machine, but I can tell that her heart isn’t in it. She just reads books, knits, and watches the Olympics. Fabulous. Mateo is driving me crazy because he wants to go outside all of the time, but the Mother of Cats is like… NO!!
Mateo goes crazy when he finally gets to go out. All those bugs!!! He wants to chase all of them, and I think that maybe he has been watching the Olympics with The Mother of Cats because this happened:
Yeah. That is a pretty high jump that he made. The Mother of Cats measured it, and he made a diagonal 6-foot jump to get up there, and then he jumped straight down 8 feet when the Mother of Cats tried to safely recover him. She thinks that he was trying to get into the tree, which isn’t a very good idea because…
Anyway, since The Mother of Cats has been watching the Olympics, she thought that this would put everything into perspective about how high Mateo was when he jumped up to the top of the catio supports:
That boy can jump!! He’s not in the run for a medal, but he did pretty well in the dismount, and he did stick his landing!
Today the smoke is better, and it isn’t quite as hot as it was last week. The Mother of Cats worked on finishing up all the hats that she made in the hot indoor days, and here they are all packed away where I can’t mess with them.
Now she is back to knitting chickens again. I love chicken knitting!!
So that’s all the news of the last crazy week.
That’s right. It is raining outside. Yay. The house will cool down and we can all go outside now.
Bug Chase Time!!!!!
This is Hannah, signing off.
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
- This has been the longest week ever.
- I saw my doctors at the end of July, and they ordered a lot of tests and procedures. I’ve had a steroid injection into my bad-boy hip, X-rays and MRIs of my knees, bloodwork done, and tomorrow I go for an echocardiogram. Six trips in all. Every single trip out of the house puts me back into the heat and smoke, which isn’t good because… you know, crappy heart and lungs. There was a lot of smoke last week because Colorado experienced an outbreak of wildfires among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and all that smoke headed east towards my area of the world.
- Late Thursday night (like near midnight) I opened the doors to let cool air into the house. I locked the screen door for safety and THE KEY GOT STUCK!! The front door couldn’t close with the key in the lock of the screen door, the house was filling with smoke for some reason, and there were sirens sounding nearby making me wonder if we had ANOTHER fire. After using lubricant on the lock, consulting YouTube videos, and then finally resorting to a hammer, I got the key out. Exhausted, the cats and I went to bed in a hot smokey house. How hot? 85 degrees Fahrenheit hot.
- After that adventure I’m back on oxygen 24/7.
- I met a lady getting ready for major surgery on one of my trips; that chicken got shipped off to her. It was another trip out of the house, but totally worth it.
- The hats on the knitting machine are the simplest ever: 120 rounds of knitting, and then gather up both ends and secure them together which produces a doubled knitted fabric like a Musselburgh hat.
- I bought ANOTHER KNITTING MACHINE that is perfect for knitting wristers with lighter weight yarn. I don’t have a problem. Really, I don’t.
- I just found out that I can knit an OCTOPUS with my knitting machines!
Yarn, Books & Roses 
That octopus has a rather strange head, don’t you think, Marilyn ? https://imgur.com/a/kkBjb5o
I’m supposed to be wearing compression stockings for my horrible varicose veins (that are being made greatly worse by the ****ing blood thinners I’m told I must take !): but as far as I know we Downunder only have those ghastly white ones. 😦
Those machines are turning you into a kind of machine yourself !!! – no other volunteer can possibly keep up with you ! WELL DONE !
I’m sorry to learn that a temperature that hasn’t quite reached 30C distresses you, but not surprised: your more than somewhat second-rate immune system likes to make everything hard for you, eh ? :
Mateo’s high jump ? – it would be like the Coal Bear to’ve managed to get right out !! – but apparently no.
Hannah remains a reliable reporter: keep it up, kiddo !
She is a little goofy, isn’t she.? Well, the thing is made from a tube off a knitting machine, but there are lots of patterns available for me to check out and now that I have three machines with different numbers of needles I have more flexibility. And I can MAKE AN OCTOPUS!!!! I already have the yarn that I want to use and everything…
Oh, I am not the only volunteer with one of these machines. I bought the first one after seeing what another volunteer was doing with hers. The machine (a less expensive one) struggles with heavier yarns and the hats are pretty small, but when you use light weight sock yarn they do great and the hats fit! I just happen to have a lot of sock yarn in the stash that can now be put to good use!!
That dang CoalBear has been getting out of the catio pretty regularly now. He is a bum! As soon as I walk out and catch him on the other side of the wire, he RUNS to the screen door to get back in. I’m trying to protect the bunnies and also, I want to make sure he doesn’t get snagged by a hawk or owl while he’s off wandering the yard.
You are lucky that Mateo runs to the screen-door, Marilyn ! If Boodie ever gets out, he runs as far and as fast as he can !! He is definitely an escape artist, the little bugger. 😦
I’m sure that they both just can’t resist the call of the wild. Mateo is a cat who always needs a safe route back into the house, so he is a little desperate when he gets trapped outside the wire. Boodie sounds more normal to me!
I forgot to talk about the temperature! There are a lot of issues at play. It has gotten pretty hot here the last week: we broke records and one day was 40C. The heat makes my muscles and joints feel better, so I like to go outside and bake, but there is less oxygen in hot air because it is less dense, and that is an issue. Then there is the wildfire smoke and ozone pollution creating havoc. It actually hurts to breath for hours after a trip outside. The other problem is getting the house cooled down so I can sleep. It is hard to sleep (and recover) if it doesn’t cool down below 30C overnight, and I’ve been getting up dizzy and blue faced. Hello oxygen concentrator, I love you!!!
Ignoramuses like me never think of things like hot air containing less oxygen. Sighhh …
However, I can indeed understand the problems inherent in wildfire smoke: we do that a lot Downunder. Not from choice !
What kind of air-conditioning do you have in the US ?
I have an evaporative cooler that works really well in filtering smoke and cooling the house. I get into trouble when I go outside…
“What’s the difference between a swamp cooler and an air conditioner? For starters, an air conditioner unit only blows temperature-controlled air into your home. A swamp cooler, or an evaporative cooler, blows wet air into your home. This means that a swamp cooler will add humidity to your home to cool it down.”
We have air-conditioners called ‘split systems’, with the machinery outside and the cool air deliverer inside. They’re not madly costly, either …
With 12% humidity (so I need humidity in the house) and smoke in the air, the evaporative cooler is pretty good. It sounds like your split system is like what we call a heat pump. They aren’t very popular here…
Any idea why ?
My guess is most people get air conditioning as part of their heating system, and heat pumps may not be able to handle extreme cold like -20F (-30C).
Ah ! – makes good sense. Thanks, Marilyn ! 🙂
I’m sorry to hear that you’re back on the O², but it’s better to be safe in that regard than the alternative 🌻
It may have been a long week, but by all accounts, it was quite productive as well – Don’t go over doing it 😀
I’ve been forced into a period of rest again although I’m extremely thankful its not Covid this time 🤧 I’ve welcomed my ole friend Prednisone again 😆
Blessings
Perry
Sadly, I have another two appointments today, and then I suspect the results of these tests will have me back into the cath lab to check my pulmonary pressures. Sigh. The weather turned overnight and it is raining and 30 degrees cooler, so I’m hoping that this outing won’t be so exhausting.
Prednisone is a blessing and a curse. I’m riding a wave of reduced inflammation because of the joint injection last week, but it will slowly fade I think. I’m sorry that you’ve picked up something again; hope the prednisone gets things under control soon.
Good grief, woman. I’m exhausted just reading about all you’ve been doing. And in all the heat, smoke, and ozone to boot. Nasty, nasty conditions outside. Thank goodness the fires have been mostly controlled and the heat has broken.
Mateo wins gold in the feline high jump! Tada!
And you have a personal hawk outside? How cool is that!?
I’ve never seen print compression stockings. Those are adorable. If I’m ever told to wear them, I’ll want to know where you got those.
Do take care of yourself and be careful in the smoke, heat, and humidity if they return.
The weather broke overnight!!! I’m so excited because I’m back off to Lone Tree today to get more testing and an echocardiogram done, and the pollution and smoke should be greatly improved by the rain, not to mention the cooler temperatures. I’m trying to decide if I can fit in a little side trip to the yarn store. 🙂
Luckily Mateo hasn’t tried that jump again. I put a pile of soft shade netting onto the table where he jumped from and that seems to have done the trick; the hawk sighting makes me think he needs to stay off that high bar!! He has his gold medal hung from the highest platform of the cat tree indoors.
Those compression stockings are Viasox and I found them on Amazon. They are advertised as for diabetics with extra padding on the soles, but that works great for me because one of the sad little side effects of scleroderma is we lose the fat pads on the bottoms of our feet and it hurts to walk.
Enjoy the cool weather!!!
Oh no, that does sound like a pretty miserable week. The compression socks are cute, though! And so is the latest emotional support chicken.
That chicken was one of my favorites. I’m so glad that it has found a good home. The recipient sent me a wonderful picture of it in the car with her heading home from her first round of surgery.
Oh, that’s awesome!
I wish you well. I can’t imagine!! We are lucky out here in Ohio where the smoke doesn’t impact us. I hope you are able to take care of yourself. What a lot of appointments!! Congratulations on figuring out how to get the key out of the screen door! Thank goodness for YouTube!
During the worst of it (like, one of the days I had to go for an appointment) the entire sky was white, I could see the smoke on the ground, and the sun a dull red ball in the sky. Thank heavens for rescue inhalers! YouTube is now my fallback for all problems. Can’t get the case for the thermostat open so you can change the batteries? YouTube!! The doctor says to do physical therapy for your hip? YouTube. You want to make a knitted octopus on your new knitting machine… you probably have caught on by now. Best resource ever!
Well seems like you’ve got yourselves an Olympian of a cat there. We had a dog who got over a 7ft wall once, he was half Alsatian half Doberman and there wasn’t even much room for a run up, it baffled us all. The new chicken looks great, and look at that stash of hats you’ve made. You are on a mission. I hope there air and temps have been better suited for what you are after. After a miserable June and July we are now having a cold windy wet August. I’ll have to hope for a warmer and drier autumn.
We had an abrupt change in weather that brought cooler temperatures and rain. Yay!! The cats aren’t too thrilled with the rain, but they are running around the house and playing in the cooler air.
Luckily the Olympic jump hasn’t been repeated. These animals!
I’m still cranking out chickens and hats. You nailed it: I am on a mission now!
Wow – that is quite a jump!! Glad the weather has cooled down for you, and hope the rain helps with the fires and smoke. As always, beautiful emotional support chicken!