Spring!

Harbingers of Spring are the usual suspects:

Daffodils and forsythia are blooming,

 

 tender green leaves have appeared on some shrubs, the peony has sent up the preliminary shoots.

Snakes poke their heads out to see if it warm enough to venture out

from the space under porch where they spend the winter…

Bluebirds check out the nestbox…

And yesterday morning when I walked out of the post office, the tornado siren, which is on a nearby telephone pole, fired up and began blaring. It is very loud, as it should be.

Bad storms can happen any time of the year – not long after we moved here there was a tornado in Springfield in December, but we’re heading into prime time for tornadoes. This part of Missouri is not officially in tornado alley, but we are close enough.

We can hear the siren at our house, which is about 1.5 miles away, and it has sent us down to the basement on more than one occasion when it fired off in the midst of a bad storm.

It is not a sound that one particularly wants to hear when the weather is bad, but I am sure glad we have it.

A Sad Day

It is never easy to make the decision to end an animal’s life. Even when you know the time has come and it is the right thing to do.

The phenobarbital we were giving Squeaker twice a day to control the seizures wasn’t working very well anymore. The seizures would cause her to loose control of her bladder and she would spray urine—usually not very much— so it wasn’t a big deal to get out the Lysol and spray the area and blot it up.

She had three violent seizures yesterday, two of them within about an hour of each other. When she had the third seizure later in the day, we discussed calling the vet to have her euthanized, but then backed down and said, “Well, let’s wait until the end of the week.”

We didn’t get to the end of the week.

This morning she had another violent seizure. This time on the bed. It must have lasted a long time because her bladder was full and she emptied it on the comforter and it soaked through that onto the one underneath. Not the end of the world, both comforters can be washed…

But because the seizures were increasing in frequency and becoming more violent, it was just going to get worse and worse... and harder on her... and so we decided it was enough.

We made the hard decision. We cried. I took her to the vet this afternoon and cried. And came back with an empty cat carrier and cried some more.

We’re going to miss her. A lot.

Farewell little kitty.

A Happy Day

Today is her birthday. 

I was old enough when she was born to remember her from the very beginning of her life. She was such a sweet little girl, sensitive and tenderhearted. The only time I can remember being angry with her was when she got into my “Evening in Paris” cologne when I was a young teenager. 

I especially love this picture of her, which I took in 2012 when I went to California for her daughter's wedding. 

She took me on an outing to the Bowers Art Museum in Santa Ana (Orange County). We lived in the City of Orange before we moved to Oregon.
 

There was an orange grove behind our first apartment there, and in the spring smell of the blossoming orange trees was exquisite. The city very wisely planted a specimen orange grove so folk would remember how the town got its name. They were already ripping out the orange groves when we left there in 1980.

It was a wonderful day. The museum was just the right size so we were able to walk through all of the galleries without being exhausted at the end.

She is so pretty, but even if she wasn’t, she would still be beautiful because it comes from within, from the deep, abiding relationship she has with God. “Her children arise and call her blessed; 

her husband also, 

 
and he praises her.” 

Me too. I am so thankful she is my sister. Happy birthday Sissy!