Monday, April 09, 2007

Caroline Reads The Blog!




I was invited to Caroline's on Easter Day for wine, appetizers, and an egg hunt. It was a lovely event, a bit chilly, but they had an outdoor fireplace going. So I'm talking to Caroline--whom I haven't seen in months (people here kind of hibernate in their caves during the winter)--- and she starts telling another person about Shrink Rap! She was even quoting different posts. Wow! I didn't remember that I'd ever told Caroline about the blog, I found myself vaguely embarrassed, but ultimately quite flattered.

Caroline Reads the Blog!!!
(Please note: the photo above shows ClinkShrink and Roy, not Caroline)

30 comments:

ClinkShrink said...

There's someone you haven't told about the blog??

Aack, and that darn disturbing cat pic!! I'd rather have Foo's screaming man pic. Never fear, I'll find a pic of my own for that post!

Those monkeys can't be us---they're not taking pictures of their feet.

NeoNurseChic said...

Ha!

Clink....no screaming man picture. That thing gave me nightmares for weeks! (kidding...but I still hate it!) Oh and - wanted to say that I had to put Tony on diet food because he was like 14-15 pounds. He looks like his tummy is not as full now, but I haven't re-weighed him...it's been 2 weeks, so I need to. He HATES the diet food! It's the same brand - science diet...I've used science diet forever with him - first the kitten original, then the adult indoor cat, and now the adult light. I think he only eats it because he gets so hungry that he can't stand it. As soon as we finish the batch of it (it was a small-ish bag), then I'll go back to adult I guess! I wasn't overfeeding him, but he is a very big cat and got overweight. Even when I cut the amount of food, he still was too heavy! Had no choice but to go diet... Poor poor kitty!

Dinah...for some reason, I thought you were Jewish.

Take care!
Carrie :)

p.s. word verif: froii (like they wanted to say Freud but sort of wandered off in a dream-like state and didn't finish the word? lol)

Midwife with a Knife said...

Carrie: if you have luck with the kitty diet, let me know. One of my cats weighs 30 lbs (although in his defense, he is a big boy regardless, but he is getting kinda fat, I think his ideal weight is probably like 25 lbs) and the other weighs 25 lbs (he's actually slender but large.). My cats are bigger than other people's dogs.

NeoNurseChic said...

MWWAK - Tony's stomach was like hanging really low. He's always had a pot belly, and he is also a very big cat, as far as cat's go, but my mom thought he shouldn't have such a big pot belly. I remember seeing a poster in the vet's office that showed pics of cats at various weights, and looking at their stomach was how to tell if they were overweight. I was just looking stuff up online, and it says to feel the ribs - if you can't feel them at all, the cat is overweight.

I'll weigh him later today and let you know how it is going! He's very looooooooong.... this pic is just to show how long he is!

NeoNurseChic said...

Darnit! He still weighs 14 pounds!! And I lost 2 again! (I know that probably annoys people, but seriously, if I lose weight, then I look at not so much fun GI tests - whereas if I gain, then I don't have to have them!)

Well he looks thinner! Maybe he had gotten to over 14 pounds - I didn't weigh him before I put him on the food.

My mom said maybe you should just keep him on the adult light food for good, but I don't think that's healthy... I think once he gets to around 12 pounds, that should be good enough to return to regular adult food. However, maybe I should go feel his ribs... LOL He didn't like me getting the scale out...flipped around in my arms and went, "Mraw!!" He "talks" so much - it's great. :)

DrivingMissMolly said...

All this talk of cats is making my eyes water!

Carrie, how 'bout mixing both foods?

Lily

Midwife with a Knife said...

carrie: I feed my cats the light adult food (Actually I switched them to senior food this year.. hard to believe I've had them both since my first year of medical school). I had a vet who said that the way to get cats to loose weight is to feed them nothing but canned food. I don't know, I should do something about my fat cat (although I can still feel his ribs, he has the physique of a teddy bear), but it seems kinda wrong to put a cat on a diet. And when you have 2 cats, how do you put one on a diet?

NeoNurseChic said...

This is true... I've never had a cat before Tony, so I don't know what happens when you have 2! When I visited Helen in England, her cat was allowed to go outside - they had a door flap in the back door, and this cat that she used to care for but ran away has returned and both the cats eat from the same dish. I thought canned food made them MORE fat! Tony actually doesn't really like canned food. When I give it to him, he eats like half of it but then no matter what I do, won't eat the rest - I usually add a little water to it so that it re-moistens it if it's out for a couple hours (but throw it away after much longer than that!) and have even mixed dry food into it.

He's not really a picky cat, but he doesn't seem overly fond of the diet food. When I was at home for Easter, my mom still has the regular adult food, so when he came back here - it was so funny. By the time I put the food down, I knew he was hungry from the ride home, and he ran right over to the dish but it was like there was a force field around it. He turned right around like it was poison! lol... He's fine if I change different types of litter on him, but now I prefer the Scoop Away the best, so I just use that most of the time. My mom and I figured if I left the diet food out long enough, he'd get hungry and eat it - and that's what he's done. I like Lily's idea of possibly mixing the light with the adult. Maybe I'll do that after he loses a couple pounds. I tried to feel his ribs this morning, and I can feel them, but he is pretty squishy.....but I also think he's like a teddy bear! I hate putting him on a diet or not feeding him as much. I leave food out for him all the time, but I usually just put it out at night...so if he eats it all, he has to wait until nighttime for me to give him more.

Did you get your 2 cats at the same time? Tony can be kind of mean (I've shared lots of stories!), and my mom's friends have suggested that I get a 2nd cat to take some of the focus off me and put it on another cat as a buddy, but now he's a year and a half old. He is my baby and he's totally a mama's boy. He's only mean because he wants MORE of my attention! I just had to run out of my room (he's not allowed in my room because he gets into too much and won't let me sleep...he rips the keys off my laptop even!), because I heard a big bang. Somehow he knocked over one of my kitchen chairs. Don't know how! He's a nut... ;) (In the best possible way, of course!)

So today I was supposed to work 11a-11p. I'd put in for vacation from 11a-3p, and I got it. I haven't worked in a week and a half (but only missed 1 day of work last week for infusions!), so I wasn't sure what to expect. We only have 16 babies in the NICU right now and can hold 40! So at 7, they asked me if I wanted to go home and take 4 more hours of vacation! Sure! Especially since I forgot to set American Idol on the DVR! lol.... Can't be missing that!! Plus last night I couldn't fall asleep until like 5am.....arg..... I have an early morning neuro appt, so maybe tonight I'll get more sleep. Heh....

Take care!
Carrie :)

Midwife with a Knife said...

At this point I'm going to officially appoligze to Dinah, Clink, and Roy for hijacking this post and their blog to talk about cats.

Carrie: I got one when he was a baby kitten (3-4 weeks old) and bottle fed him. I think he thinks I'm his mom. He met his "brother" when I moved in with a roomate. And my roomate was kind of abusive to his cat, so when I moved out, I took the cat with me. They like having each other. I work long hours and they play together and cuddle together. :)

End of kitty tangent.

ClinkShrink said...

Ah, Shrink Rap has gone on a kitty tangent before:

The Cats Go Barefoot With Grace

I'm guilty of starting that one. Cat-related discussions can go there as long as you link to pictures. (Meerkats included)

Midwife with a Knife said...

Well, if I have to link to pictures... here you go. The kitties (Ron and Sylvester) will be proud.
http://mwwak.blogspot.com/

I hope that works, my links never work. I feel technologically impaired.

NeoNurseChic said...

I knew Clink wouldn't mind a tangent on kitties! Sorry to Dinah and Roy, though!

Clink - here is an adorable one that I snapped of Tony last night with my cell. I was sitting on the couch watching tv, and he curled up on the pillow behind me and fell totally asleep. He was so sweet - slept like that for the longest time! Even had a dream and was twitching his paws like he was running! I've seen my dog do that lots of times, but only seen Tony do that once or twice! I love him!!!

MWWAK - I worry that Tony would get jealous of another cat if I got one now. Not sure.... Like I said, I've never had a cat before, so it's all new to me! (Well...less new now - I've had him since 11/05) Plus, I live in a one-bedroom apartment, and I don't think there's enough space for me and 2 cats! One is enough of a handful! haha

G'nite!
Carrie :)

Midwife with a Knife said...

I try not to ask for help with personal problems on other peoples' blogs, but I'm intensely frustrated right now.

Why won't my links in comments work? What am I doing wrong? I used to be so technologically with it. Now I'm practically a luddite.

(And Carrie, Toby is a cute kitty! :) )

Dinah said...

Links in comments don't work for me either.

MWWAK: sorry I forgot you in my connectedness post. You've been added in!

Midwife with a Knife said...

Dinah: Thanks. At least I don't feel like the only one who can't seem to make them work. :) (But still, if anybody has any idea what I'm doing wrong, by all means, let me know).

Oh, and regarding the connectedness post, thank you for including me (Although I didn't feel slighted.). It was a great post.

NeoNurseChic said...

Dinah! I taught you how to do links in the comments!! And you did it successfully before! Oh dear...time for Carrie's IT lesson again, isn't it!

OK....now, I can't use an arrow bracket because blogger will think I am trying to make code, but for the purposes of this demo, I will use right and left parentheses for the right and left arrow brackets like those depicted above the comment box where it says You can use some HTML tags, such as (b), (i), and (a).

So here's the demo....

(a href="http://www.mylinkhere.com/")Link Name(/a)

That's it! Now let's see you both try it at least once!!! lol

And MWWAK - Thanks for the comment about my baby. :) I just was chasing him around the apartment to burn off energy/calories. It was fun. :) haha....

Midwife with a Knife said...

Carrie: Hah hah! I've actually been watching this thread hoping to be able to learn how to do the link thing. I'm such a doofus.

And playing with cats is good exercise! My cats make me laugh out loud when playing too. They're such silly beasts!

Let's see. Here's my cats:
(a href="http://mwwak.blogspot.com/2007/04/cats-on-blog.html") Cats on a blog (/a)

Midwife with a Knife said...

I'm a total html failure. I'm going to go sulk now.

NeoNurseChic said...

OK here's what you did wrong - read my directions again. Instead of using a parenthesis, you have to use the arrow brackets. Look above the comment box, and (assuming your blogger page looks the same as mine - sometimes there are differences between Mac and PC), it should say, "You can use some HTML tags, such as (b), (i), and (a)" - I put parenthesis because if I use the correct keys, then it looks like this bold italics and so on. The reason I know how to do all this is because blogger on a Mac in Safari browser does not offer you link buttons and other cool buttons when you are creating your own posts. So to learn how to put links in my posts and on my blog, I had to learn how to do it by hand! I'm also a computer geek and like to figure things like this out! lol....

So you are very close with your attempt! In parenthesis, it should say exactly, (a href="http://mwwak.blogspot.com/2007/04/cats-on-blog.html")Cats on a blog(/a) (no spaces around the Cats on a blog part...), but if you replace the parentheses with the arrow brackets, then it becomes this:

Cats on a blog

Try again!!! :)

NeoNurseChic said...

OMG your striped cat could be Tony's twin!!! Is he (she?) a specific breed? Because I got Tony from a pet store and picked him from a litter of 3 remaining sibs - 2 boys and a girl...he wouldn't let me put him down! Kept crying when I'd put him back in the cage... He's just a "mutt" cat...lol But the markings on him are markings that are from breeds - like he has a raccoon tail, those stripes are just like on your cat - really spots more than stripes, but they way they are positioned, they look like stripes. He looks like he has chipmunk markings on the back of his head...those little verticle thin dark stripes. He looks like he has glasses.....markings around his eyes and then lines that go back from the corners of his eyes. He has a white diamond on his nose. He has a white belly and paws. He's all sorts of colors if you look closely - black, white, silver, tan....and that makes it hard to find fabrics that you can't see the cat hair on! It shows up on everything!!!

So here are more pictures of Tony:

From the first few months after I got him: My New Kitten

Kitty in a Basket

hunting me

playing attack my hand from under the piano

I got him really hyper by putting some of his toys together in a pile

he wore his fool self out

Oh and like your black cat - he loves to sit in the sink!! It cracks me up. It's so tempting to turn on the water when he does that, and I have done it a few times - but actually he doesn't seem to notice at first! Odd to have a cat that likes water!!

Your cats are beautiful!! :) Now I want to go in the other room and play with Tony...but first I have to eat lunch! I got to leave work at 12 today and take 7 hrs of vacation. :)

Take care,
Carrie :)

Midwife with a Knife said...

Carrie: Thanks. :)Ron (stripey tabby) was adopted when he was 3-4 weeks old after his mom who was a feral barn cat (named Large Marge) was hit and killed by a car. My plan was to just bottle feed him for a friend so he wouldn't die, until he got adopted. Well, once you start bottle feeding a baby kitten, even if it's only for the week it takes to get him weaned, he ends up being yours for life, as it turns out. So, he's just a stray, really. He actually likes water too. He'll sit on the edge of the bathtub and attack my toes when I take a bath. He'll get in the shower with me sometimes in the morning. He's a weirdo. The big black and white cat took up the sink habit after we moved here. I don't know, he's just a goofy weirdo (but I like him! I'm glad I stole him from the roomate that used to kick him!)

Here it goes. href="http://mwwak.blogspot.com/2007/04/cats-on-blog.html" Cats on a blog

Midwife with a Knife said...

AAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!!!!!

Midwife with a Knife said...

Cats on a blog

Midwife with a Knife said...

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks Carrie!

NeoNurseChic said...

Hmmm...I'm not sure what you did there...I think the mistake is that you forgot the bracket after the actual web address and before the Cats on a blog title. There should be a right-handed bracket (um...greater than sign, in mathematical terms) right after the quotation mark at the end of the web address...... Is that what is missing? Because it turned it into some sort of messed up hyperlink, I can't tell exactly what you entered to make it look like that! If you would like, I could email you so that I use the exact same symbols that you have to use, however that's the only way I can do it exactly as it should look (instead of having you substitute brackets for parentheses).

I shut the bathroom door when I take a shower, and as I said, Tony can't come in here at night. He is just too devious. Like I said, chewing up laptop wires, going in my closet and attack my things (well, I could just shut the door there) but he also has knocked over lamps, ripped the keys off my laptop keyboard, gone on my desk (if you'd seen what my desk looks like, you would know that this is not a safe place for kitty and can only end badly!!!), and so on....! I know people think I'm kind of mean that I don't let him everywhere, but I just can't - it's partially for his safety and because I also need to sleep and rest! However, I think he bites me sometimes because he has separation anxiety. If I'm walking around the living room, he might attack me because he thinks I'm going into my room to leave him again. I have to pick him up (if he's not running around like a hyper, manic cat) and carry him into my room, and then put him out and shut the door - which makes me feel badly, so usually I end up taking him in my room and holding him on my lap for at least a little bit, and I only put him out when he decides he doesn't want my attention any longer!

Krazy Kitties! Gotta love 'em! I've never bottle-fed a kitten - Tony was 8 weeks when I got him....that first link I posted from his earliest months, there are like 3 pictures from the day I brought him home. He's the only cat I've ever had, but I'd love to have one from the bottle-feeding age someday............

Gotta go eat something and lie down - I'm so tired...!
Carrie :)

NeoNurseChic said...

Oh yes! We were posting at the same time!! Congrats!!!! :)

Anonymous said...

Re: links in posts: Thanks Carrie, but it's just not worth it.!

No one wants to discuss Monkey food?

Midwife with a Knife said...

I have no bananas.....

NeoNurseChic said...

I have 3 in the kitchen!

Oh - um...speaking of crazy things that cats do....for the last couple of hours, I've been sitting at the piano working on this piano/vocal pop song that I want to record later - had to transpose it down a step so that I don't sound like crap, and then have a lot of vocal runs and stuff I want to put in the end of it, but for me, even though I've been playing piano and singing since forever, it still can bring about a coordination issue in the brain when I want my hands to play the straight rhythm (which is syncopated as per the way the song goes) and have my voice additionally go out of that rhythm. My brain starts to feel like there are really two distinct halves and they're working in similar but not same universes! But anyway - I've said before that Tony hates music....one of the things he used to do was run into the bathroom (this is the farthest he can get away from the piano), lay against the base of the bathtub on the outside and have the shower curtain draped over the top of him. I would joke that the shower curtain was his magic blankie to protect him from the evil music... Then, when I started recording and playing a lot more, I guess maybe he got curious, but he's still a chicken about it. My piano is on the other side of the wall from the kitchen, and the refridgerator is exactly on the other side of the wall - but I have this open dining area (I'm not describing this well - I should find a pic), and he somehow goes on top of the fridge, and then he pokes his head around the wall and looks down at me while I'm playing and singing. The first time I saw him do that while I was in the middle of playing, it scared the living crap out of me to see a pair of eyes going around the wall there about 5 feet above my head!

But today, he did something different. I've mentioned that he has been going in the cabinets lately, and I do have a big plastic tub of litter against the cabinets under the sink because the trash can and a lot of cleaners are in there, and I need my dad to put in some locks for me, but the other cabinet where he tore up the cheerios box, I cleaned it out and put things like peanut butter jars and other things he couldn't hurt in there. So today, I was playing and singing for awhile, and then I was like, "Where's Tony?" I called him, and he didn't come....so then I thought he might have gone in there, and I opened the cabinet door, and there he was!! He came out while saying, "Prrrrrr" (not a purr....but like he's rolling his tongue or something or buzzing his lips. It's hilarious)

Who would guess that *I* would have a cat that is afraid of music? LOL

If I do record the song, I'll let you guys know. It's "All By Myself" by Celine Dion - based on music by Rachmaninoff so there's a section in the middle with lots of triplets that gets a little tricky. :O) Fun song to sing but my voice is starting to get a little hoarse from belting for a couple hours straight! ;)

NeoNurseChic said...

If you want to hear the recording, go to my music folder and the song is "All By Myself" - it's a .m4a file. I would like some of the things in it to be better - but I'm very self-critical of my own music and rather obsessive-compulsive about piano practicing and pitches being right on, so even the slightest deviation in pitch or wrong note really really bothers me! haha... I can't re-record it right now because my voice is actually hurting. I'm pretty sure before I went to college, I did serious damage to my voice, and then I stopped belting all the time (well, until I sang alto in our one choir that sang a lot of gospel tunes, but as soon as I became a Soprano II in that choir, it was better), and my voice actually healed. So I don't want to be scarring up the vocal cords again! The ENTs say I don't have vocal nodes, and I'd like to keep it that way. :)

While I was recording, Tony made this meowing talk sound, but I don't think it's audible in the recording! He was by my front door which is like 15 feet from the piano, and I record with a headset and mic so even though I heard it while recording, I don't think the mic picked it up! :) Silly kitty....

Hope you like it!
Carrie :)