Lounging around

This concludes the summer series on Tora, although I’m sure I’ll have more pictures to post of her every once in a while. I’ll be starting a new series on Fibromyalgia which will run roughly from August 11 to Sept 12, as a precursor to Invisible Illness Awareness week. Thank you for reading and I love you all!

Update 3/28/12: Come check me out at my new WordPress Blog, I got a new camera and it’s fancy and shmancy and great! http://ajmckphotography.wordpress.com/

Tora doesn’t understand baths

“Hey Mom!”
“Hi Tora…”

“Whatcha doin?”

“Taking a bath, Tora.”

“Why on earth would you want to do that!?”
“Well I have to get clean, darling.”

“Uh oh, I don’t have to take a bath…. do I?”
“No Tora, you bathe yourself!”
“Okay. Phew!”

Haha yes I DO pretend that my cat and I have legitimate conversations. It’s a problem.

Tora has adventures and then sleeps

Tora is about to make a very poor decision here. Despite the six claws on Tora’s front paws, kitsa is still able to pin her without hesitation every time they wrestle. Sometimes I wonder how the old lady can keep up with an energetic kitten like that.

Then I remembered that cats sleep for something like 18 hours a day. Wow…

“Squee!”

Nom first, ask questions later

Tora is currently in her “wants to attack and kill anything that moves” phase. I hear it’s supposed to last for approximately as long as she is a cat.

Good morning, kitten!

NOM!

I guess we were right in naming her “Tiger” weren’t we?

Welcome home Tora!

After a very traumatic drive home for the both of us (note to self: ALWAYS check the weather before you drive home in the middle of the night), Tora was all set to be introduced into her new home! Well, er… sort of.

You see, when you add a new kitten into an already established household, you have to take certain precautions. Namely quarantine.

Tora did not like quarantine.

I tried distracting her by giving her tasty treats and by staying in the room with her as much as possible, which of course caused the older cat to be confused and jealous. Anytime I left the room Tora would cry and cry and cry, and kitsa would stare at the door and hiss and hiss and hiss. Eventually they grew tired of this routine and kitsa would just give me this pleadingly baffled look as if to say “Why, mom? Just… Why?”.

But I was very firm on following my instructions. The cats had to be introduced slowly, and not until I got Tora to the vet for her first check up. Her momma was a stray after all, so I wanted to be as careful as possible.

I decided to take both the cats in to the vet, since kitsa was due for her annual anyway. Boy was that an adventure in itself. You see, I only have one cat carrier, yet I had two cats to take to the vet. I ended up putting Tora in the carrier, putting on an older shirt that I usually designate for painting projects, and holding kitsa in my arms, which of course resulted in me being covered in a thick layer of fur by the end of the ordeal. Thankfully this arrangement worked out safely for everyone involved, although I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting another carrier before next year’s annual.

Other than that, the vet appointment went well, Tora tested negative for all the normal kitten related ailments and kitsa tested negative for all the normal old lady cat ailments. They did have to give Tora a squirt of medicine in her ears for a mite problem (eek!), but after those were taken care of, the vets said the cats were ready to meet.

Ok, so maybe Tora wasn’t quite ready to meet an older cat yet, but at least she’s really good at hiding!

Things went pretty well over the next few days. The girls got used to having each other around, and just the other day I saw them playing together! I found out that Tora is incredibly smart, she watches TV, youtube, and even likes to type on my computer (when she’s not trying to attack it) something about keyboards must be incredibly intriguing to cats. Maybe it’s the “click click” noise or the springy sensation, like a kitty style moonwalk or something.

I also discovered something rather interesting…

She likes the bathtub. She actually sits here while I take showers. The shower curtain protects her from getting soaked and she gets to be closer to mommy. (Aww!)

Perhaps it’s because it was so hot those first few days, and obviously the tub would be the coolest surface in the house, what with being watered down twice a day and all. Whatever the reason, she has developed quite an affinity for this spot, as you’ll see in future posts.

I also learned that this cat can climb anything. I have found her on top of the entertainment center, on top of a mattress we have leaning against the wall, she can even climb up people! Although I think we’ve managed to break her of that last habit.

Don’t be fooled by the seeming cuteness of this photo, she was definitely considering her next plan of attack when I took it.

I found that kittens significantly combat a multitude of things such as loneliness, boredom, and financial security (Can you say booster shots?). I can already tell that she is going to deserve every penny.

Story of a kitten

So, we had been considering getting a new kitten for, oh about half a year, when suddenly the opportunity arose. I met a girl holding a cardboard sign that read “Free Kittens!” on it. Normally I would pass this by, citing all my normal excuses (we can’t afford the vet bills, I don’t know anything about kittens, and the list goes on) but something drew me to talk to the girl. What I found out was incredible.

Her family had been approached by a pregnant stray in March. Not wanting to leave mom-to-be all by herself, the family took her in. But when she gave birth, there were gruesome complications. The family brought the cat and kittens to an animal hospital the next day. She gained access to surgery that saved not only her life, but the lives of the kittens as well.

Well I was hooked. After some frantic texting between myself and my fiance (who set up a “new kitten” appointment at our local vet), some quickly hashed out plans between a co-worker, and a spur of the moment kitten supplies shopping trip, I felt I was ready to embark on my first “trial parenthood experiment”.

Boy did I not know what I was getting myself into.

My co-worker, Morgan, accompanied me on the trip to retrieve the kitten. The family was very pleased to see her going to a good home, and made sure I was comfortable with all the details of kitten life. We exchanged some vital information (mostly phone numbers and names of vets), and soon we were on our way back home, kitten in tow.

And that’s when it started. The kitten was frantic! As much as Morgan cooed and snuggled and petted her, she just would not calm down. Finally she let her go, and the kitten did the strangest thing ever.

She climbed right up on to my shoulders and fell asleep. We pulled into a gas station to fill up, and Morgan snapped this shot.

Imagine me in this picture saying “What is this cat doing?”

We were soon to find out that she is indeed one of a kind.

She has six toes on each of her front paws which apparently gives her superb climbing skills. This also means she has an extreme affinity for heights, particularly being on peoples’ shoulders.

She stayed on my shoulders the entire way to my fiance’s house, which is saying something, seeing as it’s a two hour drive. Every once in a while she would shift to get more comfortable, or start to slide off and have to climb back up my sweater, but in general, she seemed very content to watch the cars go by and sleep until we arrived.

When we got to Shawn’s place, we realized didn’t have much in terms of kitten accommodations, so we made do with what we had. I’m not even going to get started on how bad of an idea this was:

There’s an extra bag of kitty litter there now, just so we (hopefully) don’t have to ever, ever resort to newspaper kitty potties again.

After that fiasco, we decided we had to give our newest edition a name. It took a lot of debating (Zyrkstra got a definitive “No” from Shawn), but we finally settled on “Tora Yuri”. Tora means “Tiger” in Japanese, and Yuri means “Lilly”. It’s more of a play on words, because the actual word for Tigerlily is something different (don’t ask me, I don’t remember what it was).

Hi Tora! (Can you see the six toes? )

We later found out that “Tora!” when said three times, is also an important battle cry from WWII, in the simplest terms, it was the code for the attack on pearl harbor. They even made a movie about it! I don’t think we realized at the time exactly how fitting a battle cry was for a name. I was soon to find out… but first, we had to catch up on some z’s! Which turns out to be her favorite activity (other than attacking everything in sight)…

We think she might have missed her littermates that first night, since she ended up snuggling Shawn’s stuffed wolf for most of it.

When she wasn’t snuggling Shawn, of course. She’s a natural Daddy’s girl, just like her (new) older sister.

In search of a mentor

I was speaking with my cousin earlier today on the topic of growing up. Hey, it’s a relevant thing for two twenty-somethings to be thinking about! Ok, so my cousin is almost a twenty-something, but that’s besides the point. We’re both going through changes in our lives like we never expected. She just finished her first year at college, I’m getting married… understandably, growing up is on our minds. Even though she and I are at different stages, one question struck a chord with both of us: “Am I even doing this right?”

Good question, and one we can’t really answer. There are no set standards for maturity, you can’t google “timeline of life” and find out exactly what you should be doing at any given age. It’s simply not that simple. So what’s the solution? Well, a mentor.

Mentorship is an idea that can be applied to just about any facet of life. You can have a professional mentor, or a personal one. It can be someone you work with or a family member. A helpful tool for both parties; the person who searches and finds a mentor learns valuable lessons, while the person who mentors gains an incredible sense of self-worth. It’s a win-win situation. But where does a girl go to find such a relationship?

Sure, there are tons of official mentorship programs for adolescents, I actually volunteered for one of these when I was in high school. It was one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. But as far as I can find, no such thing exists for those of us attempting to enter the adult world. So I began pondering what I should do about my desire to learn from someone older and wiser than myself. I came to an inspiring conclusion: I have had a number of mentors that have each helped me in monumental ways. Here are some examples:

My Aunt, known to be the best cook in the family let me come over every weekend one summer to teach me how to prepare meals for myself before I moved out on my own. I learned a lot of great recipes, but those Sundays were about more than how fold enchiladas and the secret to delicious cookies. They were about a young woman (yours truly) trying to break my way into the adult world without a clue as to how I was going to do it.

At that point in my life, it was relationships that were a big deal. Sundays with my Aunt were a pinnacle in figuring out what relationships meant to me. She had tons of advice to offer on the matter and I insisted on bringing my current partner to dinner on at least one occasion for two reasons: To find out what he thinks of my cooking, and to see if he can get Aunties approval. 

Now they say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but no one had ever told me that the way a man eats can provide a peek into his nature. One boyfriend of mine slept on the couch while dinner was cooking and stuck his nose up at the stir fry I had made, claiming it was “rabbit food”. Another gratefully accepted seconds of my vegetarian pizza even though I hadn’t let it sit long enough and it was falling to pieces before it even got to the plate. He claimed it was delicious and that we needed to take home the recipe and try it ourselves. Guess which one my Aunt gave the green light to? That was two years ago. He proposed last November.

Or how about this past year, when I was struggling with an unknown, mystery illness. Doctors couldn’t figure it out, I was going in for tests left and right, medicine either didn’t work or had too many side effects for me to handle. I was on the brink of dropping out of school and moving back home because I couldn’t even work to support myself. My fiance introduced me to his Aunt, who surprisingly enough, had gone through something ridiculously similar.

She became my go-to person for tips on how to manage life with chronic illness, and my inspiration to keep trying even when I was too weak to crawl out of bed in the mornings. She asked me about my symptoms and told me how to articulate what was going on to my doctor. She taught me how to pay attention to the way I felt, told me to write a list of my symptoms, to include everything, even stuff I had dismissed as unrelated, and to present it at my next appointment. Following her advice, I was immediately sent to the right professionals, received a diagnosis, and got on track for a treatment plan.

Looking back at stories like this, I realize that I have had mentors my whole life. Not just these two women, but many people. I had a history teacher who was the most passionate man alive. I mean, you can’t talk to this guy without feeling empowered about something. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what my instrumental instructor told me about performing. She said “No matter what happens, act like it went exactly how you planned.” Her advice helped me get through countless auditions, recitals, and solo performances.

My grandmother taught me that love isn’t perfect, and the importance of personal strength in all aspects of your life. My father taught me to be moderate and unbiased in my decisions, using thought more than emotion to solve problems. A responsible man, who follows through on his word and loathes to be indebted to anyone, he taught me the meaning of the phrase “suck it up”. Never a coddler, he taught me that tough love is a balance between affection and reality. Too much affection, and you go soft, too much reality, and you don’t get to be a kid.

The list goes on. What amazes me is that half these people probably have no idea how much they’ve helped me become who I am today. That’s when my cousin really surprised me.

She told me how much she had learned from me. Someone has been learning from me all these years?! Oh goodness, I hope I gave her the right advice! I hope I was a good enough example for her, I wasn’t even thinking that she might be watching my actions, or taking mental notes from conversations I had in front of her or… or… exactly what I had been doing my whole life with the people I mentioned above.

Moral of the story? We are all constantly learning and teaching. We learn from those we admire, and we teach those who admire us, sometimes without even knowing it. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “lead by example” doesn’t it?

What has Amber been up to?

Mostly stuff like this work:

I’m still running through some touch-ups on it, like trying to fix that fox’s shadow.
I’ve been doing that, and figuring out my life and the such. I’m considering working as a librarian quite seriously these days. Just trying to make it through the winter, I guess.

Woodpecker

Shawn and I went hiking yesterday and found this tree. He says the holes are from woodpeckers, and that some native legends attribute the inspiration for wooden flutes to woodpecker bores like these.