Bringing Up Baby

Apologies for my lack of posting over the last couple weeks. Recent events have kept me from giving due diligence to this blogsite.

I have finally recovered (mostly) from my allergies and accompanying respiratory ailment. While I still feel a little labored in my breathing, for the most part, I'm doing okay again. Adam only has to deal with middle-of-the-night sneezing and dirty snot tissues under my pillow a few nights out of the week now.

Work has been busy. I have migrated out to the field on most days, meaning I traipse around in long pants and hiking boots, putting stakes and poles into prairies and cornfields while using my GPS unit to mark my locations. It's pretty fun being outside all day; there's loads of wildlife--songbirds, wading birds, deer, frogs and toads, muskrats, etc. Additionally, the time tends to fly by because so much of our time is spent driving from site to site. The driving gets a bit tedious, but still fieldwork makes for a better day than sitting in an office.

The latest news in our little lives is that I am now Katherine Hepburn and Adam is now Cary Grant. Okay, so not exactly the best reference for those of you not into the Silver Screen's glory days (it wasn't even the best movie, to be honest). However, that little allusion was my way of saying that Ads and I now have a new addition to our household. No, I have not given birth in the week and a half since last I wrote. We found (and have now formally adopted) a cat.

Yes, we dog folks have now entered into the forays of cat living. It is strange territory indeed. Although I have "cat sat" for friends on various occasions, somehow it has escaped me that cats jump--high and A LOT--to places I don't really want them to be. Like, for example, my kitchen countertops, or my cookbook shelf, or my desk where my laptop is lying. We are having to cat-proof our house. It's like having a crying baby with all sorts of special (and dangerous) abilities in the house. We are adjusting.

We named our cat "House". I wanted to name him "Barney" but Adam liked "Howie". When we saw that we weren't going to agree to the other's suggestion, he said, "What about Gregory House?". Right away, I agreed. For those of you who are not T.V. fans either, Dr. Greg House is the central character on the show "House", one of our favorites. I said, "Well, sure. The cat needs a doctor and he needs a home, so why not call him 'House'?" House was in poor shape. He'd been hanging around our house for a couple weeks, meowing nonstop and jumping in one of our laps whenever he got the chance. He was obviously a former housecat that had been dumped or lost sometime in the last several months or so.

The sequence of events:
He ate tunafish voraciously. He purred incessantly. He cuddled habitually. He hovered annoyingly. We broke reluctantly.

The vet said he's about 3-5 years old. Luckily, his balls are gone already so I don't have to worry about him spraying in the house or my guilt over getting them chopped. He took to his litter box right away, even though it's in the basement. He still has his front claws, so we've been really careful about his interaction with Kika. She hates him already but they've kept a healthy distance for the most part, that is, until House decides he needs to be closer to her. Kika is still hoping he'll go back to wherever he came from.

The upside is that he tested negative for feline leukemia. The downside is that his feline AIDS test was inconclusive. We'll have to get him retested in a couple weeks' time to verify. Although the vet said we don't have to worry about a positive test as long as he remains healthy, and doesn't interact with other cats (so as not to pass the virus along), I really hope he doesn't test positive. I'm already pretty much in love with the little guy and want him to stick around for awhile. I think I'm kinda liking Bringing Up my Baby.