Replies

I've been good, thanks for asking. My wonderful DH has been home about 3.5 weeks now ~ safe and sound after his 8th (and final) deployment to Iraq! Woo Hooo! Of course, his deployments are done ... next year he's on calendar for Afghanistan. (Then I suppose I'll just start counting those deployments, right?) Anyway, he's happy to be home and back at work where he's up to his ears in paperwork and glitches involving pay, orders, etc. Oh, and his annual PT (physical training test) is Friday, December 9 ... please keep that (and his run) in your prayers, for those so inclined!

Our kitties are generally doing fine. After 8 straight months of fostering kittens (about 30), it seems so peaceful and quiet around here with just OUR kitty crew. Of course, Gracie (she's an 11-year-old black and white Maine Coon girl) managed to catch ringworm (it's a fungus) from the last batch of kittens, so she's being treated for that and is in isolation for another 6 weeks or so. She gets a cream on her ear, she's taking an oral med, and she goes once a week to the vet for a lime/sulphur dip. Who knew ringworm was so complicated, huh?

We had a quiet Thanksgiving ~ we went over to some friends house and there were just 6 of us, which was nice. (We don't "do" family holidays, so it's always nice when someone adopts us and feeds us turkey!) Our Thanksgiving tradition is to take about 10 loaves of bread and a 40 pound sack of feed and hit a local pond+park to feed the ducks, geese, Canada gees, wood ducks and coots. As always, that's fun.

On the home front, we've decided to tear out the carpeting in one of our rooms (sort of a den) and replace it with vinyl flooring that LOOKS like hardwood, but isn't. We keep a lot of cats in there, and life will just be easier with flooring that can hold up to cats, cleaning, disinfectants, moisture, etc. We will move furniture this weekend, since they're coming bright and early on Monday morning. The biggest hassle will be figuring out where to stash the 3 cats that normally live in there ... but they should be fine on our enclosed patio ("Catio") with their heated pet beds for a few hours, I'm sure.