Merlin's Magic

This blog is called Chile Cats. It's supposed to be about cats, ferals, and colony management, right? It supposed to may be...MAY BE have some opinion pieces, a recipe or two, and general comments about my life. It's mainly supposed to be about cats though. It's supposed to be the blog that kitty lovers everywhere would love and enjoy. So what's with all this beading and beads stuff that's been popping in quite often? What's UP with that?!?!?

Well today is going to be a special post. My blogging friend, Cherin of Lanyard Lady fame is about to celebrate her 500th Etsy sale in her wonderful store. Naturally, I asked her if I could help her celebrate. She said she would get back to me. I was envisioning party hats and whistle blowers and may be baking a couple of dozen cookies or so. Ok--not really. Kind of hard to do that in CyberLand and across the nation. I live in New Mexico  and Cherin lives in North Carolina. Nontheless, I did have a party-like attitude and I am very happy that Cherin's lanyard sales have been perking up for her.


Then I received a request from Cherin. Could I send her pictures and a small blurb about our cats so she could design lanyards with them in mind? This is what Cherin wanted to do for her special celebration. WOW! How cool is this?!?!? Naturally, I responded with enthusiasm and started searching through my photos of the cats. I started with our oldest cat in the house, Merlin. I thought I could easily write about Merlin--he's got such history and such grandeur for an older cat who survived being feral. He would be the easiest to write about--so I thought.


I found it wasn't so easy to write about this particular cat. His personality is difficult to explain on paper. So I'm using word processing on a computer and not actually writing things out on paper...the process is still the same. The little blurb I intended became a synopsis about his life and began turning into a whole chapter. Flipping through the photographs did not really help me--there were so many choose and which ones best captured his gentleness, his wisdom, his fierce protective nature, and his generosity? I ended up choosing three, cutting about 20 pages out of the narrative, and crossed my fingers and hit "SEND." 


Now Cherin is a beautiful soul and a brilliantly talented creative woman. You should see what she did with Merlin's short story. I was both humbled and gobsmacked when she sent me a picture of the lanyard she made. Tears came into my eyes when I saw how she took my words and my photos of this cat and created a wondrous piece of art.  D was totally speechless when he saw that beautiful lanyard she called "Merlin's Magic." 

We had to show Merlin. He responded with his quiet purr of approval. Some of the other cats had to come see what the fuss was about. Lacey asked if she was going to get a lanyard made in her honor like Merlin. I told her to just wait and see. 

So please go visit Cherin's blog and her store and see the magic she created and become part of the celebration! 

Midterms Week!

It's midterms week here--which means it can be hell for both students and professors. I haven't forgotten any of you--just been up to my eyeballs in students, papers, grades and "stuff on that." That's a saying from my best friend's husband and it's caught on with me. Stuff on that.  I'm behind on my blog reading/commenting but will catch up as soon as the last grade is turned in. I promise. 
I thought I'd leave you with a few signs of spring.

Crocus

Miniature Iris

 Ava sleeping in the sun

MC, Tabby, and Swirly (some of our ferals) catching sunbeams

A definite sign of warm weather....bikers.

In The Paper...

You all remember Buddy don't you? He's the stray cat (not feral) that Java brought to us last July? He was skinny, road-worn and had a bad tooth. He moved in after Java was killed in a hit-n-run. We got him neutered, vaccinated, and had his bad tooth extracted. Then we discovered the reason he was so skinny...he had stomatitis. That meant he needed antibiotics and probably the rest of his life. 

Yesterday my neighbor needed to walk to her bank, so I went with her. On our lickety-split lightening fast trek down to the bank, she told me that our kitties and our birds were in the paper. When we got her back home, she showed me. 


So here is our famous boy in all his glory.

Just The Boys

I'm taking a quicky break from grading papers this morning. That's what I've been doing for the past three days--nothing but grading papers.

So this morning, I thought I'd show off some of our "boys." First meet the primary males in our colony. There's MC, the oldest. Then Fiesty, Blue, and Swirly. 

MC 

 

Fiesty eating his favorite--canned salmon 

 

Handsome Blue

                                                               Swirly showing off his colors

  They are all related to Merlin in one fashion or another. He is the granddaddy to all the above.

 

Merlin when he first came to live inside 

Then we have the "Newbies" who joined the colony over the past year or two. We have Blanco--who incidentally is also related to Merlin. Beamer and WaitAMinute came along a bit later.

Blanco 

 

  Beamer   

  

 

                                                                             WaitAMinute

Beamer is an orange tabby feral. I think he was someone's pet, turned out or lost, and became feral to survive. Many pet cats that are turned out don't make it. Beamer is one of the lucky ones. He found a pair of cat-crazy people who were willing to manage a colony. WaitAMinute was most likely was born feral. We believe he's Lacey's father because they have the same facial features.

Then we have Buddy and what could be his brother, son, father, uncle, cousin. You remember Buddy from the Halloween Post, dressing in his costume? Well this weekend, what could be his brother/son/ father/uncle/cousin joined us. Looks like a smaller version of Buddy and very friendly. Those two must have been raised together because they haven't fought at all. They share the front porch post and both chase dogs out of the yard. We are having a hard time naming him...so right now he's 2B.  

2B

He's hard to photograph 

 Buddy

He's not happy about sharing his top bunk

 Because they are both friendly, I believe them to be strays--not ferals. Stray cats can become feral in order to survive. Stray cats were once someone's pet. Some people abandon their cats, believing they can survive outdoors. As I said before, many abandoned cats do not make it.There are many reasons pet cats become stray cats,and I'll cover that in another post later.  Right now, I have papers to finish grading!