My company got bought out last year so this year’s taxes were complicated by employee stock, stock options, and stock grants. Last Monday in the wee hours of the morning, after wrestling with the taxes for the previous two days, I got most of the forms figured out and wanted to take one last review before heading off to bed.

I heard Scout come around the chair and then she hopped up into my lap, so I put the laptop down and laid down with her. I couldn’t see him but I heard Sam come into the room, he’s got a loud motor and was purring to beat the band. I heard him circle around the chair and he too hopped on top of me and then snuggled up next to my face. He hadn’t done that before, so I figured I’d let them purr a bit before they went their own way.

The purring slowed and then stopped and I realized they had fallen asleep. I waited as long as I could until I was afraid I’d fall asleep, then woke them and went back to review the taxes before heading off to bed. Both Sam and Scout have been snuggling up to me in bed quite a bit this week, and several mornings they’ve been having a little joy fest rubbing their faces on mine and rubbing all over me and each other, purring all the while.

Pretty nice way to start the day.

This picture of Scout is from the last day of 2007 and was taken not long after she met Emma.

I had President’s Day off a couple of weeks ago and the weather was unusually warm, so after heading up to Ridgefield in the morning and working outside in the afternoon, I cleaned out the inside of the Civic and prepared to wash the outside. Realizing I had forgotten to replace the broken hose in the front of the house and with it too late to go hiking, I decided to let the cats out into the backyard for a little bit.

Scout is an old hand at backyard time, but it was the first time for Sam and Emma. I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to keep a close enough eye on both the kittens to make sure they understood that they were to stay in the yard, so I gathered them up and dropped them inside while I let Scout stay out a bit longer.

Turning from the door and seeing Scout alone in the yard I was overwhelmed with the thought that Templeton wasn’t there. A sudden wave of grief hit me and I was thankful Scout didn’t want to stay out long. The grief passed quickly, but it was so strong and so unexpected that I felt it physically long after. Every day during the warmer months, we’d go out back when I came home from work, so we spent a lot of time together there. Back inside, I was unable to concentrate on anything and eventually went up to take a bath and not think about anything.

The cats came up when they heard the tub filling up, they always look at me like I’m half-insane for intentionally submerging myself in water. They took turns sitting outside the bathroom door and sitting beside the tub, waiting for me to come to my senses and get up out of the water.

Back when we first discovered some bumps on Emma’s chest, she was rewarded with a trip to the vet and got the affected area shaved so we could treat it. She was also awarded this lovely bib to make sure she didn’t aggravate the area.

This is what the bib looked like after two weeks, as you can see Emma didn’t think it quite the state of high fashion and often removed it on her own (the picture there shows the bib when new). I didn’t photograph the underside, even though it looked much worse, as some of that damage was done by Sam during their roughhousing.

Emma has been a rather shy subject so I’ve ended up with more pictures of Sam than of her. The only way I got her to sit still long enough for me to drape the bib over her legs was to play String with her (you can see the shoestring under her foot and trailing out of the bottom left corner of the picture). She stopped for a moment trying to figure out why the string had stopped moving while I moved the bib and snapped her picture. You can also see part of the shaved area on her chest.

The bumps went away with treatment and now we’re in the slow process of waiting for her fur to grow back.