q & a

How are the other furry members of your family? I trust PJ is getting along with everyone.

For the most part, yes. The cats are still separated and we haven’t been able to keep them together for more than thirty minutes at a time. PJ is a high energy cat and the cats still aren’t tolerant of his mock charging and chasing, even if it is all in good fun. I recognize that the girls expend most of their energy playing with each other, and PJ is really wanting that, so hopefully things will smooth over as time goes on. Most of his time with the girls is spent getting him to chase an interactive toy, like a feather on a pole. It channels his energy and allows the other cats to see that for the time being he’s not interesting in play tackling them.

Ironically, the two cats who couldn’t stand PJ have been the most tolerant of him. Steph even slow blinked at him the last time he was out playing, and he responded in kind. This is very good progress. Scully, on the other hand, does her best to avoid her son. He enjoys chasing her and she enjoys doing all she can to avoid him. I’m not sure how long she thinks she can keep that up, but I’m not going to force introductions until she’s ready. In the meantime, we try to keep PJ focused on things other than antagonizing his poor mother.

The past is but the past of a beginning.

My childhood is currently in boxes in my livingroom. We’ve finally cleared out most of our things from Papa’s house, and each child has a trunk full of saved scraps and mementos of our early years. Being the oldest, with over two decades of existence under my belt, I have a much bigger pile of things to sort through. My baby blanket and hospital cap. School progress reports. Yearbooks. An old business card collection. Cards from every birthday, Christmas, and Hallmark holiday. Letters I wrote to my parents. Even the notes I took during my dad’s sermons are in there.

My task this afternoon will be to decide what I want to keep, and discard the things that no longer hold any personal meaning. Memory lane, here I come…