Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage

The kittens have grown a ton since last weekend, and they got even cuter! They are starting to eat their mommy's crunchy cat food, much to her dismay, as she really, really LOVES her food. They are working hard at mastering hiding, pouncing, and the run-by-ankle-bite. It is so funny to watch poor Sparta trying to keep track of the little balls of energy now. She still wants to groom them each fastidiously, but they don't want to be still that long. She works so hard to hold them down and lick away, while they try to wrestle with her and run away. We are so completely in love with these sweeties! This is the reason I stopped fostering kittens--I get too attached and it rips my heart out when I have to place them. I still deeply mourn Lila's brother, who was adopted to a wonderful woman 1.5 years ago! This adoption process is going to kill me.

I have to point out that the disgusting debris all over the carpet (that will soon be removed) is litter. The litterbox we have here for Sparta is low sided, so the kittens can get in too. When she buries her deeds, litter flies all over and the room is a mess. Between that and the spilled paint of every color that my artist daughter used in her various paintings, I'm just counting down the days until we can rip it out. We can't start that project, though, until the kittens have all been placed.

M. is gone again tonight, giving a talk in Madison. I was looking forward to having some time with just L., but she called Hunter as soon as we got home. They're having a great time playing, which makes me happy, but I still feel a little lonely. I called Dej to kill some time, and she chatted with me for about 15 minutes and then very politely said, "well, okay...I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing." What a polite way for her to say that she has better things to do at the moment. :-)

Most of my weekend was sucked up by the very unpleasant task of doing taxes--both ours and Dej's. I have to do Joe's next weekend. I do not like to do taxes. At all. But it does feel wonderful to have them done. I have never, in the 25-ish years I've been doing my taxes, gotten them done this late in the year!

Dej & Joe were going to let me take family pics with the kittens, but by the time I got done with taxes, there wasn't enough natural light to work with, and I prefer to not use the flash. We should be able to squeeze time in next weekend. I did snap some quick photos of Dej wearing the super cute ring I ordered her (the one from the awesome etsy shop I mentioned in a previous post). She has giant man-hands like mine--both girls do. Because her hands aren't as rough and torn up as mine, nor are they as pasty, they are much nicer looking. Her big hands mean she can pull off big, fun rings, and this looks so cute on her.

My girl is now in bed, and I have much to do. I see that Carrie has lost her collar again, so I need to try to track that down. Somewhere in this house, we still have Tica's collar floating around and Carrie's previous collar. I don't understand where they could be that we are completely unable to find them after looking for months. Someday they will show up. I know Carrie had her collar on when I got home tonight but doesn't have it on now. She's only been upstairs in my bedroom and closet since I last saw it, so there is hope of finding it. Petey jumped into the closet where we store all of our outdoor toys/sports equipment and the food for the outside birds and cats I feed. He managed to knock down our huge container of sidewalk chalk, so we now have lots of broken chalk all over the closet and the floor of our side entryway. I have to run back down and clean up whatever Daisy didn't eat off the floor.