Thanksgiving break

I am heading up to NJ tomorrow morning to spend the holiday with my family for the first time in three years. I must say, I did not miss the drive. And while my sister-in-law is a great cook, I’m going to miss being at Sarah’s house. It’s not just the food. It’s the atmosphere, even if it is rather loud and doggy. Then again, my brother has a dog, and his niece has a creature that pretends to be a dog (it’s a Yorkie, and not the good kind).

I’m trying to figure out how to leave extra food for Tig without his eating it all the first day. In spite of being mostly Maine Coon, Mr. Tig does not have the Maine Coon cat habit of eating many small meals per day. Tig will eat and eat and eat and then eat some more if I let him. I have taken to putting the food up at night, because last week, Mr. Tig ate and ate and ate and ate, and then, while I was sleeping, threw up the food in my office. On the carpet. That was fun to clean. I’m afraid I might be coming home to a few messes, but, oh, well. Them’s the breaks when you have animals.

In any case, I’ve decided to leave food in the kitchen as well as in their regular eating place. I set them up in my bathroom, since it’s large enough to fit a whole herd of cats, and by keeping the food dishes upstairs, I no longer trip over the cats while they’re eating. Come to think of it, I think my bathroom is larger than the kitchen, if you don’t count the part with the table. (The kitchen, not the bathroom. There is no table in the bathroom. Just a double vanity with only one sink.)

Mr. Tig is tipping the scales at over twelve pounds now. He’s a week past nine months. And he’s about 36 inches long, tip to tail, when you stretch him out. It’s actually kind of tough measuring him, because he likes to play with the yardstick while I try to see how long he is. The tail alone is fourteen inches. He’s going to be much larger than Tig 2, I think. Fifteen pounds before plumping up is my guess, though I’m really going to try to keep him thin, or at least, as thin as a Maine Coon can be. They’re stocky critters.

Miss Gracie, meantime, is continuing to show nothing but happiness in her new home. She’s currently very happy that it’s cold out, because I put a blanket on my leather living room chair, and when I get up, she gets in the chair and then gives me The Look when I want to get back in it. So of course, I put a blanket on the sofa. And of course, she refuses to use it until I toss her out of my chair. She gave the cleaning crew quite a bit of entertainment last week when she tried to find a hiding place where they wouldn’t bother her. She did, ultimately. I couldn’t find her. When she finally came into the kitchen, hours after they left, she came from the direction of the guest room. I think she was hiding in the bathroom, behind the toilet. Or maybe even in the shower stall. But I didn’t think to look there. Tig stayed under the bureau the whole time. I wonder where he’ll go when he gets too big to fit under there?

Above is Miss Gracie in the bathroom doorway on a sunny morning. Soon after that, she wound her way up on the bed to sleep in the sun. All’s right with her world.

An early Happy Thanskgiving to you all. Posting will be light tomorrow, as eating will be heavy.