Cat Relationship

Although Lily seems well aware that Moki is dangerous, Lily still wants to be friends with her. Last night after our dinner, Moki was in the playpen near the kitchen island. Lily could be anywhere in the house, but she chose the bar stool right next to Moki. A little of Lu appears on the other bar stool to the left. They appear to be half-awake because all three were sleeping until I got the camera. We're glad that Moki is able to sleep when Lily is around, but we wish we had more positive developments to report.


Today, Moki is back upstairs in the playpen. Guess who is watching from a nearby spot?

Lily's first Christmas

Lily told us that for Christmas she would like to post a video of herself for her many fans. This is probably a good time to do it since we haven't posted anything on her lately. She weighs 5 lbs now and hasn't gained any weight the last 2 weeks, so maybe this is as big as she is going to get. We're hoping she'll have a growth spurt pretty soon so she can be big enough to hold her own with Moki.

Toys for Christmas

Santa brought Cheryl several knitting related items for Christmas - books of patterns, needle cases and an Umbrella Swift and Ball Winder. The point of these last two is to take hanks or skeins of yarn, and turn them into balls. Many fine and hand-processed yarns come in these hanks, but if you try to knit with the yarn in that state, you soon have a tangled mess. Yarn stores will wind yarn for you, but if Cheryl is going to buy locally produced yarn, she needed these new tools.

This photo shows the beginning and end product, with Lily in the background. The "ball" is rather squarish, the way kite string comes when you buy it. Many call this a "cake" to distinguish it from a hand wound ball.



Cheryl untwists the hank to get it ready for the swift. The ball winder is the plastic gizmo on the left. (You should not untie the yarn until you have it on the swift.)


Here the skein is mounted on the swift, ready for action.


In addition to being useful for taking the yarn to a state where it can be easily used, it seems these tools make great (?) cat toys. The first video was longer than we intended - we just wanted to show the operation of the swift but then, Lu became very interested in it.

Many people put a hand on the yarn as they wind to check for knots and slubs. It didn't take too much longer for Lu to figure out how to help.

Lily also got into the act with a different type of yarn a bit later.

She thought the objective was to remove the yarn from the swift faster than Cheryl was doing it.

The skein Lily was playing with is a fine rayon - there were a thousand yards of yarn in that hank.

More Disaster Communications Fun for Norris

Norris is off to Winston-Salem NC this week for a conference on disaster communications interoperability. Interoperability is a buzz word in Homeland Security for making sure that the many different public service agencies that respond to a disaster can all talk to each other when they need to. One day of the week was set aside as a Communications Exercise that Norris will use to finish checking off the tasks he needed to demonstrate that he could do in order to get his FEMA certification as a Communications Leader. His task today involved a large simulated flood that grew larger as the day went on. As more and more mutual aid departments came to help, he had to set up new communications networks (both voice and data) that allowed everyone to interconnect when needed. The picture below shows some of the communications that were set up and operated as part of the exercise. The big black truck in the background actually belongs to the Cisco Corporation and is something they make available in disaster situations to provide data services and telephones communications over satellite links.

This picture was taken inside the Cisco truck. They spent a lot of money on gee-whiz stuff that doesn't end up in most of the communications vans or trailers owned by local governments (unless they get the really good federal grants!).

New Accomodations for our Black Cat

Moki still doesn't want the kitten to live in our house, so this week, we got a "Cat Playpen" that we can keep Moki in. Although Moki is a black cat and doesn't show up easily, we tried to get some photos during her introduction to the new environment.

Here Moki contemplates the upper areas of the playpen.

Moki is very accomplished at opening doors. There are two sets of double doors on the near side of the pen, and each door has a double latching mechanism - easy enough for us, but a fairly complicated design for a cat. It's just a good thing Moki doesn't have opposable thumbs.

Moki was not immediately completely happy about being locked in, but she got used to it, and was able to spend the evening upstairs with us while we caught up on some of the TV shows we have not watched while spending so much trying to arrange safe cat meetings. The playpen is built to be collapsible, but putting it together is a two-person job, and the attachments have all been reinforced with wire ties. It has casters, so we were able to wheel it onto the elevator and bring it up to the main part of the house. The studio was not a bad place for an indoor cat, but it meant Moki was left alone for long periods.

It turns out the little Tiger Lily likes the new playpen.

Here she is checking out the upper shelves. Clearly visible at the bottom of the playpen is a water bowl which she had just upturned, on purpose. Lily likes to play with water.

And now you get to see what Lily really likes - the playpen is like the Monkey Bars at a playground.


She's not very good at getting down gracefully yet.


The playpen is sitting where we usually put a Christmas tree. We had already decided we could not safely have a tree and Lily in the house at the same time. So we bought this instead.

We won!

We mentioned bidding on some Silent Auction items at the Candlelight Tour of the Vance Birthplace to support the local Tarheel Junior Historians. The site is closed on Sunday and Monday, but today they called to tell us we'd won our bid on three pieces of pottery by the Mangums, who have a shop on Main in our town.


We got a bowl that matches some other pieces we have, including the platter in the background. The bowl looks pretty small but that's an illusion because the platter is of a grand scale. The smaller piece is actually much bigger than the cereal bowl you might think it is from this photo.

And we got two mugs - These are in the glaze Cheryl's sister admired when she visited - but we like this glaze too! (Our parents bought Joyce a serving piece at Cheryl's suggestion later that year.)


There's something truly comforting about sipping a hot beverage from a beautiful hand-made creation.

Lu in search of Suki

Not too long ago, when Lu went up the neighbor's driveway, he spotted Suki in the yard. So now, whenever we take him out for a walk, he wants to go to Suki's house. The road turns into their driveway right where we pick up in this short clip.

The reason we always used to go up Suki's driveway was because they have a lot of large boulders. We have nice rocks, but they aren't spaced as well as these for a rock-hopper cat.

Unfortunately, Lu did not spot Suki today - we've been up there several times since that day and we haven't seen her since. We don't know if Lu will ever give up on trying to return her visits.

Candlelight tour of the Vance Birthplace

We went on the Vance Birthplace Candlelight Christmas tour last year at the nearby state historic site and had to wait a long time, so it was quite dark by the time we were inside the home. We thought we'd fix that problem this year by showing up at 4:00 when the tours begin. The Tarheel Junior Historians were there again, but we took some different photos during our wait.

In the Visitor's Center, there is a very small museum describing the origins of the home and Zebulon Vance's life.

And if that wasn't enough, we also had musical entertainment provided by Primrose. The hammered dulcimer gives the music an authentic sound for our area.

But eventually our mountaineer guide led us to the home for the tour.

We were in for a replay of last year's scenario where we weary travelers just arrived in the valley looking for a place to stay for the night. Our guide knocks on the door of the Vance home.

Unfortunately for photography, as is visible in the above photo, all the windows were shuttered and it was just as dark as it was last year inside.

During the tour, we learn that the Vance's already have guests and so we are being directed to other homes in the valley where we might be accommodated.


It may have been disappointing not to be able to get better photographs, but the Vance Birthplace tour is a nice way to start the Christmas season. We bid on a couple of items at the Silent Auction which is to help fund a trip to our state Capital for the Junior Historians. We hope to win at least one of them.