snow sense

take it from someone whose formative driving years were spent in sask, alberta and NY.....if you truly cannot drive with an inch and a half of snow on the road...stay home or take the bus.

if you do want to try driving...a couple of things..snow tires are mandatory in snow storms...all seasons radials are ok once the roads are cleared. if you are going to go up or down a steep hill...do it slowly and steadily...don't freak out a get heavy footed on the gas and certainly don't stop in the middle of the lane because you think maybe this is not a good idea or you want to think about this further..pull over first then do your thinking, it is safer for the rest of us who do know how to get up or down that hill.

i came home for lunch...i did not go back again...holy moley smokey it is a freaking circus out there.

i sent the staff home early...no point in risking their lives and ending up here alone all by myself for the rest of my life....that would truly suck big time...but hey guys...i am still working tomorrow so please try to make it up the hill or call me and i will come and get you.

tiko and tasha are back (my tiny little orphans who are now big and grown up 8 yr old cats.) they do not remember that i am their mom and i fed them every hour on the hour and cleaned their tiny little bums.

here is the story on these guys which appeals to my sense of amazing survival at its very best (you will probably find it not so appealing but thats why i live here and you are not!)

many moons ago before i had even thought of saints...i got a call about a litter of orphaned kittens...the owners had let the brand new mom outside and she promptly got hit by a car and died. they did not know what to do with the babies...so they pretty much did not do anything...so from day 3 til day 7 those babes supposedly had nothing to eat. when they called, i fully expected to have newborn babes dying like flies, but what showed up at my door was 5 adorable and healthy looking week old kittens...hmmm...did someone just tell me a lie?

anyway...i started feeding them and they did really well...except i could not get the little buggers to poop.... i figured with 4 days of no food, their guts were probably empty and anything i fed them was probably instantly sucked up and turned into energy without any waste. by day three i was panicking and i called the clinic looking for help. they thought i was an idiot who did not know how to stimulate the kittens bowels (from hand raising MANY orphans...i was actually quite expert at this.)

whatever...they could think whatever they wanted to think, just make those babies poop. so i took them in and i called at noon, and still no poop was to be had despite their expert stimulating. finally at 3 pm the vet called to tell me what they had found.

every single one of those 5 were sucking each others butts. there was no poop to be had because they had learned something new to stay alive. these tiny little things had discovered that instead of passively starving to death, they could feed each other if they just cooperated and shared everything they had in a tiny butt sucking circle....brilliant innocent babes.
i think that is truly nature's survival instinct at its most amazing.

anyway...back to today...tiko and tasha are not happy campers (and just like their tiny infant selves, they do manage to eat quite well during their stressful times, except they are now politely eating canned food out of a bowl)

we have pissed off cat one and two here and they do not like any of us very much. but i warmly remember my little butt sucking survivors so i already love them very much.

i figure in the end, they are real survivors and will eventually make the transition here and i can be patient til they start to like me again (hope it doesn't take as long as it did with boo.)

welcome to saints tiko and tasha...i will always take care of you.