Cheese, toast and pouncing kitties

On Friday we move to the South End, which has a bunch of little shops and restaurants, and we’ve had fun exploring the area. Our realtor had mentioned Formaggio which bills itself as a neighborhood shop for epicurean delights with a worldly feel.

We were intrigued just by the description, although you sure wouldn’t think all that would be available in the dinky store. But the store more than lives up to its billing. We could hardly take everything in, that place is just packed to the gills with a bazillion cheeses and meats and pastas and wine and—well you get the idea. Kent turned to me and whispered, “There are eight different kind of goat cheese!” Keep in mind he didn’t mean eight different flavorings; we are talking about different cheeses from different regions. He said, “You know what this means?” We can never move back to Kansas City.”

Yes I know KC has the Better Cheddar, but trust me when I say the difference between the two shops is as drastic as the difference between Better Cheddar and the grocery store dairy section.

I’ve started eating a piece of toast on run mornings before I head out. It’s very foreign to me to eat breakfast so soon after getting up, but I’ve found that I need something in my tummy or else I get nauseous while running.

Ah pouncing kitties . . . how I love thee. I must since they are still alive this morning. OK to be fair I need to put the blame where it belongs, squarely on Wally. He’s got a game he plays with me at night when we go to bed. When I get under the covers, that’s his sign to absolutely go ballistic on my feet. He bites, scratches and uses his back legs like a demented bunny if I so much as think about moving a toe. I’m fine with the game at bedtime. I’m not fine with the game at 3:30 AM, especially since the middle of the night game also includes pouncing on my hands which might be on my belly. Ooof.

Another reason to run

As my friends and family know (because I’m sure I talk about it way too much) I work out six days a week. I didn’t always, but a few years ago when my health took a turn for the worse and I had another three major abdominal surgeries, I realized I needed to do something about my lack of fitness.

Two and a half years ago, I started with Pilates, which kicked my butt. Pilates is especially good for developing your core or abdominal muscles, something I seriously lacked. Since my gym didn’t offer very many Pilates classes, I started taking yoga too.

Last year I was on the road 100% for the first six months of the year. I packed my yoga mat and also added in an aerobic workout so I didn’t get bored. In early July, I started running—well really I trotted. The nice thing about having done all the strength exercises I’d been doing is that I had muscles and I’d slimmed down so I didn’t have to haul as much around when I ran.

This morning I ran across an article on WebMD that touted the benefits of running as we age. Take a look, I think you’ll find it interesting. While it's great running offers these additional benefits, that's not why I run. I do the yoga, Pilates and weights to stay fit and thin. I run to stay sane.

More odds and ends

First, I may have hit a personal best with my run this morning—I ran 9.45 minute miles. I realize by most standards that’s practically a snail’s pace but hey, I ran 4.1 miles in 39.54 minutes.

Second, we are still on track to close a week from today. Moving again will be a huge pain but at this point, the pain of moving is far less than the pain of staying here. Plus the apartment has been rented out to a girl who is really excited about living here. That made me both sad (this place is gross, where has she been living?) and happy—no more prospective tenants traipsing through our apartment.

Third, I took this picture of Eddie about 10 minutes ago. Seriously, this cat has major attitude. I guess really I should spell that cattitude.

How we came to have three kitties

Chloe is my kitty—I got her shortly after 9/11 and she’s really truly my cat. She will let Kent pet her now, after six years together but it took him probably two years before he could do that.

Then we got Sammie almost two years ago. He was another rescue kitty, about seven months old and pure black. I do have pictures but since he’s all black you can’t really see any details. Sammie was the first kitten that Kent had really ever lived with, and Sammie is the reason Kent came over to the dark side and is now a cat person.

However it turned out that Sammie had FIP which is always fatal. He died just over a year ago, at about 14 months. In addition to grieving for our lil guy, we also felt cheated. He was such a fun kitty and we didn’t even get to enjoy him for a year. Our vet, who was fantastic during the whole ordeal, asked that when we were ready to adopt again, we consider a cat from his practice. Apparently people dump animals there all the time—he said it was very normal for him to get to work to find dogs tied to the railing, or a box with kittens just left there.

So that’s what we did. We wanted to get one more cat so we’d be a two-kitty family again, and we liked the idea of rescuing another cat. We thought we’d look for one between one and about three or four years old so that Chloe wouldn’t have a super dominating cat annoying her—in other words, no kittens.

Get ready to laugh at us.

We went there on a Saturday and looked at ALL his cats and holy cow he had a bunch of them. In Kansas City, you can have four pets if you live within the city limits. Apparently a woman had ended up collecting and/or rescuing 37—yes you read that correctly, thirty-seven!!—cats and someone had turned her in to animal control. So we looked at every one of those cats. They were all very well cared for and decently socialized but too old for us.

Then we heard kitten meows. Oh, we say, you have kittens? May we look at them? Suckers! They were two litter mates, both boys and about three months old. We each picked one up and we said well we could take one of these guys. Then they started crying for each other.

Yeah, we took them both home.

Sizes

It’s hard to tell from the pictures I post exactly how large Eddie really is. Chloe and Wally each weigh right about 10 pounds. On Wally, that’s stretched out over a very long frame while Chloe is a lot more compact. But neither is a particularly large cat. What you notice about Chloe when she’s running around is that her legs are pretty short so she almost looks like a small raccoon when she scuttles around. Wally is quite thin because he’s got a very long spine, long legs and a really long tail. But for some reason he looks bigger in his pictures.

Eddie weighs in at almost 15 pounds, so he’s got about five pounds of additional weight on him—that’s stretched across a frame about the same size as Wally. But Eddie also has big paws and a bigger head. He doesn’t really fit in my lap any more, he’s just too big. But he still tries.

So here are a few pictures from yesterday and you may think I did weird things regarding the relative size of the cats. But I didn’t, they are these sizes.











Edited to add: I just took this picture. That's my lap you see Eddie trying to curl up on.

To my sweating friends in KC

Did you know your forecast calls for a low of 81 tonight? That's two degrees higher than our high of 79 for today. And tomorrow when you'll be "enjoying" 100 degrees, it will just be 84 in Boston.

In all seriousness, I especially felt sorry for my friend Kevin, who moved in yesterday's heat. You guys apparently had a heat index of like 112. Gotta say, while I miss a lot from KC, I do NOT miss the heat.

Happy Birthday Alison!

She's one today! If you haven't already been inundated with pictures of Alison, well I've added a short slide show of pictures you might enjoy.