Tuesday, December 09, 2008, 08:07
Snow and Much Colder
The low temperature Sunday morning was 10 degrees below zero. Saturday morning the temperature was around zero and it was about 1 above Friday morning. Winter has definitely arrived here at Rural Route 2.
I took my books to a juried art fair that was scheduled Friday and Saturday at an old victorian theater that has been renovated. As with all the craft sales this fall, people attended but they were not really buying much. Most of the items at the art fair were what I considered to be quite expensive: $125 for a purse made out of recycled wool sweaters, $700 for a painting, $22 for 1 glass ball Christmas tree ornament. After two days, in the end, I just broke even.
Friday I parked at the office where Randy used to work (he still works for the same company, just in a different office) and walked to the theater. It's about 10 blocks. The sun was shining but there was a cold wind out of the south/southeast.
By the time I got out of the art fair at 7 p.m. Friday, it was snowing, and I had a snowy walk back to my truck. There really is not much for downtown parking in the city where the art fair was held, so I decided it was my best bet to park the truck and walk rather than try to run out every two hours to plug a parking meter with more quarters. That's if I could find a parking space in the first place.
After I was finished with the art fair, I went to Randy's company Christmas party. He was already there. The roads were pretty bad going out of town with the snow and blowing snow.
By the time I left the party at about 10 p.m., the road conditions were even worse. I made it home all right, though.
The Alberta Clipper system that roared through Friday night left us with about two inches of snow. After it was 10 degrees below zero Sunday, another clipper system came through and dumped another two inches of snow.
It was much to my delight that the weather warmed up a little overnight Sunday so that it was 10 degrees Monday morning.
But -- you guessed it -- another clipper system came through and it began snowing late Monday afternoon. And I had to cover a village board meeting in a town 12 miles away. The drive over to the meeting Monday night was not great because it was snowing pretty hard and the roads were already covered. On the trip home, the roads were worse yet, but once again I made it home.
This winter driving stuff is something to get used to again. Randy put a tub in the back of my truck with about 100 pounds of barn lime in it, and I put two bales of hay over the wheels in the bed of the truck. I also pumped up my tires Monday afternoon. Ever since I bought that truck 10 years ago, the tires have not held air worth a hoot, and that's in spite of new valve stems. I have to put air in the tires once a week. Or I ought to put air in the tires once a week. When I checked the tires, three of them were down 10 pounds and one was down 20 pounds.
Between the properly inflated tires and the weight in the back of my little truck, it actually wasn't too bad driving on snow-covered roads. My only difficulty was in being able to see where the road WAS -- especially going around curves. But, yet again, I made it home.
I am already looking forward to spring, even though it's still four months away. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Thursday, December 04, 2008, 21:30
Sebastian
My old friend Sebastian died this afternoon at a little after 1:30 p.m. I knew when I got up this morning that he was not doing very well. I carried him to the litter box in my office, but he was too weak to even stand up. I sat in my chair by the kitchen table with him in my lap for a while. He was always a "lap cat" and loved to sit on my lap by the table or while I was working at the computer. He was 16 years old. He turned 16 on June 4 and was three weeks old when Randy and I got married.
There were three kittens in the litter: Sebastian (brown tabby), Nightshade (black) and Shadow Cat (gray). I gave Shadow Cat away to a lady who was a friend of a friend of mine whose cat had died recently. I have always wondered how she got along in life. Nightshade died three years ago on October 28, 2005.
I acquired the three kittens when their mother was killed by a horse. I knew she was going to have kittens, and when I had seen her the previous day, she had not yet given birth. When I saw her that morning, I knew she'd had her kittens. I let the horses in at the stable where I was boarding. It was Kajun's fault that the momma cat got killed. He disliked another little mare out in the pasture. I did not get his stall door shut fast enough, and when the mare came in, he charged out of his stall door and tried to bite her. She jumped sideways. And landed right on the momma cat. The cat died moments later.
I knew she had kittens, but WHERE? There was a whole mow full of hay above me. How was I going to find those kittens among thousands of bales of hay?
And then I remembered that for the past several weeks, when I came out to the stable in the morning, the momma cat, a little tortoiseshell, always came out of an old dog house at the other end of the barn. At one time, the man who owned the stable had coon hounds.
I went out to the back of the barn and looked in the dog house. And sure enough, there were the kittens, Three of them. The only problem was my arms were not long enough to reach them. They were toward the back of the dog house, and I couldn't get my shoulders in through the opening.
I went to get the son of the man who owned the stable. Fortunately, Terry's arms WERE long enough. (He is 6' 4" so not surprising that his arms were long enough. He also is an ex-Marine.)
And that was how Sebastian and Nightshade and Shadow Cat came into my care. I put them in a box and put the box in the tack room. Periodically I would go in and check on them. Little Nightshade would lift her head when I looked in the box and would try to hiss at me. The kittens were only a few hours old, so it wasn't really a hiss. She just thought she was hissing. When I was ready to go home, I went through town and took them to the vet clinic. The vet weighed them. They each weighed three ounces and needed one-third of an eyedropper of kitten formula to start out.
Sebastian always liked sleeping on pillows, and when we knew he was not doing too well a few days ago, we put a pillow in the bathroom by the heat vent. He liked sleeping by the vent. I spent much of Thursday morning in the bathroom with him. I kept going back in to check on him as I went about doing my other tasks. By early afternoon, I knew the end was near for my beloved Sebastian. When I was a kid growing up on our farm, we had brown tabby barn cats. "Tiger cats" we called them. I thought most cats in the world were tabbies. Later on I found out that tabbies are not nearly as common as I thought. When Sebastian came along, I had another tiger cat to love.
When I knew Sebastian was going downhill rapidly, for some reason, the thought popped into my head to sing the last verse of "Away in a Manger" to him: "Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay, close by me forever and love me I pray. Bless all the dear children in thy tender care. And take us to Heaven to live with thee there." I sang the song as best I could, through my tears and in a quavering voice. I have always sang to all of the kittens when they were little. I think, for the most part, Sebastian knew I was there. Whenever I went in to see him, he would be purring. I think he purred almost right up until the end.
I have a big art and craft fair to get ready for at a place called the Mabel Tainter Memorial Theater. The fair is on Friday and Saturday. I don't feel very much in a "holiday mood" right now. In fact, I'm kind of a basket case. As I always tell Randy, "It is so easy to love them and so hard to lose them."
Rest in peace, Sebastian. And please know that I loved you with all of my heart from the moment I saw you and your sisters in that old dog house.
LeAnn R. Ralph