Our Ellie Cat

This is something I wasn't planning on having to write for a long time. But here we are.

Ellie, our first pet, our little cat princess, left us this past Sunday afternoon.

Starting about a week or so before Thanksgiving she didn't seem quite like herself. Normally she'd be the first to greet us when we'd come home from work. She'd hop up on the kitchen island to say hello and insist we pet her before doing anything else. But she wasn't doing that. Instead, we'd find her sleeping on our bed. That's not too odd, since that's her normal spot, but it wasn't what we were used to. Something just seemed a little off.

We assumed she was just a little sleepy. Or maybe she was mad at Leo. Or maybe she was just starting to get older and this was her new routine. Or maybe she was a little under the weather. A kitty cold, perhaps. She was still this way, not quite herself, when we left for Thanksgiving weekend.

Once we got home that Sunday we knew something wasn't right. She never misses a chance to greet us at the door when we've been gone for a weekend, but she didn't show up. We found her curled up on our bed. For the rest of the night she wouldn't get up to do anything but use the litter box and eat. I had to get her and put her on Leslie's lap since she wouldn't even do that herself. That's something I've never had to do before.

Leslie took her to the vet the next day to see what was wrong. They did blood work and other tests but weren't really sure what was going on. She got fluids and some medication and we took her home to see if she would perk back up. The rest of the week went pretty quickly. She kept getting worse. She stopped eating and drinking on her own, so we started feeding her with a syringe. We tried a few more treatments, gave her more fluids, ran an additional panel, did x-rays, and still nobody could figure out what was wrong. And all the while she got weaker.

Come Sunday morning she was the worst she'd been. For the few days prior we'd had to carry her to the litter box since she hardly had the strength to do it herself. On Sunday she could barely stand. We could tell this was probably the end. We carried her on her blanket to the sofa so we could cuddle with her one last time.

After about an hour of petting her, loving on her, and saying goodbye she breathed her final breath and was gone.

Ellie was our first pet. We got her just over a month after we'd been married. She was our only pet for about a year, so all the love was heaped on her during that time. Leslie was especially close with her. Ellie was rarely far from her and would cuddle up on her lap any chance she got. She followed Leslie from room to room, much the way that Leo does to me. Ellie knew her name and would come running from any room in the house if Leslie called her. She loved to sleep between us in our bed and, even if it was sometimes annoying, we loved it too.

She was a great cat and will be missed terribly.

November 2012 - My very first picture of Ellie

November 2012 - This is the day we got her

February 2013 - She already loves cuddles with her mommy

May 2013 - Sleepy kitty knows her spot on the bed

June 2013 - Helping us paint at the new house

August 2013 - Meeting her little brother Bernard

August 2013 - More cuddles with Mommy

September 2013 - Playing around in the tub with new little brother Franklin

September 2013 - Quite the pair already

September 2013 - Always ready to help with house projects

October 2013 - She did eventually learn to share Leslie's lap

December 2013 - And share her spot on the bed

February 2014 - She was always getting in the way, but that was ok

March 2014 - Getting into mischief with Frank

March 2014

April 2014

December 2014

March 2015

August 2015

December 2015

December 2016 - This is the last picture I have of her, days before she died. She's so weak all she can do is cuddle with Leslie.

This will be the last post of the year, so here's to a great Christmas and a happy New Year. Hold your family close and give your pets an extra squeeze for us.

Thanks for reading and see you in 2017.

Garden Victory

As autumn in Indiana comes to an end I thought I'd pen a quick post about how our garden did this year. As you may recall, we expanded to two raised beds this time around and integrated the new drip irrigation system into both. Not surprisingly, automatic watering combined with twice the real estate yielded a lot more than our previous efforts. Well, at least overall.

Let's start with what worked. Our tomatoes, especially the Roma, did really well. We had bruschetta multiple times, made a batch or two of tomato and basil pasta sauce, and gave a bunch away to neighbors and friends. One of the varieties we grew was Cherokee Purple - an odd heirloom variety that's prized for its delicious, sweet taste. To really experience these we sliced a few up and made BLTs with Smoking Goose jowl bacon. While I'm not a BLT connoisseur, this was by far the best BLT I've ever had. These tomatoes were heavenly and the jowl bacon complimented it just the way I wanted it to.

We also planted the herbs in the beds this year. The regular watering and sunshine really allowed them to take off. Our little basil plants thrived most of all and kept us in fresh basil all summer. We put it on pizza, in pasta sauce, in cocktails, and even made two big batches of pesto (which we freeze in ice cube trays before transferring to plastic bags, so now we can use small portions all winter). The mint and rosemary also did well, which resulted mainly in some mint juleps and a smoked pork loin covered in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and fresh rosemary. You just can't beat having fresh herbs on hand like this.

Another success was the large number of chilies we got out of our little guys this year. At one point I took a bag of them to give away at work because we had too many. I incorporated jalapenos into guacamole, red chilies into stir-fry, and various others into everything from omelettes to sauces. One of the biggest successes we had was creating some more hot sauce. One of my coworkers had a huge batch of red jalapenos ripen at once, so he passed 20 or so on to me. And, as luck would have it, I had a few habaneros ready to be picked at that same time. So, since I obviously couldn't let these go to waste, I had a hot sauce making day and produced two batches - one batch of jalapeno hot sauce (jalapenos, garlic, onion, water, vinegar, salt, and sugar) and a batch of "Caribbean" habanero hot sauce (habaneros, pineapple, mango, water, lime juice, cider vinegar, brown sugar, allspice, cloves, and salt). Both really turned out well. The jalapeno sauce is very in-your-face spicy as it's almost a pure chili taste, while the habanero sauce hits you with the heat in the back of your mouth since the sweetness from the fruit balances it out. I recommend serving them like I did - as accompaniments to smoked chicken wings. A+ on those for sure.

Now, what didn't work so well this year? Well, this summer had some brutally hot days. Those hot days managed to basically destroy all of our squash plants. I think we managed to get maybe two zucchini and a one or two summer squash before the vines shriveled up. We've also decided this was the last year of planting cilantro. So far we've had no luck with it and can't seem to get enough out of our plants to make it worth it. We also had issues with our tomatoes late in the season. Just before they would be ripe enough to pick bugs would be all over them. I'm sure there's something we can do to mitigate that, so I'll have to do some research before planting next year. But, other than these issues, it was a good garden year. We've still got a lot to learn, but it's been fun experimenting and enjoying our results.

And that's all for now, folks. Thanks for reading and we'll see you next time!