Oh Baby!

Scampi's medicine was in a HUGE FedEx box on the porch last night which seemed excessive packaging for a little glass bottle of medicine that supposedly tastes like tuna. The mix and instructions seemed different than what the vet told me he was ordering. I thought she was supposed to have .2 milliliters or .2 suspension but it says it's .5 suspension and I'm supposed to give her .5 milliliters. I'm not giving it to her until I talk to him.

Also in the box was a note welcoming me to RoadRunner Pharmacy with comforting words about having a sick pet. The note was wrapped around a short wand with an elastic cord and a purple "bird" with real tail feathers on the end.

Both Baby and Scampi thought it was a pretty fun toy. I got tired of playing and needed to get dinner going so I tucked the stick into a box to let Baby play with it. She played so hard that she tugged it out of the box and was wrestling with the bird and the stick all over the living room. She got it under the edge of the couch which as I've mentioned before, is her absolute favorite place to play. All of a sudden she was screaming and running through the house. The elastic cord had become wrapped around her back paw and she panicked. I set myself to catching her fast but she was so scared she was FAST. Eric grabbed a towel about the time I finally grabbed her and pinned her by the scruff of her neck. She'd slash at me and try to bite when I tried to touch her paw. My previous scratches had just healed. Now I have a new one. She almost bit me once. Eric was chanting "Wrap her in the towel" over and over but I had her and didn't want to let go.

Once I managed to unwind the elastic and she calmed down a bit. I got her purring and let her go. She disappeared under the table amid a collection of boxes for over an hour. I wanted to see if she was recovered and called her. She came out looking sleepy, poor baby! She wanted to play with the purple bird again. I cut the elastic off of it and gave it to her. She was cautious at first, but has become wild with it again.

It's so easy to forget the hazards kittens face in a normal household.

She lost the bird under the couch for a while. She'd eaten so much her belly was too big for her to fit under the couch to retrieve it! One tail feather had come off. That kept her amused for the rest of the evening. This morning her belly was smaller and she found the bird again. I need to catch some video of her playing under the edge of the couch. It's so cute!

Last night she was sitting a few feet from Cactus and Loki as they ate their dinner, side by side, almost as if they were on a date. There was no growling or hissing. We have progress in kitty relations! The two of them finished together and went to the cat door. Cactus went out. Baby watched with fascination. Loki stood there for a few moments, staring Baby down, then followed. Baby ran to the cat door and started sniffing and poking at it with her paw. It's a soft plastic door that was once clear enough to see through. It has become more opaque with age. Before she could figure it out, I distracted her with the bird and the cat tree. She seemed to forget about the cat door. Eric says it's just a matter of time before she figures it out. Maybe it's time for the big kitties to figure out the hard kitty door that leads from the garage to outside. That will give us one more barrier to the outside world for Baby.

Baby has developed a taste for the big kitty food. This gives her gas, bad horrible gas. I encourage her to eat her kitten food instead. She also has discovered Scampi's morning "whippy cream" as we call it. She chased Scampi away from it this morning. I encourage Scampi to stand up to the Baby but I think Scampi likes Baby and wants to share. Scampi is the only kitty Baby will share a lap with, and the only big kitty that will share a lap with Baby. This is unexpected because when we took Miss Cactus in, Scampi hated her until she was spayed. Of course then, Scampi was the only female in the house and her status of top Queen was threatened. Maybe she has abdicated that role to Cactus by now and has become the "Queen Mum."

All I know is Scampi is even more playful than ever. She was using her mouth to pick up and toss a little piece of trash that Eric threw at the wastebasket and missed. She'd toss it and paw at it in her stiff old cat way. She likes having a baby around.

I feel the earth move under my feet - 5.6 magnitude

Tonight was El Pollo Loco night. That's my favorite fast food. Grilled chicken, yum! We were a bit late going and getting back because Eric lost track of time at work and didn't come home on time. It was 8:04PM when I stepped onto the porch. As I went up the steps I thought I heard the metal garage door across the street rolling up but when I turned to look there were no lights on and no movement. The sound got louder and I noticed the house and plum tree moving oddly about the same time I felt the porch shaking. Eric was still out in the yard and asked "What is that?" "Earthquake!" I replied. It kept rolling and I wasn't sure if it would be safer to stay on the porch or run out by Eric. In really bad quakes, the eaves break off the houses and people are killed by them as they run out of the house. I've been taught to shelter in place. Hmmm. Must do some research on where the eaves fall. I've never been on the porch during a quake before.

When it died down I went out into the yard just in case the quake was a precursor to the Big one. Neighbors down the block who had run out of their house during the shake yelled, "Did you feel it?"

"Oh yeah!" I called back. They repeated exactly the way I said it and laughed. We waved at each other then we went into the house to see if anything fell over. The only thing that fell was a precariously balanced empty oatmeal container. The kitties didn't seem upset. I was predicting a 5 magnitude earthquake. Then I reconsidered with the panic factor tossed in and decided my prediction was between 4 and 5. Guess I wasn't panicked as much as I thought. I underestimated it. A 4 you won't feel if you're walking. This one made the house and tree move enough to really notice.

The one thing we worry about with an earthquake this big is if it was centered far away that means somewhere was hit hard. This time it was only about 20 miles away. In Earthquake terms, that's not far at all. We felt it nearly full strength or maybe at full strength if the liquification factor of the valley floor amplified it.

The news shows a store near the epicenter with broken jars of olives all over the floor. The fact that they keep showing olives and nothing else says it was just that row that had damage. They use a bunch of different angles to make it look like a bigger story.

I'm glad that's all it was. Of course there will probably be aftershocks. They said the aftershocks might even be bigger. We find that confusing. If an aftershock is larger than the first quake, wasn't the first quake then a precursor to the main quake and the larger one the main event?

I think Eric is sleeping in his clothes tonight.

** EDIT **
This morning's news shows more stores with stuff that fell off the shelves and one Target where a couple of ceiling tiles fell onto a collection of shopping carts. Conclusion: Minor damage but no injuries.