First up, this very thrilling video of my new cat Starbuck playing with a ball while Mulder watches her. Or more like I’m playing with the ball and the cats are humoring me. Riveting stuff, I promise.

I’d rather be home enjoying this view:

That is Starbuck under my desk reveling in the warmth from the kitty heating pad.

We’re squarely into fall. What have I been doing since August? I seem to be busy. I don’t have kids, but things get busy when the kids and college students go back to school.

As always there is Iowa Hawkeye football with Saturday-consuming fun that includes tailgating, painful losses, awesome wins, and homecoming. I think we turned a corner with our trouncing of Wisconsin last week.

Since the beginning of September, I’ve been taking a knitting class at a local knitting shop. The class is through Kirkwood for eight weeks and I have one class left. Its been fun even though I’m the youngest person in the class by 10 or 20 years. I’m working on my first cable scarf (the first thing I’ve made just for myself) and have also learned new and better techniques that I didn’t have before. The class is offered often and people take it over and over. I may take it again in the spring after I have mastered all the new things I’ve learned. I really need to update my knitting project photos as I have a lot of things I’ve made that I haven’t shown off.

Also in the creative vein, I’ve been rehearsing with a “Sax-tet” that Jerry put together. We’re working on Christmas music to perform in December. We consist of a soprano, an alto, two tenors, and a bari. Its been a lot of fun to get together and play my good tenor (not my abused marching horn) and music that isn’t for marching band. I’ll keep you all posted on when and where we will perform.

On the home front, my new cats, Mulder and Scully, have settled in and pretty much run my apartment, both literally and figuratively. I have oodles of pictures of them to share. Mulder has apparently gotten a bit too much love from me as he’s gained 3 pounds since I got him and now tips the scales at 18.5 pounds! Someone got new light cat food this weekend.
Currently I am trying to wrest a bit of control back by toilet training them. Yes, toilet training for cats! I know it can be done because we had a friend/neighbor when I was young who had a toilet trained cat. I knew I wanted to pursue it when I got new furry family after Mac passed, but Mulder made the choice even easier. Both cats used the litter box just fine, but Mulder had this very annoying habit of digging in the litter box for fun. It could be completely clean and he’d just dig and dig and dig until he hit the bottom of the box. The problem, beyond the annoying sound, was that he would quickly reduce the corn-based cat litter I used to a fine yellow dust, which he would then track all over my apartment. Cats. I’m using a kit from CitiKitty and we’re into week 3. Scully had a small setback yesterday, but the website has many tips for getting them back on track and so far, so good. Hopefully they’ll be trained by Christmas.

Haven’t seen too many movies as of late. The fall TV season has returned and my TiVo always has a stockpile of shows for me to watch. But I have gotten a bit of my recommended daily allowance of theater time. ‘The Dark Knight’ in IMAX is truly amazing. Its still playing in many IMAX theaters, check it out, its worth the drive (if you have to make one). I enjoyed ‘Eagle Eye’ for your action-packed, computers-take-over-the-world needs. ‘The Dutchess’ was gorgeous and well-acted, but be fair warned, its a rather melancholy tale. I’m looking forward to the November and December holiday/awards season offerings.

I saw Kathy Griffin at the beginning of the month with Doogie and Colleen. She was super hysterical and it was a great show despite it being strangely held in Carver-Hawkeye Arena since Hancher is currently out of commission. But beyond that, I haven’t been to any concerts since I saw the Bones the night before the very first home football game at the end of August. I’m saving up my vacation and gas money to hit the road and see Harry (YAY!) four times in December. He has a new Christmas album coming out on Election Day and I can’t wait to get it.

I guess that’s all for the moment.

More photos over on Flickr.

Mulder

Scully

They’ve been home for about an hour now and seem to be settling in OK. As you can see, my end table is already a popular destination. Mac always liked that spot too. There will be many more pictures forthcoming so you can see what the rest of their little furry bodies look like and how they size up to each other.

Her last afternoon at my apartment

I know its been almost a week now, but I’m realizing that I didn’t actually post here and put out the news and some people are out there still wondering. I told a few people on the phone, posted a twitter update, and posted a few lines at connick.com, but I just didn’t feel like writing it out. As though writing it here made it more real or something. *shrug*

It was her time and she went quickly and quietly while I held her in my arms. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I sat and sobbed and sobbed in the room at the vet. Then I drove her to Bussey one last time where my mom helped me bury her in our back yard, next to my other beloved pets that went before: Luv, Sunshine, Blizzard, Scamper, and Flutter (my parakeet, we buried him in a checkbox). My mom was such a great support through it all. She’d already dug the hole. That’s a good mom.

I then drove back to my place and just sat. I pretty much just sat around for the next four days. Had lunch with the Steele’s and Heather on Friday and that was good. But all I wanted to do was sit and knit and watch ‘The X-Files.’ I don’t know why I found that soothing, but I did. Actually, I still am.

Its actually harder to leave my apartment than to be in it because coming home to the place being empty is the worst part. I instinctively look for her the minute I get home, because that’s what I’ve done for the last eight years. Once I’m home and am over her not being there, I’m mostly ok.

I’m still sleeping on my side of my bed. I got the bigger bed like five or six years ago, but I’ve always just slept on the right side because the left side is Mac’s. I realized two nights ago that I’m still just sleeping on that side of the bed. I know I should move towards the middle, but I’m not there yet.

I realize that I’m lucky to have had her as long as I did, she didn’t quite make it to 20, but she was very close. And lucky that she was pretty darn healthy up until only about 6 months ago. I have so many great memories of her, all the way back to the day I picked her out of the box of kittens in Jackie and Don Vanderhorst’s garage in 1988.

Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and phone calls, cards, emails, etc. They mean more than you’ll ever know.

The other reason is that I think this may be the last night I spend with MacGyver. I brought her home after work with a vast assortment of medications and instructions for monitoring and she’s just fading. She won’t eat at all, she drank once and then threw up the water. It was so sad. She’s stumbling when she tries to walk and basically is just laying on the floor quietly. I feel like she’s telling me it may be her time. She sat on my lap for awhile and slept on her favorite chair. Now she’s just on the floor in front of my TV. I think she’s just worn out.

I’m going to stay up with her as long as I can with her tonight and then see if she’ll sleep on her pillow on my bed one last time. I’ll re-evaluate the situation in the morning but it might be time for her to go gently into that good night. I’ll never be ready, but I feel more at peace with it than I did two days ago.

Again, thanks for all the kind words and thoughts.