Socks and an Anniversary

I finished the Earl Grey socks I'm knitting for Chris, my former student who is now an ordained Catholic priest.

I have cast on another Charade sock. This time, I'm using the Araucanía Ranco Multy yarn that I purchased at The Woolly Lamb in East Aurora, NY last week.

As a point of interest my paternal grandmother had at least one parent who was an Araucanía aboriginal from this region in southern Chile.

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of Ollie joining our family.

Back in the summer of 1999, Fred and I returned home from our honeymoon (which had been delayed by a year due to our teacher's strike) in Puerto Vallarta to a very sick cat, Eddie, who subsequently died at the beginning of August. I went through the stages of death and dying in record time and a couple of weeks later Scooter and I ventured to PetsMart to see what kitties were there that needed a new home.

Back in 1983 I decided I needed to adopt a cat. My mom suggested I give the prospective kitty the 'purr test'. This involves picking up the kitty and if it starts to purr and rubs against you, it passes the 'purr test'. It worked with Stanley and we tried the same technique at PetsMart that day. We already had a female cat, Mouffie, and we thought we'd get another female as they are more submissive than male cats. The female kitten I picked up just wanted to get away from me. However, she had a very cute twin brother who did pass the purr test. That was it, Ollie (who was 5 1/2 months old at the time) went home with us.

Ollie didn't stop purring until he finally passed out from exhaustion that evening.

I took him to the vet the next day and he purred so loudly during the examination, the veterinarian couldn't even hear his little heart beating.

Scooter was only 5 1/2 years old!

Ollie was long and rangy. Skip says he's the world's longest cat.













Ten years later he still has a very loud purr but it alternates with his frequent naps (and snoring), pestering us to feed him and head-butting us when he wants attention. He charms everyone who meets him. He is a very satisfactory cat.