Grumpy Gus Revisited, and Kittens (What Else?)

Well, Grumpy Gus. my new name for Brother-in-law, had not gotten better. He spoke to several people, including a friend of mine who knows tons about holistic medicine and herbs and healing and such like. From putting clues together, everyone finally realized why his back is in the shape it is in. To put it quite delicately, he is stopped up, and it is putting pressure on the nerve.

So the doctor gave him a huge purgative to take, and he went home to take it. He has to not eat for several hours before, and then eat no solids until well after. Let's hope it works, for everyone's sake.

If i had known that's what the problem was, i would have spiked the brownies with chocolate laxative and saved us several days of agony.

Meanwhile, i truly thought all the adoption events were over for the year. I was told so, quite firmly. Then Meg called.

"Can you bring your kittens on Wednesday evening again? There is a little 8-year-old girl who has saved up her money from this whole past year, and her mom told her if she could buy the food, litter, box, and pay the whole adoption fee by herself, she could get a kitten. She will be there looking to take somebody home."

Wow. How do you turn down an 8-year-old who saves all her allowances, birthday gifts, and Christmas gifts for a whole year to get herself a kitten? You don't. So the big 5, Dawnflower, Tiger, Hummingbird, Fuzz, and Mike will be there. Let's hope she finds one of them suitable. Who knows, other people might decide, now that the big holiday hoopla has died down, that it is a good time to get a kitten.

Oh, and finally, miraculously (in the case of Gladys, it really is a miracle!), the remaining kittens are almost weaned. They also went nuts over turkey neck meat. I've never seen Ashfur get like that, she snatched the bowl with her paw, pinned her sister Ferncloud's head to the floor with her other paw, and went at it. I had to pour it all on the floor so everyone could get a share.


Today is:

Bowling Day

Constitution Day -- Ireland

Enjoying ESP Day

Fifth Day of Christmas

Ice Skating Day

Kwanzaa, Day 4 -- Cooperative Economics

National Chocolate Again Day (Because someone, somewhere, believes it can't be chocolate something-or-other day often enough.)

Pepper Pot Day

St. Gabriel - Ethiopia

St. Thomas of Canterbury's Day (patron of the blind)

St. Tropez's Day (patron of children; against gout)

St. Trophimus of Arles' Day

Tick Tock Day (end of the year is getting closer -- are you ready?)


Anniversaries Today:

Texas becomes the 28th US State, 1845


Birthdays Today:

Jude Law, 1972
Bryan "Dexter" Holland, 1966
Ed Autry, 1954
Ted Danson, 1947
Marianne Faithfull, 1946
Jon Voight, 1938
Mary Tyler Moore, 1936
Billy Mitchell, 1879
William Gladstone, 1809
Andrew Johnson, 1808
Charles Goodyear, 1800


Today in History:

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, 1170
The first nautical almanac in US published by Samuel Stearns, Boston, 1782
Gas lights are installed at White House, during the Polk administration, 1848
The first Young Men's Christian Association chapter in the US opens, in Boston, 1851
Emma Snodgrass is arrested in Boston for wearing pants, 1852
The first telegraph ticker used by a brokerage house, Groesbeck & Co, NY, 1867
The Wounded Knee Massacre takes place, 1890
Edison patents "transmission of signals electrically" (radio), 1891
Mongolia gains independence from the Qing dynasty, 1911
The first movie serial, "Adventures of Kathlyn," premieres in Chicago, 1913
Fred P Newton completes longest swim ever (1826 miles), when he swam in the Mississippi River from Ford Dam, Minn, to New Orleans, 1930
Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology, 1959
Filming began on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in England, 1965
Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees, 1989
Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union sign a peace accord ending a 36-year civil war, 1996
Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million lives, 1998
The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct, 2003