Rainy Days, part one

A lovely rainy Sunday, spent inside (mostly), not cold enough for a fire, but definitely blanket-worthy. I woke early this morning to drive my eldest daughter (the pastry chef) to work at a ridiculous hour and discovered an little problem with our smallest cat (belonging to my youngest daughter) and a piece of string... and, well, I won't get too graphic. We wound up at the emergency vet clinic at 7am, getting x-rays and IV fluids.

Poor little Nemo cat has had so many medical issues; she is already on predisone, special diet, and she has to spend her nights alone in our dressing area so the other cats don't eat her food. She weighs only 4 pounds, and we fight to keep the weight on her, as she tends to stop eating every time her little tummy gets upset, which happens a lot. She is a sweet little thing, but she always looks a bit terrified, as though we were going to eat her, rather than feed her and cuddle her. I suppose it comes from trauma in kitten-hood-- she was a rescue kitten that someone found in a fast food bag in a trash can. She had been sick before we adopted her, and we assumed that when we got her home she would out-grow that scaredy-cat thing. I suppose that when you are the size of a guinea pig in a house full of growing kids and big feet, a little caution is a good thing.

So, anyway, thank goodness we have a wonderful clinic just down the street, open 24 hours/day on weekends. (Why do pets always have their worst injuries/maladies on Sunday mornings, or the Friday before a holiday weekend?) The vet sent us home with the cat and instructions, and she promptly crawled to the back of the closet to sleep off her trauma. I was tempted to follow her, but instead I crawled onto the sofas for a little quiet time with my sweetie, my laptop, and the dogs.

While at the clinic, we spent some time playing with the "homeless row", a stack of cages filled with tiny abandoned kittens. Their stories were written on cards on the cage fronts ("found under a bush on 185th", "abandoned under house, last of litter", etc.) and their tiny little faces were heartbreaking. I am surprised that I don't have six more cats this afternoon than I did this morning-- not that I need any more cats-- but we managed to leave with only the cat we came with. Still, I can't help thinking of them and hoping that they find happy endings...

So, here I am on my sofa, with a blanket, hot tea, a snoring dog at my side, and my feet tucked under my sweetheart. Tomorrow is another Monday, complete with early rising, school, work, meetings in the evening, and all the other usual chaos... but today, I have this moment, with my family, my pets, and the peaceful sound of the rain.

For you, I have the first official installment of my kit, Rainy Days & Mondays. I have tried to build the mini-kits so that each of them stand alone, as a page kit, but can be combined with the other mini-kits in other ways. The first kit has two papers and five elements.

Click HERE to download from 4shared and HERE from MediaFire.

The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain.  This is the kind the anonymous medieval poet makes me remember, the rain that falls on a day when you'd just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam and look out the streaked window with complacency. 

 ~Susan Allen Toth, England For All Seasons