Meet Max

Back in January, after we lost Callie, we knew that we wanted to share our home with another rescue cat. Last week, on PetFinder, I spotted just the cat we were looking for and he was being fostered with a local rescue group. On Saturday, we drove over to PetCo on Baldwin to meet "Morris" & decided then and there that he would join our family. So here, I present Max (we decided that neither "Morris", the name he'd been given at the shelter, nor "Goober", the name given him by the original owner really fit).


Max is approximately 6 years old, about 12#s & front declawed. He was surrendered to an animal control organization in mid-state because his owner's granddaughter developed allergies. Best Buddy Pet Rescue in Oxford, MI, found him there last week when they went to pick up a dog. We seem to have a talent for finding cats to adopt not long after they arrive at a shelter. Callie had been at PetSmart for 20 minutes & Boomer at Oakland Animal Control for just a couple days.

Given some of our past experiences - especially with introducing Sadie to our other cats the first winter we kept her while my parents were in Florida - Max's introduction was low drama. Boomer hissed a few times, Sadie did her usual howl, and Max ignored them both. As you can see above, he soon discovered the water-bed & relaxed. He's a very mellow cat who has adopted both Tom's lap & chair as his preferred spots when he's not basking in the sun at the sliding doors or investigating the birds & squirrels out in the back yard through the glass.


Here's a close up - that little black spot on his nose is a marking, not a scab or a bit of dirt. Other than that, he is completely orange.

More Lap Robes

It's been a couple weeks since I posted, but I've been busy working on more lap robes for the Veterans' Hospital in Ann Arbor.


This one is, again, worked in the box (brick or brain-dead) stitch which creates such a pretty texture, but as the larger balls of leftover yarn get worked up, I'm left more & more with shorter lengths. The brick stitch, unlike regular double crochet, doesn't work far enough over the yarn ends to hold them in place so for every yarn change there are two ends that need to be run into the crocheting with a yarn needle.


Hence my switch to plain double crochet to use up the smaller amounts. This rather "wild" one was made with balls of yarn that were sitting around in various bags.


This one is slightly more planned using all greens. I brought the tote of green & blue yarns up from the basement & for the next while I'm going to be working in one color in various shades for each project. There's enough of the greens left over for a second lap robe which is already started, then I'll tackle the blues & hopefully by the end of the year empty the various totes.

As you can see in the last photo, I had a helper for my photo shoot. Between the camera batteries threatening to go dead & Sadie, I'm afraid that I didn't arrange the lap robes to their best advantage. This was a toss it down, point & shoot session.