Incoherent Scribblings

A Cute Update

For those of you who were wondering, the kitties and I managed to make it to Iowa safe and sound. You can read about the whole experience on my main blog.

In stitching news… I don’t have much!
Actually, I pulled out Bea’s round robin yesterday and started working on it. I was really eager to get back to my needle and thread and got a good start on my square. Bea’s theme is “cuties” and I have chosen an Edwina Hedgehog chart from my April issue of The World of Cross Stitching. This is my first Country Companion pattern and I will say one thing for it… It sure is cute!
I currently have no pictures because I don’t have a scanner and I need to charge my camera’s batteries. I am not sure how many progress pics I will be posting while I am at my mom’s anyway… I had forgotten how painful a modem can be!

No CAT-Astrophe

Well, I have been back in the States for almost a week now. I think that I have recovered from my jet lag, but unfortunately I don’t think that the cats have… either that or they have decided that the most effective way to get even with me for this latest trip is to wake me up every two hours between the hours of midnight and eight AM.

Yes, as you have probably guessed, the kitties and I managed to make it to Iowa safe and sound. And incredibly the whole experience went quite smoothly…

On Thursday I called to confirm the Logistics of F.A.T. and get directions to the area where we needed to go to pick them up. When I called, I gave my name and told the agent that I would be picking up the cats the next day and she responded, “Oh yeah. You’re the (crazy) cat lady.” (The “crazy” part was not vocalized, but I could tell from the tone of her voice that was what she was thinking.) Apparently everyone in Lufthansa’s Chicago office knew some crazy cat woman was going to be on their doorstep on Friday.

And I was too…

My dad and I left for Chicago Friday morning at ugly-thirty (aka 4:00 AM!) and made such remarkably great time to Chicago that we arrived at O’Hare’s cargo area almost three hours early. (My dad is one of those people who always has to be at least 15 minutes early for an appointment or he thinks he is late, so I wasn’t surprised that we were early… and for the first time in my life I didn’t mind being so early.)

Since we arrived so early at the office, I tried to expedite the process by offering to fill out the paperwork before the cats arrived. Unfortunately it couldn’t be done, so Dad and I went and had a long lunch while we waited for the cats’ plane to arrive in Chicago.

When I was in the office before lunch, I was told that after the plane landed it would be about an hour before I could actually see my kitties. However, a very nice man (I am not sure if he was the pilot or the animal handler) cleared the cats through customs for me right away and luckily I was able to see them less than an hour after they arrived.

I was allowed to go to the warehouse to check on them while I was waiting for the paperwork and as soon as they heard my voice they were at the doors of their kennels. It was pretty obvious that they were glad to see me and anxious to get out.

Not long afterwards I signed the paperwork and they were loaded into the car for the second part of their journey. We then headed back to Small Town Iowa and since we didn’t get stuck in Chicago traffic, everyone was more or less settled in by midnight.

And the best part of the story? Even though they were in their kennels for probably close to 24 hours, no one had any accidents en route… even though everyone did use the litter box within ten minutes of being released!