It’s always Autumn in England

I guess I should update on things.

Edona is doing really well. She made it through surgery and is recovering well. They have taken her off of the ventilator and most heart medications. She is on a feeding tube, but they have started giving her liquids as well. The doctors are hoping to move her out of ICU in the next few days. God is good and has been looking after this girl!

Evan and I have been keeping busy with the house and property. We borrowed my uncles tiller and are hoping to have a late summer/fall veg garden planted in the next few days. However, we have a busy weekend ahead of us, so we will see what we get done.

Saturday night, we are going to the drive in and watching Harry Potter with a few friends. Can’t wait! I have been re-reading the last few books and enjoying it. It has been so long since I read them and I have watched the movies so many times, there are lots of things I had forgotton.

Sunday we are going to a birthday party for my nephew, who is turning 3. I need to go buy him a present I guess. I know what I want to get him, just need to go get it.

Our dog is settling in nicely, but our cats still won’t come out of our bedroom. We don’t know how much longer we should make our cats hide under our bed, before we decide this isn’t working. The thing is, the dog is great, our cats just don’t like dogs at all. hhhmmm…not sure what to do on that one.

There is a cute calico cat that has been haning around our house for the last week to 10 days, at least. It will let us get to within about 5 feet and then walks away.

Evan and I had both seen it a few times each, and last night it was sitting on our porch and two of our other cats were outside and within a few feet, but just ignoring it. Considering our cats are VERY teritorial, this was a bit odd, but I didn’t really think much of it. I was just glad they were not chasing it or trying to kill it. This morning, when I got in the car, it squeezed out of the small crack in the barn doors and sat there looking at me. I have checked the barn and there are no kittens, but I can’t get close enough to the cat to see if it is male or female. We have not fed it, but it also has not left our property today. I think we have a barn cat.

However, I made Evan promise this cat would not come inside our house. Or be fed by us. I would be tempted to take it to the vet if I can ever catch it. I would only do this to make sure it is neutered, but that is the only thing I would ever do for the cat. I’m also not going to name it. It will always be cat or kitty.

This morning, when I walked outside to go to work, I noticed a bird’s nest on my porch. If I had not been running late, I would have gone back in the house to get the camera and take a picture. I will do that tonight when I am home.

The nest was not there yesterday, so they built it quickly. I am writing about it because, I don’t know much about birds. I know many are sensitive to human smells and if you touch eggs, babies, the parent won’t come back. I told Evan to get a ladder and see if there are any eggs in it yet.

My concern is this, we have 4 cats that love to sit on the porch. I would HATE to see my cats kill any babies, and I know William would do just that. I know that is nature, and cats kill birds, but if I can move the next to the tree 5 feet away and it would not affect the birds, I think they would have a greater chance of survival.

Anyone got any experience with birds building nests on their front porch? I will take a picture tonight, so you can see where it is at. My favorite part of the nest is that the birds found a popped balloon and used the string in the nest. The popped balloon is hanging down, which is what I noticed first this morning.

We moved in last weekend. We have spent two nights in our house so far! It is nice to have our own space again. The cats freaked out for the first couple hours and we had 3 of the 4 hiding under our bed for several hours. Harry ventured out first and walked through the whole house, before joining the others under the bed!

Chica did not want to come out of her cat carrier, so I took the top off and picked her up. She seemed fine after that. She is really my cat, so I think she was just waiting for me to get her out.

Chaucer  has spent the most time under the bed and although she comes out, that has always been her favorite place to sleep, so it’s really not that unusual.

William is already meowing to go outside. I’m really not sure how long we can keep him inside for before he drives me crazy. I think I would like to wait until this weekend to let him outside, that way I know he is settled in the house.

Other than that, we do not have internet at the house, so I may not be updating very often on here or Facebook. I can usually get the internet on my phone, but sometimes it is tempermental about what websites I can get onto. This also means we are not checking our emails unless we are at work, so if you really need us, call our cell phones!

Where does the time go? Yesterday was August 15th and suddenly today it is September 16th. How did that happen?

Job - Great

Sam’s football games - Great (3-1) but they only got beat because the team was a division above Lapel.

Car - Great. But it does have to go in and be looked at, the battery seems low, but it might be a spark plug

Weather - Great. I love the weather we have been having, I would guess it is in the mi-70’s, just perfect!

Cats - Great. William caught a chipmunk and DESPERATELY wanted to bring it in the house. It is the first time he has caught anything that I am aware of, so it makes me wonder if it was sick or old or something.

Here is a picture of my office. I took this the first couple days, so I now have a nice, new chair. I am going to turn my desk facing the other way, so I can more easily see who is coming to my door. I am also getting rid of the very small bookcase and just keeping the large one.

Just for fun, here are some pics of the cats!

Here is Harry, sitting in all 4 cats favorite spot…looking out the window

Chaucer sitting on the cat tower that Evan made

Chica and Chaucer playing

William is a bit camera shy, so it is hard to get him to hold still long enough to get a picture. I will keep trying though!

Yesterday morning, I let out the cats as I usually do and then sat down to read the newspaper. Every few minutes I would look up and see what the cats were doing. Chica doesn’t usually wander too far away and generally just sits on the patio and sunbathes. Well, all the sudden she is no where to be seen, so I step out and call her name. Nothing. She doesn’t come and I can’t see her. I don’t worry too much, but I did tell Evan she was no where to be seen. About 5-10 minutes later Evan went outside and then came and told me he had found her, but to come and see her.

This is what we found:

Chica had found a tree and was at least 25 feet up. I guess she must have been even higher when I first called her, because I could not see her at all. I think when I called her, she started making her way down and it took at least another 10 minutes for her to get all the way down.

Here she is a bit lower:

Evan and the cats flew out today with Evan’s parents. Everything went very smoothly and the people were super nice. I did notice lots of people looking at us and that made me smile. Evan and his parents had escorts through security and they took the cats to a quiet room, opened one cage and swabbed the inside and just swabbed the outside of the rest of the cages. They said the cats stay in that room until last thing, then they walk them down, that way they stay out of the noise. They said in Chicago, they will be last off of the plane, again to keep the cats away from all the noise and bumps. They will be waiting near baggage claim.

If you ever travel with pets, AA is VERY good!

Now I am off to work for the day. 4 day week and then Evan comes home next Monday, which is Bank Holiday, so again another 4 day week. Lucky me!

This week has been fun and also stressful, but I guess moving will always be stressful, no matter how well you plan, organise, etc.

We have had fun with Evan’s parents here. We have been to Bolton Abbey; York and ate at our favorite spot, Oscar’s. We also spent one morning at the Trafford Centre and today we headed over to the Lake District. We stopped in Keswick and Ambleside.

We also made a decision this week that Evan is going to fly home with his parents on Tuesday and take all four cats. This involved booking Evan on the same flight as his parents; buying 4 cages for the cats suitable for Air Travel and getting the cats Vet checked. We used PayPal money to pay for the cages, which was a bonus!

On Friday, we got some advice about money and finances before we head to America and once we are living there. A few things we need to do are open a new bank account; do our American taxes for last year in America; write to the Tax people here and get a refund for the year we here in England because we will have been paying income tax based on working 12 months and we are leaving early, so we should get a refund.

While Evan is gone next week, one of the things I am going to work on is putting furniture and stuff we are not taking with us, onto ebay to sell. Sam and Shane, be expecting a half empty house when you get here. Sorry!!

Part of getting stuff listed on ebay is that we had a company come and give us an estimate for shipping our stuff to America. I had estimated that we would take between 120-170 cubic feet with us to America. When we moved from Northampton to here, the van we rented was 250cubic feet and I figured we would be taking about half of that to America. The estimate we got was 147 cubic feet. How good am I!! Maybe I should go and work for a moving company! Anyway, it has spurred me on to start getting rid of stuff NOW.

If the cats are going to be living with Bill and Jane, we want to get ourselves out of here as quickly as possible, so that they do not have to take care of them for too long.

I will try to post some pictures of this week soon, but for now, I will end this very long post.