Maybe this post will not quite seem blog worthy – other options would be how cute Pippin is when playing with his mouse (and sliding on the new hallway floor), house remodel, Jay’s insane work schedule (can we say average of 4 hrs of sleep per night these days?), my itchy skin, or baby stuff. The story of my neighbor seems like the most ‘unusual’ so we’ll go with that.
Jay and I know the names of the neighbors who live closest to us and we wave at each other if we’re outside at the same time. Rarely to we have a conversation of more than, ‘How are you?’ They all seem like perfectly nice people, but at different stages in life than we are. The neighbor I talk the most to is the woman who lives next door to us and lives alone (important for later in post). This woman had been on vacation recently, but had seemingly returned. Then last Thursday evening, I noticed her garage door was still open, car in driveway, yard waste container not put away (2 of the 3 are unusual – she rarely has her garage door open for longer than a short time span and always puts her garbage/etc containers away promptly – unlike us). Friday, same picture. Saturday, also the same picture – though no sign of our neighbor herself. By this point I was becoming concerned – and hoping she hadn’t slipped in her house somewhere and was lying in pain, unable to get help… I mentioned it to Jay and he too seemed concerned. We decided that if nothing had changed by Sunday, we’d go talk to our neighbor across the street with whom this woman is better friends. Sunday rolls around and no change, so Jay and I went to knock on our neighbor’s doors, Jay checked to see if they were locked and if he could see in any windows – and I was trying not to feel like a snoop. After no results from this search, we went and talked to our neighbor across the street who knew nothing about this woman being gone again and was also concerned when we mentioned the garage door had been open for a few days. First the three of us went to close the garage door. Then she and I went and spoke to the neighbors on the other side of said missing neighbor – again with no new info, but more concern on their part. Luckily, both sets of neighbors had some ways to contact my neighbor and an email message and phone call were sent off. Tuesday my neighbor across the street got a call from the ‘missing’ woman – all was well, she was on vacation with her father in eastern Oregon and hadn’t checked email/messages in days. She’d rented a car and therefore, probably just forgot to close the garage door as her car was in the driveway. Mystery solved, in the best way possible. Exciting times at the Blanton/Otten household

For a while now, Clara has been convinced she would love to be an outside kitty. We let the cats out on the patio, but that does not always satisfy Clara. Since we’ve been remodeling, the side door has been used much more than usual – and Clara can often be found waiting by the door, hoping to sneak outside. Last week, she was finally successful in not only getting out the door, but also in not being noticed… I think she was only out for about an hour, but that was enough time to get into a cat fight, lose her collar, and tangle with a rusty nail. Ah Clara… When she came in, I tortured her by washing out her wounds. The next day I called the vet to see if I should bring her in – I thought her wounds were minor, but wanted to be sure there was nothing else I should do. The vet’s office said that as long as the wounds were not red and infected, she should be fine. Yesterday I had to take her in for a check-up and showed the vet her largest wound – and found out it was more serious than I thought. Poor girl had a big tear that had opened up (I thought she’d just lost the top layer of skin…). So today, she’s having minor surgery to repair the wound (the vet did not think it would heal on its own and it was too long since it happened to just glue it closed). I think the worst part will be that she will have to wear a special kitty cone so that she doesn’t like the sight – any guesses on how often a day we’ll get hissed at? Poor girl! And thus she continues to be our expensive kitty – Pippin only has to go for yearly check-ups, but Clara, no, she gets to make many more trips for all kinds of reasons. Good thing she’s so darn cute!