The Tree's Up

Actually, we put it up last weekend, but I only just now got around to taking the pictures off my camera.  It's a small tree.  This is a terrible picture of it.  I couldn't get the colors very well because the flash was ricocheting off the bright wall on the back.  They were either blown out or out of focus.  Sorry it's such a terrible picture.

And this is the oldest ornament on our tree.  It's been around since the early years of my parents' marriage way back in 1944!  My mother always hated this ornament because of its age, but I always loved it.  Luckily, she gave it to me a long time ago, and I've kept it safe.  And since my mother died back in 1997, it's precious to me.

I love this treetop that Erik gave us when he was still in high school (which is now more than 13 years ago).  I really like it (sorry again for this terrible picture):

Each of our cats have their own ornaments too.  Here's Gracie:

She's such a scaredy cat that she generally looks all puffed up like this.  With sadness, we put up our Krissy ornament this year:

We had to put her down back in January, just shortly after last Christmas.  We really miss her.  We had her for 19 years.  She was a tortoise shell calico.  Here's the real little Krissy:

And here's George's ornament:

And speaking of George, if you've been following for very long then you know he has an autoimmune disorder known as feline pemphigus foliaceus.  It's a terrible disease that both cats and dogs can get, and they can die from it.  We have to give him steroids every other day, which he hates.  We call it "waterboarding the cat," because we have to wrap him up in a towel, and then I hold him in my lap on his back while Mike shoves it down his throat.  He's so smart and so strong that it's really hard to get him to take his medicine.  And if he doesn't get it, he starts looking like this:

I just took this picture two days ago.  He does it to himself because he itches and then scratches himself all up.  I wish we could explain it to him.  It would sure make things a lot easier. 

Before he was diagnosed, it looked like this all over his head.  The edges of his ears looked like they'd been gnawed on by rats, and he had it literally all over his face, even on his lips.  We thought it might be a nervous habit, but he started getting it on places where he couldn't have scratched himself, like on the back of his neck.  It was even on the pads of his feet.  Really, it's a terrible disease.  He's such a sweet cat.  I'm afraid we'll lose him some day because of this, and it would be a terrible death.  Imagine itching to death.  I was afraid we were going to lose him before he was diagnosed because he was obviously miserable.  It hurt watching him scratching and shaking his head all the time. 

So that's about it from me.  I hope you're all getting your Christmas decorating and baking done.  I'm going to start working on my baking tomorrow.  I'll let you know how it turns out.