A Day of Distraction

Good morning, my friends. I have just about an hour before we need to head off to the clinic for my scoping procedure. I'm happy to say the Liquid Plumr has done its job. I was a little worried when we went to bed last night. When one spends the day prepping for this particular procedure, one doesn't want to have to do it again any time soon. This morning, it looks like everything is a go...and go...and go. Sorry. Trying to inform without being overly informative, if you know what I mean.

So I kept myself pretty busy yesterday. I took a walk on the treadmill, did four loads of wash, dusted and vaccumed the upper level, and I spent a good part of the afternoon on the applique for this one quilt block. It was tricky getting the placement right.

Sadie was my helper cat. Mainly, she just wanted plenty of petting.

There was just a little bit of time left in the day when that was finished, and so I traced the final two names for the Shop Hop 4.0 quilt. I'll stitch them when I've finished with my current project.

In other cat news, Smitty has presented us with a mystery. For the past month or so, I've noticed a scab on the back of his neck. My guess was that he was hitting something when he jumped up into their basement clubhouse. The "clubhouse" is the space between the basement and the main level. It's warm there, and they both like to get up there for napping. Also, we can get mice in that area, and so they keep the area free of mice.

Yesterday morning, his neck looked like this. 

It's the first time I've seen the fur worn away like that, and we've ruled out the clubhouse as the source. We've checked the edge of the kitty door that leads to the catio. Nothing there that could be causing this. We've walked around all the rooms of the house trying to spot something that might account for it, and neither of us has a clue. We can only think it's something he's passing under or through when he's outside. It doesn't seem to bother him, and we can both touch and stroke that area without causing him any discomfort. No idea.

With rainier weather approaching, they'll be spending less time outside. We'll be able to monitor this more closely, trying to rule out anything inside the house that's causing it. In the meantime, we'll just give him extra TLC and keep an eye on it. He has an appointment with the vet in a couple of weeks for his routine vaccines, and we can talk it over with his vet when we see her. Weird.

Okay, that's all I know for today. I have a little time left before I need to hit the shower. I may or may not blog tomorrow. My procedure is at 11:15, and I expect the afternoon will be spent recovering from that. I'll check in if there's anything to talk about. If not, I'll be back on Wednesday.