Christmas 2009

The Holidays have come and gone and we're already well into the new year. But I've got one fantastic picture to share.

On Christmas Eve, Alicia and I were busy talking to our family on the phone, eating a wide variety of junk, and slowly opening presents. So we did a terrible job of taking pictures. But I managed to snap these pictures of Alicia opening a gift from her parents:

Is that a girl whom loves her Legos ®, or what? I promised I'd post this picture about two weeks ago. I hope it was worth the wait!

Just to round out the holiday pictures, here's the kitties:

Leela

Technically, Alicia and I adopted a second cat. In reality, this kitty had been pestering us for two years. We were afraid that Alicia was allergic to cats, so we took a risk and got Livia, a supposedly hypo-allergenic cat. We love Livia, but she gets lonely. To solve that, we finally brought in the cat above.




I took Leela (formerly known as Oreo) to the vet three weeks ago to give her a checkup. She's free from any of the standard kitty diseases plus she's flea-less. Leela took her vaccination shots like a champ, and home she came.

We kept her in the bathroom for the first day, but it turned out she was already trained to use the box. Or, maybe, she just wanted to impress us!



Livia and Leela haven't bonded yet. They hiss when they see each other. They've even divided the apartment in half: Livia gets the living room and the lovesac, Leela gets the bedroom and the window.

Leela started out antsy to get back outside, but now she doesn't even want to leave. She absolutely loves our bed.



Friends tell us that it might take up to 6 weeks for the cats to become friends. That seems about right. They are less jumpy around each other now... maybe they'll be curled up together soon.

Tiberius

Please welcome the newest addition to the Glaser-Copeland apartment, Tiberius!



Alicia and I were at Pet Co. shopping for cat food. Livia has spent a lot of time staring out the window. I know all cats do that, but it breaks my heart. I want the apartment to be exciting for her. Thus, I decided to look at the fish. I remember Tips would stare at my fish when I was young. Wouldn't Livia want to watch this fish?

Turns out, no. Livia doesn't even notice Tiberius. Lucky for us, Betta fish are cheap. They enjoy small tanks, no filter, and little food. The most expensive thing was the fish itself: we bought the coolest looking betta for a whooping $13.99.

Oh well. It's been fun watching Tiberius swim around. Very tranquil.

Should you be worried, you can see below that Tiberius' bowl has a cover. So if Livia does finally get hungry and go fishing, she'll be out of luck.

Alicia has a great post explaining the name: Check out her blog post here.

Livia Pictures

Back by popular request, here are some pictures of Livia: 

Livia

Just a quick picture of Livia sleeping. She's the bee's knees.

Livia is healthy!

As you may have read on Alicia's blog, Livia wasn't feeling very good after we brought her home.

But I'm happy to report Livia is fully healthy. Here's the story:



This is Livia on her way home from the shelter on Monday, October 5th. She seemed pretty lively when she got home, but perhaps a little weak. We blamed this on her operation, as she had just been spayed.

She was very cuddly, but not much for running around. Come Thursday, she starts sneezing. By Monday, Livia was sniffling and sneezing and sleeping all the time. So it was time for the vet.

I took Livia to the Vet on Monday, October 13th. He explained that shelters can do their best to keep the place clean, but when you get that many stray cats in one place, disease will spread. He'd even worked at the shelter we adopted Livia from.

He prescribed Livia amoxicillin, to be given twice a day. He also gave her two shots, to aleviate her congestion in her lungs. He mentioned that it might take a week until she stops sneezing.

The next few days were tough. Livia only seemed to get worse. Now, she was still eating and she was moving around a lot more; but she was really sneezing and sniffling. It took some faith in the vet that she really was getting better.

This was combined with the fear of allergies. The vet mentioned there was a slim possibility that Livia was allergic to something. Alicia was starting to catch something, so we were worried about Alicia being allergic as well.

To top it off, Alicia is allergic to penicillin. Livia had a tiny drop of amoxicillin on her chin, and when Alicia scratched her chin, the back of her hand broke out in hives.

But, rest assured, everything worked out. When Alicia got the hives on her hand, she washed her hands and it immediately went away. I became more careful giving Livia the amoxicillin (I wipe her chin off, too). Sure enough, she stopped sneezing by Monday.

Now, Livia's perfectly healthy. Here she is stretched out on the bed:



Alicia is healthy now, too. We've finally got a happy, healthy household.

Columbus Day

Happy Columbus Day!

I don't know about you, but I've got today off. It's the last day I've got off for awhile. (As you may recall, I've had 6 days off in the past three weeks).

I've still got a lot of work to do, so I can't blog too much. I plan on writing a bit tonight after Alicia gets home, so there will be more about Alicia's Birthday and other fun things that have happened in the past weeks.

For now, here's a picture of Alicia's new cat, Livia:

From Brian Blogs in Brooklyn