Sophie's Story

In case you've missed the news, Prince William of Wales has become engaged to his long time girlfriend, Catherine Middleton (Kate). There were the obligatory photos of the two of them when the news was announced. The was quite a bit of press regarding her engagement ring, a sapphire surrounded by diamonds that his father gave to his mother as an engagement ring. Some people thought it romantic and some people thought it was creepy, given what eventually happened to the marriage and to Diana,Princess of Wales. I think it's just fine. It is a nice looking ring and shouldn't be sitting in some vault somewhere. It wouldn't be the first time a man has given a woman a family heirloom as an engagement ring. A few days after the engagement was announced a customer of mine noticed my ring. "It's Diana's ring!", she exclaimed. She was the first of several people who remarked that my wedding ring looked a lot like the one currently gracing the hand of Miss Mid...

Hi Everyone! This is Scamp. Sophie is making Colby and me write this. For some reason she doesn't realise that we are house cats and are thankful for the same things pretty much all the time. Don't get me wrong, I love my life and I prefer it this way, it's not high on the excitement scale. So, here it goes. I am thankful for my humans. I'm not saying this because I have been promised a treat after I'm done writing. I really mean it. Our humans are good. I like Sophie's hair. I like to sniff it and chew on it especially after she's washed it or even better after it's been coloured. I love freshly coloured hair. Carrie has nice hair too. I'm thankful for grooming sessions. I need them so that I look my best. I am a beautiful cat, with long,silky,black striped fur and it takes some effort to look this good. I'm thankful for milk. Milk is very good for me and Sophie keeps some special cat milk on hand. It tastes good too. I'm also th...

I have started my celebration of Thanksgiving this week. It hard to celebrate Thanksgiving these days. Everywhere around me it seems that people are putting up Christmas items and stores are competing for buyers already. I am irate at the thought that a holiday that is supposed to celebrate giving thanks and selflessness is being pushed aside in favour of Christmas, which is now a holiday of relentless consumerism. Yeach! C and I are very big on giving thanks. There are several times in our lives before we knew each other and after where kindness from someone made a big difference. We take very seriously the verse from St. Luke "For unto whomsoever much is given,of him shall be much required" (12:48 KJV). C practices tithing after the custom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I do a variation on this. Since I do not belong to a church to contribute a tithe to, I take my 10 percent and put it into our savings account. If we run into an issue where money cou...

C and I have a standing date every other Friday night to go grocery shopping. Yes, while most couples are ordering the appetizer and working on the first glass of wine,C is at the deli counter getting some sliced ham and I am looking for some sushi. Since we religiously follow the rule of not going to the grocery store hungry we will sometimes grab a quick (or not so quick) bite before we start shopping. We like to go to different places when we can. C had heard about this really good barbecue place from some coworkers. He went there alone once to scout the place out. He liked it so much that he brought me a bit of food to sample at work and we decided that that is where we would eat before our shopping date. It turned out that we had both eaten late lunch on Friday so we shopped first. After our purchases were loaded into the car we headed off to Dickey's Barbecue Pit. I liked the place the moment we stepped inside. It was small, with tables on one side and a long counter...

Catalog season is now upon us. From now until the middle of January I'm going to get about half a ton of catalogs in the mail. Thankfully we have a post office box so I won't have to worry about our letter carrier getting a hernia. I like to at least look through most of them. Some of them have a lot of nice things or interesting things but are either too expensive or too impractical for us. I get catalogs from businesses I'd never order from. I'm surprised at how many. I always though the Internet would cut down on this. Oh well... I got one catalog from a place that sells educational type toys. I have no idea how I got this as I have no kids and don't order from places that I thought would share a list with a toy store. I looked at it anyway and was instantly jealous. This is a really cool catalog, it has all kinds of educational toys in it. There are all kinds of games and puzzles. They have Rubik's cubes,books with brainteasers and logic puzzles bo...

I had a song stuck in my head. It was the latest song by Taylor Swift. It had been playing in my head for the better part of two hours and I was getting tired of it. It's not that I have anything against Taylor Swift. It's nice to see a female vocalist that can play guitar and write. I even sort of like 'You Belong With Me'. Her phrasing is atrocious though, but that's another story. The fact is, most of her songs are about being a teenager. I'm 41 and not interested in that anymore. I would prefer something more mature. Normally I can hear the Muzak playing throughout the store and that helps. The channel that is usually on is like a radio station minus the commercials and plays a variety of soft rock type music and a bit of country. Usually I can find a song to replace what's stuck in my head. Unfortunately for the past week or so someone has chosen the elevator music channel. You know what I'm talking about. It's the one with popular songs on ...