Valdivia Family Blog: May 2008

Well, here we are – coming out of blog hibernation (second post in two weeks)! Finally more consistent blogging from the Valdivias. Well, I guess the beginning of spring sprung some pretty busy times for us but we are recovering now and ready to come back a bit to the computer – at least with a bit more consistency. The weather is great and the garden is almost planted. Yes, don’t laugh, our garden is not quite what most people would call a garden but it is what we can do with the deer, gopher, and water rationing problems we have here!

Speaking of gophers, we’ve added some weapons to our home. Well, gopher hunting is kind of a side benefit to this addition but comes as a welcome one!

A special family was in need of a home for these 3 beautiful cats and now that my allergies are almost eliminated (I say almost because I still have a few aspects to them to work out), we decided to let Megan finally have the opportunity to have some feline friends. We tried in the past but had no success as my allergies were just too serious. I have held these beautiful creatures and although I still have some reaction to them, I am confident the remainder of the healing will be finished soon. I am getting allergy elimination treatments through a protocol with the name of NAET which is an acronym for Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Techniques and has done way more than eliminate my cat allergies. I am no longer struggling with a life-long motion sickness in the car and my food allergies are almost all but a memory now! This is truly a miracle that the Lord has granted me this last year through the gift of my close friend. (Thank you!)

So here’s introducing:

On the left: Teddy (Teddy Bear for me because he is the most lovable and cuddly one and Teddy Roosevelt for everyone else because they wanted a more manly name and calls him “Mr. President”). :)
On the right: Riley – which means “valiant or noble”. I think you will agree he has quite a noble stance! He demands the most respect and gets it! We love him.

Now for the show stopper:

This is awwwwwwww (wait, we will take a deep breath now), okay, now we’re ready. This is:

Tsukiya – (yes, Megan, the name queen, named him) and what a beautiful name! It means “moon” and it really fits his exotic Siamese mix! It is pronounced “sue-kai-yah”.

These 3 cats are brothers and get along beautifully. They just experienced our yard yesterday for the first time and although Tsukiya didn’t make it back for dinner, he did make it back for breakfast. I think they have marked their territory quite well because they are hanging out on the property exclusively today so we are much more relaxed. :)

Tsukiya decided to “break the Valdivias in” by bringing a special gift into the garage where the cats call “home”:

He was very proud. Having only had indoor cats all my life that played with cloth mice, I was amazed that their outdoor counterparts play exactly the same with “just killed” specimens. I kind of wish they would just eat their prey though. It seems like a waste to loose all that nutrition and kill a very good garden inhabitant just for fun! But, we will have to get used to more of the same. The worst is that we LOVE birds, feed them, and save them from every enemy. BUT, it would be wrong for us to have outdoor cats and not let them exercise their instincts so we are preparing to let the little sparrows expire at the hand of our higher food chain pets. You can be assured that they will not be in the house though because we still believe in protecting our pet birds from their “instincts”. So, you can see, there is some conflict in thinking going on in the Valdivia home. We’ll balance it out over time, I’m sure!

In parting (for now), I will share a couple more photos and officially name this entry “the cat post” since it’s been taken up by our new family members. Enjoy!

Until next time: