Liz Howell

Every year Jim and I participate in the Haunted House for the community put on by the Forest Advisory Council with help from the Eagles.  It is free to the community and benefits those in the area. This years theme was a haunted pirate ship.  Diana a local artist did a fabulous job on the backgrounds and creating the rooms. I went as a vampire pirate and Jim went as Hammerhead from the Pirates of the Caribbean. I wasn't scary enough to scare anyone but Jim got a whole lot of screams.  We did not have as many victims this year as we did last year but it was still a lot of fun.

We came home that night only to find that someone has tried to break into our house.  They busted the window and twisted out the whole frame in my computer room.  We will have to replace the entire window now which was an expense we had not planned for.  We filed a police report but were told that the charges will only be for misdemeanor vandalism since it did not appear anyone got in.  We have an idea of who it was because only a few people knew we would both be gone for the event and the times that we would be gone.

Well Slick kitty is MIA.  The last time we saw him was Monday night for dinner, it is now Sunday the 27th and still no Slick. I went to Animal Control on Thursday to see if anyone had picked him up and turned him in but no luck.  We have searched the roadways in the event he was hit by a car but never found a body. If he was ok I am sure he would come back home, however he was our resident hunter and prone to investigating things that he had no business messing with to include getting in vehicles that didn't belong to him so who knows. I can only hope that perhaps he is at someones house and living the life of luxury as an indoor house cat.

Slick showed up on our doorstop as a young kitten, he was very sweet and very skinny. After about 1 month when it seemed he was here to stay I took him to get his shots and neutered. He brought home Black Kitty about 6 months later, they were always together play fighting, chasing each other and stalking small critters around the property. Slick has only missed one feeding in the entire two years he was here and that's because I accidentally locked him in the horse trailer, so he didn't really miss that feeding as I heard him crying and let him out.

The first couple of days that Slick was gone Black Kitty and Abbie seemed to be on edge so perhaps they know something I am better off not knowing. Black Kitty who has always been reserved and shy is now very active about coming to see us and sleeping on the porch. I have never been able to catch him so I can't let him in the house (even though I want too) as he might have something contagious and Naomi is fighting her own battles with bowl issues so we certainly can't take a chance on her getting sick with something else.

I will check the pound again next week and hope to find Slick but unfortunately my hopes are not high on finding him. We did have him micro-chipped so if he is scanned our address will show up and maybe he can come home. We all miss him terribly.

Jim's Firecracker Lilys bloomed and once again he was out of town so I took a picture for him. He was at his Mother's last year when they bloomed too. They are really pretty but multiply like crazy, I have already re-potted six of them this year and still have 2 more that need to be removed from thier original container. They are very beautiful but only bloom for a short amount of time before dying back to thier bulb.