My update rate sucks. Sorry. Last time I wrote, we were in the midst of our mini-vacation, and now school has already been going on over the past week, and we leave this afternoon for a wedding out in Minneapolis. Soccer got mostly rained out (or if not rained out, the fields were simply too wet to play on), which while inconvenient in one sense meant that we could make more TaeKwonDo than we had expected: definitely a good thing.

Our trip out to Galena was really quite nice, though necessarily short. The kids seemed to have a pretty good time, at least. I’ll have photographs up eventually.

Mom heard from The Elder and Unknown recently, with some photos even, which was nice. She sounds like she’s doing okay, though going through a period of indecision about college, no-college, moving out of the house, getting a car, and all that good stuff. I remember all that quite well myself, even though it was “so long ago”. I think she’ll survive, one way or the other.

I have a ton of games to referee this season—not as many as some of the younger guys who can be more available for games than me, of course, but more than usual. #1 Son is working higher-level games than before, now, too, and is excited about it. Unfortunately one of our wet-field cancellations was an upper-division game for him. I’m not certain if he was upset about not getting the experience the game would have provided or not getting the money. A healthy dosage of both, I would imagine.

#1 Son started school on Monday and #1 Daughter on Wednesday. Both are doing well. I’ll be helping out once a week in #1 Daughter’s class again, but not this week. They’re on a new five-day rotation schedule which is applied literally (it skips the holidays, in other words), so the days that #1 Daughter’s teacher wants me to help float practically from week to week. So, we’ll see what kind of help I can manage to be. #1 Son is already fitting in well at such a bigger school. Of course, it’s still too early to tell, but his attitude is certainly up. At least no one’s given him crap about being “the new guy” yet, and he’s a got a few friends scattered around the school from soccer, summer camps, and TaeKwonDo, so that helps.

The kittens are growing quickly and are a ton of fun. The older cats are even getting along with them a little bit. Sometimes. I’ve been too busy to take too many photos, although #1 Daughter and I did take a few the other day. I’ll try to get those up online as well. I keep wishing the big cats would play with the little ones, but they still seem to prefer acting like their territory has been invaded. They mostly ignore the kittens, and tend to simply turn away and stalk off when confronted, as opposed to the hissing and other posturing that was being done before. I suppose that’s an improvement, anyway. Because Jupiter especially is apparently too stupid not to take a swipe at either Pluto’s or Ginka’s tail as they walk by.

So there you go. Another boringly domestic update. More later.

The shelter told us to basically quarantine the kittens for two weeks. Contradictingly, from the 20-30 pieces of advice I’ve found online, that quarantine period should only be as long as necessary to get the kittens vaccinated. After that, they should begin integrating with any cats in the house as soon as possible. Needless to say, we have created a bit of acrimony with the cats, due to having the kittens primarily in #1 Daughter’s room (Pluto’s normal daytime sleeping place), and alternatively in #1 Son’s room (Ginka’s favorite hiding spot is under #1 Son’s bed). So, we began allowing them all to start interacting the day before yesterday. Which conveniently served as an excuse for the kids to keep cleaning up after themselves across the whole house, not just in their rooms. Yay!

Ginka and Pluto are naturally dead-set on establishing, repeatedly, their dominance. Which is to be expected. Either the Spouse-Unit or I have been along with the kittens as they’ve met up with the cats to help ensure that aggressive behavior from the cats doesn’t go over the top. We’re being careful to reassure the cats during and after each interaction, and not just coddle the kittens when they get scared. While neither Ginka nor Pluto seem overly pleased with having to share their space, no injuries have been sustained by the kittens as of yet, and the cats continue to interact with us favorably.

During the day, we confine the kitties to either upstairs or downstairs, wherever the children are, since they’re both home this week. The cats are staying outside a bit more, but with the kittens having basically the full run of the house now, they are becoming increasingly more familiar with the kittens’ scent. By winter at the latest, I’m pretty confident things will be going well between the four of them, and hopefully, this winter will be a more active one for the cats, with kittens and a lot of new toys to play with!

Jupiter laying on top of #1 Son, for today’s dose of cuteness.

I updated and changed the gallery. It will be an ongoing, relatively-frequently-updated thing, and I’m using it as an example to Adobe^® to point out how ridiculous it is the way their gallery generator in Lightroom won’t do a checksum on exported images and pages and NOT re-export everything. 38 photos (today’s count) isn’t so bad, but when I have to redo galleries of hundreds of images, it sucks massively.

anywho, the gallery is here.

I know what you’re trying to do, Jupiter. You’re trying to melt my brain with your cuteness. Clever kitty. It will not work, however, because wood doesn’t melt! Hah!

caught during my lunch minute:

Mouse & Jupiter snoozing:

Lazy little kittunz. Gets a jobs! Pays the rents! K, then, sleeps!

Poor Mouse. Abandoned by her cousin. It was obviously devastating:

Sadly, Tilly is on her way back to the shelter. She’s over-aggressive, both to humans and kittens. I personally felt like more time might change things, but the Spouse-Unit and #1 Daughter did not. Thankfully, Mouse (or whatever her name shall be) is bonding quite tightly with #1 Daughter, and that’s a very good thing. Jupiter certainly likes #1 Son as well. Looks like Mrs. Degidio, who’s looking more for a cat, will have to wait.

What happened was that we had a friend who said she’d have a kitten for #1 Daughter last Thursday. When that didn’t happen, we went to the shelter and wound up getting kittens for #1 Son and #1 Daughter. After we got home yesterday, our friend called wanting the Spouse-Unit to pick up Mouse for #1 Daughter. I think the premise that two young animals together are better than one is very true, but apparently three is indeed a crowd. Poor Tilly wound up not being friendly with anyone other than the Spouse-Unit and myself. She’s an exuberant kitten, however, and will fit into the right home, I have no doubt. She’s one of those personalities, I think, that would be better off as the queen of her domain, with no other interfering cats or kittens around.

I will edit this post with links to the Sioux Falls shelter when I find it. Please support your local animal shelter!

i present Jupiter and Tilly, the two newest members of the Krause-Gee clan. and of course, as luck would have it, we are also now keeping Mouse for Mrs. Degidio. joyfulness abounds in #1 Daughter’s room, which has become the kitten sanctuary, even though Jupiter is #1 Son’s and Mouse is temporary!

this are Jupiter. yes, he has different eye-colors.

and this are Tilly. it’s not a tumor, it’s a paw. oh, the cuteness….

a mini-gallery of selections from the recent invasion also exists.