Scruffee Update

If you go back to my post from October of 2009 you can get a feel for our crazy cat....SCRUFFEE.  At any rate i thought i would share some developments and thoughts about this interesting cat.  Scruffee and our dog Alice have become pretty good friends...they keep each other company during the day while we're at work.  Scruffee likes Alice a good bit more than Alice likes Scruffee....it's an interesting relationship.  Rachel and I are convinced that Scruffee thinks that he may be a DOG and not know it????  I wouldn't be surprised to hear him bark at some point.  This cat comes when you call his name...he sits and waits for his treat in the morning.  Pretty sure he learned this from Alice...now if we could just get Scruffee to go outside and do his business on the lawn like our dog....well that would be FREAKING AWESOME!!!  And to think that at one point i was seriously considering having him put to sleep when we were at the Veterinarian's a year and a half ago(see my previous post).  Needless to say i'm glad that Rachel talked me out of that crazy notion and that we now have a pretty great cat/dog.  In fact i wouldn't trade him for the nicest fishing boat on the Columbia river....LOL.

House Cleaning Products

I love that my beautiful wife Rachel has found the inspiration to make some household cleaning products from scratch.  I can't wait to see the finished product.

Married Life

I love it.

Wedding fever

So...i haven't been on here for quite a while....my bad!  Anyway lots of things have happened since the last time i posted.  The wedding plans are going pretty well.  We have the Photographer reserved...the table settings and tent rented...i'm pretty excited for October 10th to get here.  Rachel has been a fantastic fiance and i know that she will be an even better partner and wife.  I have been lucky to have her in my life. 

Meet Scruffee the wayward Cat

So as some of you know we have a cat...and not just any cat.  This cat is physically unique and has a storied past.  For the last couple of years there has been a homeless semi-feral cat of dubious breeding living under Rachel's house in the crawl space.  We're not sure who the cat used to belong to....our best guess is the people who live a couple houses down abandoned him when they suddenly moved.  So he was on his own to scrounge and forage for himself.  Rachel thought it would be nice if we started feeding him and perhaps we could catch him and take him in to the Feral Cat Coalition for a check-up.  Well as luck would have it, Scruffee (we named him that because he's a domestic longhair cat and living outside hasn't done him any favors) would occasionally come to the front porch and eat.  But we could never get close enough to hold him.  So we borrowed a live trap in hopes of using that....well that worked....to catch the neighbors cat!!!  GRRRR!  Eventually we had to give the trap back...no luck capturing the intended target.  We eventually bought our own live animal trap....but we ended up letting our co-worker borrow it because she had a massive feral cat problem to contend with....she was on the news after her neighbors complained to the city and the press.  Anyway back to Scruffee...we didn't see him much.  In fact we thought that maybe he was gone for good.  And then one day i was mowing the lawn and there he was laying in our front yard in the shade of the privacy hedge.  He didn't seem concerned at all that i was mowing the grass...after i was done mowing i went to see if i could pet him and say hello.  Umm no that didn't work!  He jumped up and with three good legs jumped over the fence and hopped away.  That's right Scruffee was injured on one of his front legs...i could see the bloody wound when he scaled the fence and ran off.  So i told Rachel what had happened.  She was immediately concerned and wanted to find him.  We looked everywhere but to no avail.  So we had to get our trap back from our co-worker and start again with our efforts.  We set the trap on our front porch on a saturday evening....and sunday morning when we checked our trap we had finally succeeded in catching the poor fellow.  Rachel and I took him to the emergency vet in Oregon City...where they cleaned up his mangled leg(looked like he lost a fight with a bigger cat or a dog) and gave him some shots....and gave us the bill....oh a lil more than $500 for a homeless cat!  I love Rachels big heart and sense of wanting to help injured and lost animals.  So while we were at the vet we learned that Scruffee is a polydactyl cat.  He has six toes on each paw.  Looks like mittens actually they're so big.  Neat huh?  Anyway i figured after $500 dollars that he was definitely our cat and that we were going to keep him.  So we took him home and rehabed him. For a week or two he stayed in a big dog crate and rachel would feed an water him and clean his litter every day.  Then we let him out and made him a nest in the spare bedroom and blocked off the door so our dog Alice couldn't harrass him....funny thing about Alice...she used to chase the cat under the house and bark at the opening like crazy and now here was the cat living inside the house.  Hehehehe this was getting interesting.  So our cat would hide under the bed an only come out occasionally to peer around....i think Rachel was a lil bit scared of him cuz she got scratched one day....but i knew he was trying to be a good cat.  I coaxed him out from under the bed and held him while he purrrrred to his hearts content while i scratched his head.  Cats love that.  Now he's pretty much taken over the house...Alice is actually scared of the cat...he will chase her and hiss and bare his fangs....what dog wouldn't be scared of a cat with extra claws?  So here it is October and the dog and the cat have an uneasy truce and we both love the cat.  He is so affectionate and cuddly.  He loves to sit in Rachels lap while she's on the internet or watching TV.  Sometimes he likes to try and lay on the keyboard while Rachel's online...hehehe that's always funny.  We even trained him to stay off our bed....squirt bottle does wonders with cats.  LOL!  So here we are with a dog who used to chase the cat...living with the cat.  Oh how the universe works sometimes.  So there you have it...the story of Scruffee the cat and how he became our CAT.

Face Book

Well i have been a lil bit negligent on updating my blog....my apologies. I've been sucked into the realm of Facebook. I was hesitant at first...but now i've warmed up to the idea of the whole social networking aspect of it. I've been in contact with people i haven't heard from in years...and i talk to my brother John and my sister Shauna a whole lot more than i ever did in the past. So that's a good thing.
Rachel has been steadily preparing for our wedding next year. I love how she is so task oriented and stays focused on the important things in order to be as prepared as possible for the big day. Me on the other hand....well lets just say my A.D.D gets in the way. LOL! But i try to chip in an help whenever i can or am asked. Hopefully i can contribute much more in the near future. All i can say is that i'm really excited about our future together and love the idea of being married to this wonderful woman. She's been a life blessing that i sorely needed!

Background info....how it all started.

So i guess everyone should have a little bit of information about how this all began...Rachel and I are co-workers.  And i have...whoops HAD a rule about getting involved with my female co-workers.  My rule was not to pursue my feelings...but somehow  my feelings for Rachel overcame that and I had to let her know how i felt about her....gutsy move i know.  But it worked out.  BIGTIME!!!  I would like to add a little footnote here...without Leah's guidance i would've been lost on this endeavour.  So Rachel and i have worked in the same section since 2005...she was icy to everything male for quite some time...i couldn't blame her for that.  We work in a blue collar industry and the men can be gigantic ass$%#@.  You get the idea.  I was attracted to her from the beginning but i didn't dwell on it.  It wasn't until 2007 that we became closer a little bit at a time...you know how the vetting process works for men and women....i sensed that she was attracted to me as well after awhile.  So in march of 2008 I summoned all my courage and asked her out...to my great surprise she said YES.  I couldn't quite believe it at first...but it was true she said yes and i was on my way to finding my true love.