Sleepy Day

Well, the alarms on Lon's and my phones went off at 4:30 this morning, indicating tornado watch in effect till about 10:00am, if I remember right.  We got up, moved the instruments to the closet under the stairs and spent a few minutes looking at radar reports and reading NOAA text.  Soon, we realized that while most of the squalls were packing winds in the 40-60 range, there was one, headed right for us with winds in the 70-80 range.  This is reportedly enough to knock down a tree, and we have SEVERAL very tall, substantial trees close enough to the house to do serious damage.  So when the winds get high, we have the girls in particular, move to the living room (the trees are closer to where their bedrooms are)  Often the boys join them, there, just out of solidarity.  But since this time it was a matter of waking them up to move down here, rather than having them 'go to bed there for the night', we just let the boys sleep where they were.  Or so we thought.  Within about 30 minutes, the county storm warning sirens were going off.  There was a tornado warning area that overlapped into our county, but did not include our specific area.  The county warning system goes off if ANY of the county is under warning, though.  So, now the boys were awake too.  We had everyone find their shoes, and put on clothes, and put the small pets (guinea pig and hamster) out into the shelter, so that if we had to go in there, they would already be there.  And we all laid back down to try to sleep.  Fortunately for me, I was able to get a bit more sleep.  But since I had not gone right to sleep when I first went to bed, I was sitting at a grand total of about 4 hours by 8:30 when I finally actually got up.  ugh.

Thankfully, homeschool lifestyle allows for naps.  Which I managed to catch a few of this afternoon, short as they might have been.  I'm feeling better now.  And just VERY grateful for an effective, efficient warning system that lets us know when we do and when we DON'T need to go into the shelter. 

The other thing I'm thankful for today, is that we did NOT go put these cats to sleep last Friday.  Lilly seems to be just fine.  Her eyes are not weepy she is not sneezing any more, she is the most energetic that she has ever been.  Our only concern with her, at the moment, is that her eyes seem overly dilated. But the new vet knows about it, and all he has asked us to do is keep an eye on it for now.  Elliot, on the other hand, is clearly feeling better more of the time.  While we know that he is NOT out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, just to be working with a vet who has pulled cats through FIP is SO encouraging.  He is just calm and matter-of-fact, and he is very encouraged by how much of a fighter Elliot seems to be.  Right now I'm just really hoping that I will get the opportunity to walk into Dr. Pitman's office with two healthy cats in about two months, and suggest that when he has a cat come in with an FIP diagnosis, that he ought to refer the owners out to Dr. Bernstein, before he suggests euthanasia.  Part of me is actually kind of angry with him for suggesting that Lilly be put down at all.  But when I remember that he is 'old school' I guess I can't blame him too much.  Certainly am glad we got the second (and third) opinion though!  It does, admittedly, feel a little odd to be at vet #4 on a cat that is only about 7 weeks old!!  Here are some photos we shot of the two of them, last night...