How to give a cat a pill!

HOW TO GIVE YOUR CAT A PILL
IN TWENTY EASY STEPS

1. Sit on sofa. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your elbow as though you were going to give a bottle to a baby. Talk softly to it.


2. With right hand, position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. (be patient) As cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow. Drop pill into mouth. Let go of cat, noticing the direction it runs.


3. Pick the pill up off the floor and go get the cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process. Sit on floor in kitchen, wrap arm around cat as before, drop pill in mouth. Let go of cat, noticing the direction it runs.


4. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. Scoot across floor to pick up pill, and go find the cat. Bring it back into the kitchen. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten. Drop pill into mouth.


5. Pry claws from back legs out of your arm. Go get the cat, pick up half-dissolved pill from floor and drop it into garbage can.


6. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of closet. Call spouse from backyard. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.


7. Retrieve cat from curtain rod, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered Doulton figures from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.


8. Get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.


9. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply Band-Aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.


10. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with rubber band.


11. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw T-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.


12. Call fire department to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take another pill from foil wrap.


13. Tie cat's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table, find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed, force cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour one cup of water down throat to wash pill down.


14. Get spouse to drive you to the emergency room, sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Call at furniture shop on way home to order new table.


15. Get last pill from bottle. Go into bathroom and get a fluffy towel. Stay in the bathroom with the cat, and close the door.

16. Sit on bathroom floor, wrap towel around kitty, leaving only his head exposed. Cradle kitty in the crook of your arm, and pick up pill off of counter.


17. Retrieve cat from top of shower door (you didn't know that cats can jump 5 feet straight up in the air, did you?), and wrap towel around it a little tighter, making sure its paws can't come out this time. With fingers at either side of its jaw, pry it open and pop pill into mouth. Quickly close mouth (his, not yours).


18. Sit on floor with cat in your lap, stroking it under the chin and talking gently to it for at least a half hour, while the pill dissolves.


19. Unwrap towel, open bathroom door. Wash off scratches in warm soapy water, comb your hair, and go find something to occupy your time for 7-1/2 hours.


20. Arrange for SPCA to get cat and call local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

Dude, where's my car?

Yay! Google maps has finally taken pictures of every street in Cozad. As long as this doesn't worry you, it can make for heaps of geeky fun!

I've been tooling around Cozad (virtually), trying to find my car! Stopped at the bank first, and - yay! - they show the date! Go back through my geocaching records, and I can see I had been out 'caching the day before... Hmmm.... check the car wash, nope, not at the library or the church, so where did I go?

Cozad residents can having fun "driving" around, finding their car, maybe even themselves or their friends!

Sorry, Broken Bow and Gunnison residents, you'll have to settle for just pictures of the main highway through town. Probably won't be long, though!

Click here to see the maps!

Or, here's the store, and what might be my car!

View Larger Map

Very Sad

Had such a good time around Fort Kearny last week (see below) and now I read that almost every place I went has burned in a wildfire yesterday!

North end of the fire was Coal Chute road, which I drove on, and watched some cranes. South end was Kilgore Road, which I drove on. East end of the fire was Bassway Strip WMA, where I hiked and geocached for six miles....

VERY SAD!!

Worst of all, the old bridge over the north channel here was destroyed. Click here for pics.

At least no one was hurt, and it sounds like Mel's property was unharmed.

Fueling up (Not the car!)

While on my Kearney trip, I ate at Culver's, have you seen this place?

I had a "Butter Burger" with bacon, and a chocolate custard sundae with hot fudge and oreos!

I will definitely be going back!!

Caching and Cranes

Got up at SIX A.M. Tuesday, so I could watch the sun come up at Fort Kearny. (Any teachers reading this?) I was hoping to see lots of cranes during their annual migration. Unfortunately, it appears the birds didn't want to spend the night here, I saw very few. Very few people, too, but was pretty cold at this hour.

But, thanks to Geocaching, I was driving by a cornfield North of Kearney, and guess what I saw!



Spent the whole day geocaching, walked about 15 miles, and planned my day so that I would end up south of Gibbon to watch the cranes again at sundown. This time was different, I saw hundreds of the birds, and had a crowd with me to watch. They have built some viewing platforms here, and the parking lot was packed! There was even a tour bus!



Look at this guy's camera! Anyone want to get me one of these for my birthday?


Here's the best my camera could come up with:


But that wasn't the end of the day! There's a geocache in the Bassway Strip WMA that has to be done at night! You have to shine your flashlight around and look for reflectors stuck to trees. I found TWELVE of the darn things, took me about two hours, and STILL didn't find the cache! Arrrgghh..... Still, I had fun, and it was quite a learning experience for me.

"Had" to do my geocaching logs when I got home, got to bed by 2 a.m.!

I can see for miles and miles

Another fun aspect of Geocaching is leaving "Trackable" items in a geocache. They have unique ID numbers on them, so you can watch them on the Internet as they move around, and never have to leave home! (Kind of the opposite of geocaching, but still....)

I dropped a very pretty coin in a cache in the Hastings College parking lot, way back in 2006. It criss-crossed the state, then the country a few times, before taking a big jump from Southern California all the way to Germany!

Wish now I had taken a good picture of it!

So, now I keep getting e-mails like this:
In den Händen von Wolf 6572 gesehen.
Mit den Meilen auf dem Tacho, sieht das Ding noch richtig gut aus.
Gute Reise !

The coin has now traveled 12,220.5 miles!!

Geocaching's website even makes a nice map of the coin's travels. I clicked on stop #8, and see that is in Virginia, about 3 miles from where I lived when I was in the Navy! Cool!!

Storm Hockey!

Tonight was "Camp Comeca Night" at Storm Hockey, so I figured this would be a good chance to take in a game, my first ever!

Was hoping to do some geocaching, too, but it was WAY too cold to do much.

Had a good time at the game, then had a "BBQ Combo Plate" at Skeeter Barnes! mmm....



Wow, I really like hockey!