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Cats, Cake and Cabin
The other day, we introduced you to our piano playing cat, Mika. Mika is one of three sisters which we adopted into our home in the spring of 2001. She is actually the cat of my oldest stepson, but when he moved, we didn't feel it was right to separate the cats from one another, so she stayed with us. She is grey and sweet and her name is Africa for racoon (think Pocahontas - which is not why Bruce picked that name, he just wanted something different).
Since we love all of our cats, we thought it would only be fair to give each of them equal 'air time'. So today, I will introduce you to Katrina's cat, B'lana. Now B'lana is the alpha cat in our little gang. She rules the roost. She is also the largest of all four cats (largest around). We don't know why as we feed them all the same feed, but she is a heavy cat. B'lana is named after B'lana Torres from Star Trek Voyager. B'lana is a Klingon and very sure of herself. When we first got these kittens, our B'lana let us know right away that she was on top of things. She was the boldest of the three and the most adventurist.
B'lana is more like a dog than a cat. Her favorite place is curled up on the sofa next to me. Even though she is not my cat, she often seeks me out. I think it's because I am the best 'petter' in the house. She loves to have her neck scratched. And she prefers being indoors to outdoors, but we make her go out in the hopes she will get some exercise. A couple of quirky things about B'lana is her bent tail. It is bent at the end and has been that way since she was born. Also, she drinks water, not by lapping, but by dipping her paws into the water bowl and then licking the water off of her paws. So without further ado, here is B'lana and Katrina...
This past week when we were at the grocery store, Katrina asked to buy a funfetti cake mix and icing because she wanted to make a cake. So I said 'okey-dokey.' So yesterday morning, after I made pancakes for breakfast and brownies to take to today's church luncheon, she made her cake. I got out the ingredients and she did all the work. I did share with her a tip that I was told long ago by a caterer. Her cakes were always so moist. She told me that instead of water, she used milk. So when I went to get the milk out for Katrina, I noticed we had some leftover heavy cream from some ganache I made for a Valentine's cake. So we used heavy cream. It is amazing how much thicker it makes the cake batter. The cake baked up quite lovely and it got rave reviews.
We decided to take the cake with us when Katrina and I went to see my dad and stepmom at my dad's mountain cabin. But it hadn't cooled enough for us to ice before we went. So Katrina iced it once we arrived. As you can see, she took her job very seriously(and note the glowing eyes in the background)!
While Katrina worked on the cake, Granddaddy and Dianne were busy checking out the microscope we had brought along. They were looking at a piece of Fred's hair and marveling over the barbs on it!
Here is Fred, the owner of the hair and the glowing eyes. Fred is the largest housecat I have ever seen in my life. He is laying on a double bed in this photo next to my daughter's guitar. I don't know how much he weighs, but he is large!
Katrina was very happy to show Granddaddy how strong she was. She helped him unload this wood and he paid her a dollar. She told him she would be happy to come back and help anytime!
Then we went for a walk. My dad owns 51 acres that backs up against National Forest. He is having some logging done because the trees are starting to die. They are near the end of their life cycle. This is one of the stumps.
Here is another picture of that stump, with Katrina sitting on part of it. Simply amazing!
All in all, we had a lovely day. You may be wondering where Jack and Daniel were. Daniel was stuck in Illinois due to bad weather Friday night when he got ready to fly home. Jack was at a birthday party and learning how to ice skate.
