Mosaic Progress - Part 2

Last night's work:

Mosaic Project

I have started another Mosaic - MacKenzie in the Garden with Bees. I am using a 24" x 48" piece of tile backer board. Here is the drawing on the board, the guidelines for the piece. I follow the lines more or less. It just depends on how the tessarae go down.

I've started attaching tiles and stained glass and will post some more photos in the coming days as the piece progresses.

MacKenzie Died

                                                      Photo by Gareth

It is s sad, sad morning. I just found a phone message on my cellphone about MacKenzie. I hate the way that messages sometimes do not show up until days after they come in.

On June 3rd a gentleman called and left this message: "I am calling about your orange cat. I thought you would want to know that I found him in my yard dead a couple days ago."

This means MacKenzie died the night he got out. All the hope that he would come home has been false hope. That hurts. All the late night searching, barefoot, in pajamas, after hearing a cat outside the window, was in vain. Mac will not be coming home.

It also hurts me that since I did not find the message on my phone for over two weeks, that his body is gone and I cannot hold him one more time and bury him beside Kai. I really, really do not want to know where his body went.

I hope it was not the garbage. I so hope it wasn't.

Mackenzie Missing

                                                      Photo by Gareth

We have had a cat go missing. His name is MacKenzie and he's an orange tabby. I cannot believe he is gone. He got out the night of Princess' wedding. He's not been home since June 1st.

He was the really friendly one. If you caught him looking at you and you patted your chest he would leap into your arms and wrap his front paws around your neck and snuggle his face against yours.

He loved going outside and escaped as often as he could. But he always reappeared on either the front or back porch within hours (or less if it was raining - he hated the rain).

We put up signs in the neighborhood. We've been to the Humane Society.

I could stand it if I thought he'd just taken up with another family. The thing that makes me heartsick is the possibility that Mac ended up going into someone's shed or garage and got locked in there and died.

I wake up at night thinking I hear him crying.

Fencing the yard

Yesterday Abelisto and I worked on the fence for the beeyard. I think it will end up being around 20' by 48' when it is finished. Of course the bees will wander afar. This is just to protect their home-ground from noisy neighbors, dogs, skunks, and the stray kid that wanders through. It will also give the cats an outside area to be in that is safe from dogs.

Speaking of the cats, Poppy (the lone female) was spayed this past week. It came down to telling daughter #3 that something HAD to be done. Poppy was marking her territory trying to attract a mate. Unfortunately her territory included places/things like my inkjet photo printer (which I finally threw out) and the rest of the computer desk area (both computer desks actually), the laundry room counter, and any plastic or vinyl bag that she found in the house - which meant that my studio had to be kept tightly closed because my new (and expensive) quilting sewing machine has a dust cover that is made of vinyl. She did pee on it once when I forgot to shut the door all the way. It took the chrome off of the presser foot knee-lift which was laying on the table in front of the machine... damn cat. Anyway, the hope is that once she no longer is constantly in heat she will no longer be advertising the fact by marking her territory. She came home on Friday, a bit groggy and out-of-sorts, and I have found no new pee marks. I am tentatively hopeful.

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