slowly healing, with feline friends

It’s been a week and a day since my right knee was fully replaced. I can walk about the house without any aid, and I can use my collapsible Traverse trekking pole when I’m outdoors to help with stability, just in case. Otherwise I stay indoors and move around helping to keep things clean and straight as best I can. These past few days I was able to do things like wash dirty pots and scrub the kitchen sink, as well as fix spaghetti Saturday night. These sound like such little, trivial tasks until you can’t do them or only with difficulty. Even getting a shower requires I wrap the incision with Glad Press ‘N’ Seal to keep water off and out of the wound to avoid any possibility of infection. Right now my dressing is almost totally clean when I change it daily. One more week of this…

I’m not the only one needing special comfort. Lulu went to visit the vet on Thursday, the same day I had to visit my surgeon for a post-0p checkup. She went to get her teeth cleaned and checked. Unfortunately for her she lost three, two of which are feline equivalents to wisdom teeth. When she came back she was OK, but she started to stay next to me a lot more than usual. Friday night she came up and slept next to me in my chair for comfort.

She’s since gotten back to her old Lulu self, but this past week seems to have deepened a bond between us even further.

The Florida Gingersnaps have been out and about in the central part of the house, running and playing. At 16 weeks, which was the week of my knee operation, they were six plus pounds each, or two pounds ahead of schedule. Kittens are supposed to add a pound/month. The Gingersnaps and Lulu seem to be getting along pretty well. More than once I’ve seen all three just lying close to each other on the floor, usually when the Gingersnaps get tired from chasing toys and themselves.

a doodle’s gonna do what a doodle’s gonna do

No, I don’t know what prompted Annie to nap in Lulu’s bed on the stuffed chair. All I know is that today my wife, sitting in her comforter and recovering from her knee replacement, called me into the main part of the house and told me to bring my camera. There Annie was in the chair, trying her best to stuff all four feet into Lulu’s cat bed.

It isn’t as if Annie doesn’t know what it is. She’s very, very bright. She’ll sit and watch Lulu a good bit of the day do Lulu things around the house, including lie in that bed. Apparently Lulu didn’t care that Annie was in her bed, and later in the evening, Lulu put herself into her bed as if Annie hadn’t been in there earlier.

I have no idea what’s developing between those two.

But in thirty-plus years of keeping Labs, I’ve never seen a Lab do anything like this. I guess the behavior is from the Poodle side.

Here’s what it looks like when Lulu is in her bed. There’s just enough room for Lulu to comfortably snuggle in.