I Once Caught a Cubby Cat. . . .

While suffering through our first bout of Covid this May, I saw a cat rescue's photo of a cream-colored kitten and began babbling to Mike, "LOOK at her!  Oh my goodness!  If she were mine, I'd hold her on my shoulder all day long!  I'd call her 'Cubby' and just cuddle her all her day!"  She was blind in one eye and missing the other.  I wanted her as soon as I saw her.  I had really actually thought, "That's my cat" as soon as I saw her, but I said nothing to Mike about wanting to apply to adopt her.  We hadn't even discussed getting another cat in the soon-to-be-two-years since Stuffed's death.  Having a new one somehow didn't even seem like a possibility. 

A month passed and I hadn't been able to stop thinking about this fuzzy little soul.  Was she scared?  Was she lonely?  Did people cuddle her?  She was blind:  Was she safe?  She was just a baby!  On the morning of June 23rd, I woke from a dream in which we'd adopted Cubby.  (She was "Cubby" to me from the start; The rescue called her something else.)  The plot of the dream was lost to me upon waking, but Cubby had been ours.  This was the two-year anniversary of Stuffed's death, and I took it as a sign that we were meant to go for it.  More than a month had passed since I'd seen the rescue's last update on her, so it seemed likely that she'd already been adopted, but I emailed the group anyway to tell them we wanted her.  And I took it on faith that we would somehow be the ones to get her, just like in my dream, and without waiting to hear otherwise, I ordered two aqua gingham collars--one kitten-size and one for her to grow into--a red heart-shape name tag and a special needs tag that stated she was blind, I began reading articles and a couple books about taking care of blind cats, and I ordered a picture of her to keep beside Stuffed's on the table between Mike's and my chairs.  I went ahead and paid the adoption fee and bought kitten food and a few catnip mice to start off her toy collection here.  And I waited to hear back from the rescue.  And waited.  And waited.  I babbled even more feverishly to Mike about this kitten, I prayed about it, I texted him about it while he was at work, I wrote in my journal about it, I willed an email to come or the phone to ring and waited some more.  At one point while Mike listened and looked at me pityingly, I started crying halfway through saying, "It's okay, I know I'm not going to be the one who gets her," surprising even myself with how gutted I felt at the thought.  But almost simultaneously, I would think, "How could this NOT be my cat???  Look at her!"  It was every bit as odd as it seems.

The rescue didn't list a phone number, so I emailed twice more the next week but still got no response.  I dreamed of Cubby a second time while waiting to hear back, however:  In the dream, we had adopted her and I was carrying her into the apartment, but she peed on my shoulder before I could get her over to the litter box and Mike and I were laughing about it.  'Still no word from the rescue, though, and in desperation, I decided to write them a letter and to send it via Overnight Delivery.  In three pink legal pad pages, I pleaded my case for our adopting this kitten, feeling decidedly desperate but compelled to do so, and I sealed the letter with a drawing of Cubby.  Despite being twenty-seven dollars poorer after paying the next-day-delivery postage and uncharacteristically late for work to boot, I felt a sense of peace as I left the post office:  Whatever was meant to happen would happen.  I had fought to be gifted with her, but the rescue would obviously choose the person they deemed best for her, and if all I wanted was what was best for her, then it simply followed that whatever they decided was fine.  Blind baby Cubby would be in good hands.  

On my day off the next day, a woman from the rescue group called and said she'd just received my letter and "I'm so sorry--I thought you knew the cat was yours?!"  She had thought someone else from the rescue had already contacted me, and those volunteers all thought that she had.  I was already crying while she explained this and mouthed to Mike, "We got her!" so he wouldn't think they were tears of disappointment.  The woman explained that the group had received so much interest in this kitten and other people had applied for her but that they had "been extra picky" and had been waiting to find the right person and home for her.  After a frantic week of blind-kitten-proofing the apartment--something I'd read online had recommended covering corners with bubble-wrap so a blind cat could explore and form a mental map of a space without walking into anything sharp-edged in the process, so soon enough, I had taped bubble-wrap around all our chair legs, table legs, wall corners, etc.--and buying new beds and kitten-specific things like a stuffed cat that contained both a heating pack and a battery-operated heartbeat, Mike and I made the eighty-mile trip to collect Cubby.  At this point, we had seen a video of her and a few more photos, so we were stunned to see how much smaller she appeared in-person.  'Not even two pounds yet, she kept her eye squinched shut but snuggled onto our chests and shoulders as we took turns holding her. 'Love, love, love.  ♥

 

Halfway home, Mike driving while I kept an eye on Cubby in the backseat, we parked for awhile to give her a break from her carrier.  As I picked her up to cuddle her, she peed on my shoulder just like in my dream.  I carefully cleaned her with a wet wipe and held her awhile longer after I dried her, but when I put her back into her carrier, the innocent-looking little kitten who had pre-bath been facing me the entire trip now turned her back on me and sat facing the car door instead.  Ha!  'The furry cold shoulder, we call it.  It was the first sign of feistiness in her, and we laughed about it the rest of the way home.  (Mike from the front seat:  "She turn around yet?" - Val:  "Noooope.")  Once we got her home, I sat on the floor with her and opened the carrier to let her begin exploring, but instead, Cubby scrambled up onto my shoulder to sleep.  We sat on the floor that way for forty minutes--"Getting caught in a Cubby Trap," Mike and I began to refer to it--until she was ready to scout out her new surroundings.  "This cat!" as Mike would say.  'Such a love.

So began a summer of what a coworker would affectionately refer to as "Cubby Chaos."  Cubby would sit so still and patiently as I wiped her eye and missing eye area every morning, she would gobble down her food, and then:  Off to the races!  My memory of July is a haze of blearily trying to get Cubby onto a sleep schedule--"Now you know what it's like having a newborn," Mom remarked after one of my been-awake-since-4 a.m. reports--snuggling her on my shoulder and chest--she would lick my face and pat-pat-pat at it with her warm little paw pads as if reading it in kitten Braille--repeatedly running to reach her as she attempted to walk across the air between the arm of Mike's recliner to the arm of my wing chair like Wile E. Coyote nonchalantly stepping off a cliff, weighing her daily to make sure she was gaining weight--and she was! She went from not-quite-two-pounds to almost-five this summer--rescuing her from the tops of chair-backs, bookshelves, and cat trees--she could climb up but couldn't get back down, whether because she was blind and missing the depth perception or just because she was young and little and hadn't yet figured it out, I don't know--laughing as she chased her pink ball around the apartment--we'd hear its jingle and turn to see her marching past with it in her mouth--and texting updates back and forth with Mike.  We had rearranged our work schedules before adopting her so that one of us would always be home with her, at least until she was older and able to be alone safely.  Now that the sleep-deprivation and constant worrying have passed, I look at the pictures and reread the texts we sent each other this summer and laugh.  We only ever knew Stuffed as an adult cat, so this little kitten's energy and antics were eye-opening for us.  

And our favorite, a live-action shot from my attempted afternoon nap with her in bed beside me:

By mid-September, Cubby had settled down some.  She would either sleep through the night in bed with us or stay out of trouble if she moved to one of her beds in the living room.  Always a good eater, she weighed almost three pounds more than she had when we'd adopted her.  She was still smaller than she would have been had she had a better start in life--she was found in a tree stump when only a few weeks old after her mother had been hit by a car, and she'd been bottle-fed after that--but she had noticeably more heft to her now when we picked her up and looked more like a tiny cat than a very young kitten.  She seemed more than comfortable in her new home and had a bunch of favorite spots and daily routines now.  She continued to chase her pink ball and carry both it and a rainbow-striped long-tailed mouse around in her mouth as she ran around.  She wrestled a stuffed Grumpy Cat and cuddled up with "Mama Cat," her heartbeat cat, during naps.  Her barely-audible meow that we'd gotten used to was now a baby-dinosaur-squawking kind of sound as she got more practiced at using her voice.  Her Siamese-mix coloring was coming in darker, so her ears were standing out more against her cream-colored fur, making her even more adorable.  As I texted Mom, it was like I had Holly Hobbie's cat.  :)    

Cubby's spaying was scheduled for mid-October, and the last weekend of September, she began showing signs that we learned were possibly of her being in heat for the first time:  Lethargy, lack of appetite, decreased playfulness, and not wanting to be cuddled.  She drank but didn't eat either Friday or Saturday, and Sunday October 2nd, we took her to an emergency vet since I figured she might need IV fluids for nutrition soon if she didn't get her appetite back.  After the initial exam, the vet's assistant told us we could wait in the waiting room while more tests were run or wait outside in our car, so we chose the latter, and within about ten minutes, the vet called to say that she was sorry and knew this wasn't what I was expecting to hear but that it was time to make some hard decisions about Cubby. Cubby had FIP, which the vet described to us as a "silent killer" kind of illness that typically  lies dormant until it's almost progressed to its fatal end.  She and one of the assistants had both had a hard time finding Cubby's heartbeat, and the ultrasound had shown fluid already built-up in both her abdominal cavity and around her heart.  She couldn't tell us what to do, she said, but there was nothing she could do for Cubby.  She continued to talk, but I was already sobbing and told her I was sorry but that I couldn't talk and was passing the phone to Mike.  I heard her say, "I understand, and I'm so sorry" before Mike stepped out of the car with my phone.  While he walked around the parking lot talking with her, I cried like I have rarely cried in my forty-five years, feeling literally blindsided, and the memory of the sound of my voice as I sat slumped over in the front seat repeatedly howling, "No, nooooooooooooo" remains one of the most disturbing memories of all of this for me.  

The assistants and vets who helped us and Cubby that day had all mentioned at various points that Cubby was "really cute" and "very sweet."  The main vet was crying with me and Mike while she prepared to put Cubby to sleep.  "Poor baby," she murmured to her as she administered the final drug.  Mike and I talked to her as she passed, Mike sitting beside her while I supported her little body as the drug took hold.  She was still smiling even as she died. 

We buried Cubby by dear Stuffed in Mike's mom's backyard, with her blankie, her pink ball, her other favorite toys, and a note, and covered her with Baby's Breath and a riot of roses in both summer and fall colors to reflect the two seasons we got to share with her.  It was almost 10 p.m. when we finished in the yard, working by the garage lights and motion-sensor lights.  When I told Mike that I was glad Stuffed was near Cubby, he said, "Yes.  He can keep an eye on her," and I started crying again.  I had bought the baby Cubby figurine below a month before she died, intending it to be one of my Christmas presents from Mike, but he gave it to me after we came home from burying her.  With that perfect smile on her face and the pudgy kitten body to go with it, there she is with beautiful Stuffed, utterly oblivious to the "Cubby chaos" she's created.  :)  O' my cub!  My heart, my heart. . . .

Almost three months later, I just ache to feel Cubby on my shoulder again.  I miss the warm heft of her soft little body against my shoulder.  I miss the way she tilted her head at us.  I miss singing to her about how ♪ "I once caught a Cubby-Cat.  I caught her in my Cubby trap.  And when you catch a Cubby Cat, you cuddle her on your shoulder and lap."  ♫  I miss watching her nuzzling into Mike's neck, rubbing her face into his beard.  I miss watching her romp around with her ball in her mouth.  I miss getting home from work late at night and having her run out from the bedroom toward me.  I miss holding her paw when we'd first go to bed so she'd know I was right there.  I miss her in her entirety.  It will always bother me that I'll never know how big she would have gotten as an adult cat or learn if she would have eventually jumped down from the perches, trees, and chairs on her own.  She is the closest I'll ever get to having a baby.  The grief is literally breathtaking sometimes, and I force myself to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out until the overwhelming wave rolls out again.  I was heartbroken after Stuffed died, but at twenty-one, he had put in his time, and we had been with him year after year as he became an elderly cat.  Cubby was maybe six months old when she died, and we only had twelve weeks total with her.  Just getting her bigger, stronger, and more confident in her surroundings had been such a mission for me from the very beginning, I still feel lost without it.  The day before Cubby died, I had been reading about Robert Kennedy's assassination and how young women who worked in one of his campaign offices the summer of 1968 were witnessed silently taking down its windows' "Kennedy for President" posters and banners.  I've remembered that image a lot since October 2nd.  I had kept a baby book of Cubby's medical records, daily weights, etc.  I'd been so proud of her.  (I'll always be so proud of her.)  How brave she was!  'Blind and hungry and likely expecting her mother to return to her and the rest of her siblings in that tree stump this spring, not being able to see the face of the person who pulled her out of it or the faces of those who transported her or handled her or bottle-fed her or held her in the months before we got her.  'Having to trust that these new voices and hands and shoulders in July would be gentle and good to her too and this new home was a safe place.  She had to take her entire world and lifetime on faith.  And she did it smilingly!   One of the books about blind cats I'd read before adopting her  was a memoir by Gwen Cooper of her time with her beloved "Homer."  After he died, she stated that she had known within five minutes of meeting him that he had already made her want to be a better person, and I had felt the same about Cubby before I'd even been approved to adopt her.  I think about that a lot too.  I think about how as May began, I didn't even know yet that this sweet little soul existed, and how just days later, my heart and my life had been changed by her.  And here I am now, in the end-of-year stillness, sorting it all out.

Monday or Tuesday of the week before Cubby died, I had woken from a dream in tears.  In it, Mike and I were sitting with a female vet--in real life, Cubby's regular vet had been a man--who was asking us how old Cubby was.  "'Between four-five months," I'd answered.  The vet said something else I've never remembered, then:  "I'm sorry.  You only have one more week with her."  I woke up crying at that point and told Mike I'd had a bad dream, but I hadn't even thought of it again until after Cubby had died.  It all really played out as it was destined to, it seems, from connecting with her the first time I saw her picture to knowing instantly that she would be "Cubby" and not the name the rescue group had given her. . .the first two dreams I'd had about her before we'd even been approved to adopt her. . . .I will ponder it all my earthly days, the wonder of how this precious blind baby came into my life and the part she played in it.  

2022 turns to 2023, then, with eternal gratitude for the gift of our ever-smiling Cubby.  What else is there to do now, after all, but be thankful for her, hold her in our hearts, and let her teach us how to feel our way forward?

♥

3 Good Meals and 8 Miles a Day: 37

Spring arrived with better health and a renewed commitment to it.  Two months later, I've lost eight pounds and have only forgotten my daily vitamin twice.  My breakfasts have become a routine of oatmeal, yogurt, and berries.  My tax refund bought me two new pairs of walking shoes, one for my "real" walks and one for my walks to/from work.  I have been keeping up with both my journal and my food/health diary.  (The food/health diary usually falls by the wayside.)  Heart-healthy raspberries, dark chocolate, oatmeal, and red grapes are now weekly purchases.  (I know red wine is good for the heart, but I've never liked the taste of alcohol, so I will stick with heart-friendly groceries instead.)  I realized the local marathon will fall exactly on my 40th birthday in May 2017--the city holds it on the first Sunday in May every year, and in 2017, that will be May 7th--and have decided to dedicate these last three years of my 30s to training for it:  I have enough time to get back into shape and to become a long-distance runner, and after having already suffered-though/completed two half marathons on no training, I have faith that with proper preparation, I can finish a full.  Walking in the meantime, then, and running again by year's end, I'm thinking.  More water and tea.  My beloved Diet Cherry Pepsi as a treat and not an almost-staple.  Talking things out with Mom and Aunt Laurie instead of keeping my thoughts bottled-up.  Making the time to write.  'Am now a third of the way through my first effort at a children's book.  Today's birthday cake was a single-serving dark chocolate one with cream cheese frosting and more dark chocolate chips, based loosely on this recipe.  (Mike enjoyed a slice of cheesecake and some cookie dough ice cream.)  Tonight was Taco Night.  It included an ice-cold  Diet Cherry Pepsi.  This past week has been filled with visits and messages from family and friends.  Life is quiet and sweet and good.  ♥

When I made a second trip to the grocery store this afternoon to pick up my forgotten-this-morning birthday candles, the cashier ringing me up asked who was turning 73.  "It's 37," I said.  "They're for me."  The cashier and bagger both goggled at me and said in unison, "You're 37?!"  The cashier said I don't look it and that she'd have guessed  25.  THANK you!  The bagger said something like, "You wear it well."  And thank YOU, young man!  The cashier then started singing "Happy Birthday" to me, and she and Young Bagger Boy both wished me a happy birthday.  This was undoubtedly one of 2014's sweetest epsiodes.  ♥  A friend told me in 2003 that I look young but wouldn't appreciate it until I was 40, and today, at 37, I know that he was right.  As ever, aging fascinates and amuses me.  I feel quite blessed by the entire process. 

The green Holly Hobbie birthday tablecloth is actually a section of vintage fabric I'd set aside to finish the side of the wing chair with, and onto the chair it will soon go, but it only seemed fitting to use it first as a tablecloth today and infuse it with this happy time and all these sweet memories.  Oh, 37!  I am loving it so much already.  ♥

The Patchwork Wing Chair Tonight

It's been awhile since I wrote about the wing chair I'm redoing.  This week marks the first work I've done on it since late last summer.  I had ordered a piece of vintage green chenille on etsy in August to use as a seat cover, but the green was so pale it looked white, so that put the seat on-hold, and I've yet to find another fabric for it that really wows me.  Around the same time, I ordered a pink upholstery trim to use as faux piping along the chair's cushion and/or edges, but when it arrived, it was hot pink/fuschia (one of the few colors I don't like) instead of the pale pink I'd thought I'd bought, so the piping part of the project was put on-hold too.  One of the successful finds for the chair last summer was this vintage green Holly Hobbie fabric I'm using on the outside of the chair's wings. 

A real collector of this treasured character from my childhood would probably know the name of the fabric right away, if fabrics were even named in the 1970s and 1980s, but to me, it's just Holly-Hobbie-Preparing-for-a-Birthday-Party.  The print is so dear:  It depicts Holly Hobbie and friends/family baking a cake, making a list, looking at the cake, sitting beside each other with both a cat and a stack of wrapped presents at their feet, drinking cups of tea together, holding balloons, and washing dishes.  Ahhhhhhhhhh!  I love this material.  ♥ It would make the sweetest birthday party tablecloth.  Maybe someday I'll find more and have a go at that. (If any of you are as smitten as I am, a pillowcase made of the same material--but with a pink background--is currently listed on etsy as I write this, and unless someone uses the "Buy It Now" feature before you have a chance to, an eBay search for "Holly Hobbie birthday tea party fabric" tonight will lead you to the same fabric in a gorgeous blue.  I think the blue is the most striking, but the green matches my chair better.)  Like the character whose name I pronounced "Hobbly Hobbly" as a kid, this fabric has stolen my heart. 

I need to do a real patch-job at the top of the wing above since I cut the fabric a bit too short in one spot instead of following the wing's curve properly, but at least with this style, an extra patch will hardly stand out.  :)  The chair's main patchwork (the back-rest section) started to look too cutesy to me last August, and the Old English Sheepdog patch I'd made for it was the one that bothered me most.  Kent of the Spring Bulbs kindly gifted me with a yard or so of Sheepdog fabric last summer, and I've since used it to start both a new patch and the chair's skirt/dust ruffle. 

The new Sheepdog patch is so far a cotton batting-filled dog that I'll sew to another fabric square and then sew and hot-glue into place. 

The space between the chair's arm-rests and skirt/dust ruffle is the same pretty pink roses fabric I used on the mantel wall, "Barefoot Roses" by Tanya Whelan.  I see now that I should have ironed it before adding it to the chair, but I've done stranger things than iron the side of a chair, so I'll add that to today's to-do list.

The skirt/dust ruffle is going to be made of the Sheepdog fabric and sections of an old green check Daffodil tablecloth I found on eBay years ago and have never used.  It's too small and not the right shape for my table, but it was too sweet to pass up--it screamed "Val" with its green gingham and giant appliquéd Daffodils in each of its four corners--and I knew I'd eventually find a project for it.  In 2011, it was the backdrop for the photo I used for Mike's and my wedding announcement photo-card, with our first "married" picture and my bridal bouquet on top. 

This week, it's permanently taken its place along the bottom of this most beloved chair in our home.  ♥

The cut-out flowers along the chair's side and skirt were a late-breaking idea the other night.  I only recently discovered designer Vicky Trainor's lovely blog, "The Linen Garden," and as soon as I saw her projects adorned with floral fabric cuttings, I wanted to cover everything I owned with flowers (even moreso than usual).  This post of hers was the one that wooed me into adding these fabric cut-outs to the chair.  How darling!  Following her beautiful example, I blissfully snipped flowers while watching Marie Antoinette (also gorgeous, probably the prettiest movie I've ever seen) Monday night and have been arranging and rearranging flowers against the chair ever since. 

Almost all the flowers between the Sheepdog panel and green check panel below are only there temporarily as I want to be happy with how they're arranged before I hot-glue them into place.  I'm planning to attach trails of the fabric flowers along all four sides of the chair, and the very first photo at the top of this post shows what the chair actually looks like right now, so I do have quite a bit of work ahead of me here.  It is such happy work, though, and it's been the perfect project to delve back into in this dreary below-zero-temperature January. 

♥

Beginning to Look Like a Chair

The wing chair is certainly looking more chair-like, but after three weeks of choosing needle and thread over long walks, I'm likely looking overstuffed too.  :)  Now that I've finished the patchwork part of the chair, I'll head back outside.  Around 5 a.m. this morning, after a long night working on this and determined to make it my last night of making patches, I finished the patchwork on the chair.  ♥

On a roll, I decided to keep going and cover the chair's [wings? I assume] and the strip under its cushion in the pink rosebud fabric I'd set aside.  And Stuffed, who had been barricaded from "his" chair most of the month, promptly jumped up and settled in for a nap as soon as I'd removed the last straight pin.  

I'm taking a break for a couple days while I plan out the rest of the fabric and rest my hot-glue-blistered fingertips.  The moment I added the rosebud fabric at either side, the chair looked like a true chair again and not so much like a wing chair I was in the process of maybe destroying by adding handmade patches to its back-rest.  'A bit of a relief, that moment.  I've never done this before, this revamping of a whole chair.  Cotton batting!  Needles!  Threads!  Upholstery trim!  Hot glue!  Limited lengths of vintage fabric pieces that really had to be measured-twice-cut-once. 

I'm beyond pleased.  Maybe I can someday sell chairs and couches redone this way, I was telling Mike the other day.  I could get a vendor spot at the flea market with my furniture pieces and maybe some pillows. . . .  I had already drafted a few versions of future business cards in my head when Mike snorted, "Yeah.  Just see if you can finish one chair first."  My mom and I have had an in-joke since first seeing Dirty Dancing ages ago that we break out in moments like this.  When lead dancer Johnny excitedly tells Neil Kellerman his ideas on how to "shake things up a bit" with the final show's choreography, Neil obnoxiously cuts him off as he begins to dance and says, "Woah, boy!  'Way over your head here."  Mom and I have adapted that to "Woah, girl!" and we say it to each other whenever one of us tells the other of her latest plans.  My business cards were definitely a "Woah, girl!" moment, but if I saw this chair at a flea market, I'd want it, so maybe someday. . . .It is always sweet to experience these moments that make you fantasize a bit and see a maybe-different-maybe-someday vision of yourself and of your life. 

Almost every--if not every--patch here has some personal significance, which makes it all the sweeter.

My grandparents' old chenille piece and one of their quilt-top pillow tops, hankies from friends and family, a scrap of fabric from chairs I'd sat on in my first apartment kitchen with Old Friend, curtains from my former room at my parents' house, a bandana Mom found me for my birthday a few years ago. . . .The three roses in the tiny square patch at upper-right below were attached to a cross pendant my friend Sommer gave me for Christmas our last Christmas together.  I saved the cross, of course, but decided to add "her" roses to the chair, so now my Som is there too.  ♥

The heart I made for the patch below reminded me more and more of my beloved Holly Hobbie as I worked on it, adding the rose, the stitches, and the orange trim above it, which reminded me of my dad, who still laughs at the fact that as a kid, I pronounced Holly Hobbie, "Hobbly Hobbly."  He still calls her that.  :)  I've found Holly Hobbie fabric to use elsewhere on the chair, and I'm sure a "Hobbly Hobbly" joke will be made by Dad when he sees it. 

Since most of my Old English Sheepdog things are still packed away at my parents' house, I didn't have any of my stash here to cut up for a patch, so I decided to try to make one.  The sheepdog below is okaaaaaay.  I did my best and gave it some grass and flowers to stand on, and I just said, "That's good enough" and moved on.  This has been a sweet project, but I'm also tired of it.  Have I mentioned I don't really even like to sew?!  The things we do for our visions.  :)  The white-striped dotted Swiss patch to the dog's right is one of the curtain-pieces.  The pink-dotted piece is the chair-scrap, and eagle-eyed blog readers will also recognize it as the fabric I used to frame my "Home Sweet Apartment" needlepoint. 

The coral-ey daisy patch and the one of the girl playing with her cat below are two of the only patches from the salvaged quilt-top I saved that I ended up using, after all.  Most of the girl-with-her-cat patch is covered by the seat cushion, but it was too dear not to use.  It is pretty threadbare and maybe wouldn't have survived being cut out and re-attached someplace else, so it's fine where it is.  The pink chenille at left was my grandparents'.  Gah!  I love this chair!  ♥

I also represented Stuffed with the heart-patch below made of the green dotted Swiss fabric I used way back in June 2007, before I'd even first met him, to make him his cat-shaped toy we've come to call "Girl Cat."  I paid a visit to Mike that summer bearing a backpack filled with homemade apple pie, peanut butter and chocolate birthday cake, and the cat toy for Stuffed.  A tiny green dotted heart now to remind me of it all.  ♥

The boy-on-the-beach/no-fishing patch above is one of the only other original quilt squares I saved from the old quilt-top I used as a grid for this.  Like the girl-with-cat square, it is threadbare and fragile, but we'll love it as along as it lasts.  It is too special not to save. 

Stuffed is content just to have access to his chair again.  And now I'll join him in it for a bit of rest.  ♥