It’s been a tough week-if you follow me on anything social media you already know that Miles got out Saturday night and is missing.

At first I was mad, because this happened while I was gone, and it was Louie’s fault, but I’ve forgiven him. This did not come easily, and I was very mad for at least 12 hours, but I thought it was important to do, and not just conditionally. I mention this, because it’s just part of the story. No matter whether Miles comes back, I couldn’t have that hanging over us. I don’t know if he’s forgiven himself yet, but I hope he does. Though it was a bit of a mistake on his part, Miles is a cat, and cats do things sometimes that end up with them running off, and he is a great cat, but he is a cat.

I’m incredibly sad. It’s been horrible, and the grief comes in waves, as it does. And there’s hope, and then more disappointment and sadness. I tend to get overly attached to my pets…one of my students the other day said, “oh, I’d be a wreck if I were you!” and of course, while I was able to hold it together to do my teaching, of course I’m a wreck.

We’ve done a bunch of things, flyers all over (and we are doing new flyers tonight since it’s been raining), litter box and food out, one of the cat trees, going around the neighborhood over and over, searching, talking to people, facebook posts, next door posts, craiglist posts. He has a microchip, but wasn’t wearing a collar, so if he got scanned at a shelter or something we’d be notified. I haven’t visited shelters, but I’ve followed online. We’ve had a couple possible sightings, but who knows.

I am trying to stay positive, and if nothing else, to remember how much fun with had with Miles during the time he was here. Everybody has a story of how their cat disappeared, even for weeks, and then came back, but I know that happy endings aren’t always there.

I’d say that Muriel is despondent, but she’s a cat. She’s fine. I imagine she’d be happy if he came back though! I thought he was more attached than she was…we have taken her out back to get her smell around more too, in the hopes it would bring him home. I hope he’s not off hurt somewhere. I hope that he is doing okay. Maybe he’s having a fun time. But maybe he’s scared. Maybe there are too many cats outside here to let him come home (he ran because he got out, and then got spooked by another cat). I don’t know.

So anyway, I’m pretty consumed by all of this. We’ve been hanging out in the backyard at night (the weather has been lovely for this), we’ve been walking all over the neighborhood. I went for a few runs around the likely places he might be as well, thinking if I got extra sweaty and smelly that would send my smell further. I saw a cat the other night eating the food, but I went to get a closer look and scared him off. I thought it might have been Miles, but there’s been a gray cat hanging around and it might have been that one.

It sucks.

There was another election today, so I went and voted. This time I took Louie with me and told him how to vote (no seriously I did. He and I share similar political views but he hadn’t done any research at all so I told him what I knew and suggested who to vote for and why.) We do a lot of voting here! (Last month was the primary for some of today’s elections. I’m hopeful that we don’t have to vote again for a little while…)

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like maybe I do know what I’m doing with this whole teaching things. For one of my jobs I have to be observed every two years and the observation went quite well. I think I’m getting better at teaching college age students and started having some new ideas for how to push them more and how to work with my music majors and making a 4 year plan for them rather than working piece by piece. I didn’t have my bullet journal with me for brainstorming, and in fact, haven’t used it in awhile. I think I’d better dust it off and get to it, as that is a good way to have ideas.

I go through phases with planning. I’m always gungho at the beginning of years and semesters but then I taper off. As I’m nearing the last month of the semester I’m thinking ahead to next fall and what worked and what can be improved. As always, more relaxing and telling myself that yes, I know how to do this, and no, music lesson scheduling may be a challenge but no one will die if they don’t get a lesson in. I struggle to find the balance between pushing students to perfect pieces, and pushing them to learn the gist of a piece and move on. That’s one of the things I want to focus on…I love getting students to perfect and polish music, because they generally don’t want to, but that is where the real learning comes in. Yet, there is a benefit to playing more pieces than you perfect and gaining a wider repertoire of pieces that you kind of know and can return to.

We had a nice weekend. Friday night we saw the Mark Giuliana Quartet at Jazz at the Bistro with friends. We ate dinner there too since I was pressed for time—they have some decent food—not great, but decent. Saturday night we went to the Symphony to see Karen Gomyo play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (one of my all time favs!) We wanted to do a hike during the day Saturday but it was raining all day and that didn’t sound fun. Sunday I had makeup lessons and a quartet concert. I had a headache and felt tired most of the day so after that I just came home and relaxed.

We’ve been trying to rewatch all of Game of Thrones before the new season starts, so we worked on seeing a few episodes. (Spoiler: we aren’t going to make it, so then we’ll have to decide whether to wait to watch new episodes until we catch up and try to avoid spoilers, or just confuse ourselves further.) I would say we only end up watching 4 to 7 episodes of television a week, so it is hard to get through too much at once. It’s amazing how much I’d forgotten about the show though, and rewatching it certainly reminds me of small details.

Sunday was also the one year anniversary of the day we got Muriel! What a fun day and a great decision. She and Miles have been hours of entertainment and have really invigorated my instagram account.

Sometimes I think that Muriel might think it’s the one year anniversary of her being kidnapped, the way she’s always trying to get out the door. But I think she’s got a decent life! We even got her a friend!

You see that cut on Louie’s cheek? That was from Miles. Do not try to give Miles a zerbert without looking into his eyes. And then trust what you see.

This winter we have certainly had a lot of snow, ice, and sleet! Tuesday night my quartet had a concert at the Sheldon Concert Hall, and while we ended up having a nice crowd, it was definitely smaller than we’d hoped for, and I assume a big part of that was the winter weather that was predicted. The gloom and doom of the newscasters “stay home, stay off the roads” kept people at home, and then the snow ended up starting right after the concert was done, so we got home no problem.

It’s hard to judge, isn’t it? If we cancel things every time they predict bad weather, you end with things canceled and nothing happening a certain percentage of the time. Other times, you don’t cancel and things are worse than expected!

Our concert was a lot of fun. Sometimes I forget how fun performing is. One of the things that I enjoy about playing with the quartet is that generally things go better in concert than in rehearsal—or at least, they rarely go worse. I’m not sure exactly why that is, but I think we are much more focused in performance.

I have been feeling like I haven’t been doing enough performing over the winter. Yes, it’s winter, and the weather, and the cold, and nobody comes out. But I often worry that I’m wasting my so-called talents when I spend most of my days cajoling young children to stand up straight and watch their bows. Then again, that’s important too!

I dreamt that I decided to drop everything here and move back to Cleveland and teach/freelance there. After arriving, I realized it had been a huge mistake and that I’d left all the things I’d gained here.

In any case, I think that the constant barrage of horrible news involving today’s political situation doesn’t help my frame of my mind. I feel stressed about so many things completely outside of my control and it just gives a low level of stress and feelings of failure. Sigh.

We have a drawer in the new bathroom that I’ve been keeping the extra toilet paper rolls in. Yesterday I needed one so pulled open the drawer, and found this. I actually screamed first! Then I closed the drawer.

We are taking a short trip to Branson in March. Have you been? What do you recommend?

I didn’t exactly plan on it, but…we now have a two cat household.

Meet Miles.

He was a feral cat that walked up to my friend Michael’s porch one day and seemed friendly and in want of human help. Michael and Heather started feeding him and he hung around a bit more, and ended up being very friendly and affectionate. They couldn’t keep him because they already have enough pets, but decided he needed a good home, and…here we are!

Miles came over yesterday to see if he and Muriel would get along, which we suspected might work. Miles was in his cage at first, and Muriel sniffed him, and then when there wasn’t any growling or hissing, we opened the door. Muriel walked RIGHT into the cage with him.

Since then, we’ve been working on getting him situated. He seems to enjoy being inside well enough and is doing well with the litter box. They are wrestling pretty intensely, but most of the time it seems quite harmless (I’m doing a lot of internet research.) I’m around quite a lot this week (and month, really) so it’s a good time to introduce somebody new to the household.

No cat will ever replace Mackenzie, of course (nor any dog), but it’s good for Muriel to have a friend, I think. And it’s good to have some young animals running around keeping us entertained!

Of course, I haven’t taught lessons with them both here yet. That should be interesting. But I’m sure things will settle into a routine soon enough.

I don’t know where the week went otherwise. I was teaching, doing household errands, some stuff with my band…we played at a variety of Make Music Day events.

Louie and I went on a long bike ride on Saturday—we went from St Charles to Machens on the Katy Trail, which was about 12.5 miles each way. Machens is the beginning (well, eastern terminus) of the trail, but the odd thing about it is that there is no way to really get there, except by the trail.

This was the low point of the bike ride.

Oh, and here’s just a few more cat pictures. This is officially a cat blog again, you guys!

Muriel is trying out being a backpack.

Miles trying to escape under the couch.

Oh, and he’s probably about 8 months or so old, and isn’t yet neutered, which isn’t too big of a problem, but a few things have made me want to hurry. I made an appointment for Friday…he has had his first round of shots and tests for illnesses and such though.

Wish us luck! While I still on occasion miss my old pal Oistrakh (the fatness) I’m so happy to have some new cats in my life to grow to love.  And I think that two is a good number.

Oh my goodness, where DOES the time go? I have been too busy (not as a badge of honor, more of a running around screaming sort of thing) but the semester is almost over! I should probably sit down and reevaluate my life choices but I simply don’t have the time.

I did have the time to get a new cat though, on March 31. We named her Muriel and she is about 1 year old. She’s a sweetie, and she is such a stereotypical cat: she gets into everything, she climbs on stuff, she knocks some stuff down, she sits in boxes, all that jazz. She is soft and smells wonderful and I’m happy to welcome her to my home. It turns out that like 50 percent of my current students are allergic, so maybe this cat will scare everybody away and then I’ll be less busy She does tend to get overly excited by the violin so I keep her in the other part of the house while teaching.

I took her to the vet the other day, the same vet I’d taken the Fatness to. It is amazing that even though over two years have passed, when I walked in that door I felt so much sadness, because the last time we were there was putting her down. 

When I was a child, I remember deciding that older people didn’t get sad when people they knew and loved died, because if they did, and all those people died, why, they would be sad all the time, and how could anybody live like that? And as I’ve gotten older, I realize that I was both right and wrong as a child, that you aren’t sad all the time, but you do just live with your loss. And while this is a post about a dear cat, and my new cat, and how one is replacing but not exactly replacing the other, it applies to human loss as well, in many ways.  Sadness and grief are part of life, along with joy and happiness.

So I shed a few tears in the waiting room, and then I got her checked out by the same vet, and he said she looked really healthy, and we talked about what she needed in a future appointment, and then he said “have fun with her!” which at first I thought was odd, but then realized, oh right, why even have a cat otherwise?

So my feelings are mixed, but Muriel is her own self, and she is likely to become a natural part of life here. At first, it seemed so weird, you can just go get a cat and take it home and keep it, without signing papers or applying for licenses or anything?

Mackenzie seems to like her well enough—they are getting more used to each other, but there hasn’t been any fighting or growling or hissing, so that’s been really good. Muriel had lived with a dog already so we’d hoped that would be okay.

She’s getting used to being here. And no, that’s not peanut butter on her face. That’s just her face!

We now have a cat again, and it’s been really fun. I’m glad to be back into the cat world.