Gertie

I know that many of you who follow our blog are pet lovers, as are we.  besides Ruby and Chevy the dogs, we have Dirty Gertie the cat.  We got her at six weeks old, and when we delivered her to the boat and introduced her to the dogs, she quickly asserted herself as the Alpha Cat.  She puffed herself up and charged.  Ruby and Chevy scattered.  She's a runt, but a pint sized dynamo full of piss and vinegar, and personality.   She's in trouble now, though.

Gertie has never been a big eater, but we never worried much about it.  She's a very small cat.  For the past few weeks, she's been making a rasping, wheezy kind of sound.  At first, we thought she was trying to talk, but Pam became concerned and took her to the vet last week.  The vet thought Gertie had asthma and gave her a shot of steroids.  This should have fixed her up immediately and also made her ravenous.  It did not.

Yesterday, Pam took Gertie back to the vet. Xrays were done. An abnormality was found in her heart, and she has nothing in her stomach. She's not eating at all. The vet kept her overnight, and today we should learn the verdict.

In other news, our '56 Thunderbird was picked up in upstate New York and should be delivered today. It will be good to have Dad's car here.

In boat projects, I started the finishing touches on the master head project by caulking seams in the paneling.  Since I'm not a neat caulker, I masked the seams off...

gunked in the silicone caulk...

and smoothed the caulk with my caulking tool.  There are special caulking tools that you can buy and are billed as giving perfect results.  My caulking tool was my pinkie, which seemed to work just fine.

I did about half the seams this way, and now that they've dried, I'll see about finishing caulking today.  The last items on this check list is to install the tiles and cut a few pieces of molding, and then declare it done and have a victory beer.  Yeah, I should paint that port too, I suppose.  That will be its own project, with its own victory beer.