Lizzy starts her new adventure!

Nope, no good night for me. Again. I made the mistake of drinking a lot of milk yesterday afternoon, which kept me up half the night. I must get into the habit of no more liquids after five. Also, Ziva came and lay really close to me, wanting attention. Her insides were rumbling something awful! Lizzy slept in the cat carrier, her siblings on the bed with me. At one point Mewthos came and lay along my arm.

I’m thinking of taking Ziva to the other vet, she has developed such a large potbelly in such a short time. It does worry me.

At work I selected and edited the photos I’d taken. I played around with brightness and contrast, but that red aura around the moon is not as visible as I’d like. Then I started reading “The House of Phalo : A History of the Xhosa People in the days of their Independence” which I find fascinating. It’s a history text, not a novel, written by well-known historian Jeffrey B Peires. The thesis I was reading referred to the book a lot, so I looked it up and started reading.

At 35°C it is too hot to do much work, add to that my lack of sleep and you get a good idea of my level of productivity today. Fortunately not much is required of me today.

The guys arrived back today and brought some German delicacies – bread and ‘Wurst’. Direct translation would be sausage or coldmeat, but it doesn’t compare to local sausage nor coldmeat. I loved the ‘Mett’ (which is a spiced ground pork) and the ‘grobe Leberwurst’ (rough or coarse spiced liver spread). I just kept having another and another just because it was so tasty!

I got permission to leave at three again, so ... back at home I’m taking a string of photos of Lizzy. Saying goodbye. Trying not to cry.

Half past six and Lizzy has left. She just walked into the cat carrier Rose’s daughter brought and lay down waiting for the adventure to start – while I’m still holding back the tears. She’s going to a wonderful home, I’ll hear every day how she’s doing … she’s three months today. I’ve felt her move inside her mommy. I was there when she was born. When she opened her eyes. Took her first step. You know … sniff.

Ziva and Shadow went out, I wonder how they’ll react when they come back and find Lizzy missing. I’ve shut the rest in the bedroom – better tend to the bird while I have the place to myself.

Birdie wriggled out of my hands and onto the table. From there he hopped down and hopped to the candle shelf, where he spent some time chirping happily. He got some extra time outside his cage, since my phone rang. The neighbour across the road knows someone who’s looking for two kittens. Unfortunately they want two females. Well, let’s see. Finished cleaning the bird cage, bath, food and water trays, replaced them and went looking for Sir Chirpsalot. He had wandered along the window to the other end of the room. Just walked or hopped – no flying, I’m sorry to say.

I let the Mip Mips out and Earl went absolutely nuts, crawling up my leg onto my shoulder – he nearly climbed on top of my head! He recovered soon, though. I distracted them with a bit of rat-race. They sniffed all along the window, where the bird had been – but there’s nothing in their behavior that suggests they miss Lizzy. Ziva also shows no sign of missing a Mip Mip – she comes in and rushes right to the food bowl, as always. Now she’s sleeping on the chair!

I just saw a message from Rose (an hour after she sent it, lol – I don’t pay much attention to my phone) Lizzy is busily inspecting her new home!

I took over 100 photos tonight, so I’ll take them to work again and process them there. Here are the photos I promised yesterday.

Rose's neighbours got a new cat. Female. Spayed.
Yet she's an absolute terror! She will chase Ziva across two
porperties to fight her!

Here you can see the line of pink coming from the sunset in the west towards the east.
It hasn't reached past the trees at this stage, yet

Night sky - I fiddled a bit with brightness & contrast, or it would have just been pitch black sky

The moon just rising above the Stadium

You can see a red aura surrounding the moon - but it's not like I see it.

Here the craters are nicely visible

Different setting and it's yellow

Here the Aura is very visible. It looks like rings because I've compressed the image - it's not as
smooth as the original, but also much fewer bites.