I've been corrponding with Krista on and off (she seems to be very busy
with work and doesn't even lurk here any more), and she gave me
permission to post some snippets from her e-mails as an update for
anyone who remembers her. I thought some of you might like to hear from her.

---

"Otherwise, I hope you and Mir and Caliban are doing well!  We are still
holding at a dozen critters, though this weekend at a funeral a cousin
tried to get us to take in a stray hanging around their house; he'd
named it "Boyfriend".   Boyfie has a name twin in Amelia Island,
Florida.  I don't know that Miranda and Caliban are duplicated anywhere,
though we do have a cat named Ariel.  :-)"

---

"We don't actually have a dozen cats - we have three inside the house
(Lula, Hubie, Ariel) and one who lives on the screened porch (Meezie)
who we plan to bring inside before it turns cold; we have one inside the
office (Ozzy) and 7 more around the office who MIGHT AS WELL be ours,
though 5 of them (Smokey, Tigger, Ping, Schnozz, Zeke) belong to
neighbors - Smokey and Tigger have people who do their best, but can't
really afford vet care so we do that.  Zeke, Schnozz, and Ping (my own
names for them - I assume their person has named them, but I don't know
what) belong to another neighbor who gives them food & water when she
thinks about it, grr.  So we take care of them, and they spend over half
their time here.  We'd re-homed their mother without telling the
neighbor - momcat was pregnant again when these 3 were still little, and
we had her spayed and placed and just played dumb when neighbor said the
momcat "left" and she hadn't seen her in a while. Then there's Hansel
and Gretel, obviously brother and sister, who were obviously dumped
across the stret from the office, sigh.  We're trying to find a home for
them together, but so far no luck.

And now there's a new stray around the office that I've been seeing at a
distance, but only yesterday saw up close for the first time.  She is a
GORGEOUS cat - she looks like a purebred siamese.  She also looks like
she's in very bad health, with sores and bald patches.  She also looks
like she's nursing a litter, though I haven't seen any kittens.  It
never ends.  I keep thinking about how you said you'd never seen a stray
cat, and I am very, very jealous.

Other than too much work and too many cats, we're fine.  :-P    I'll try
to boop Hubie for you, but he doesn't like Ariel and is easily offended
these days.  When we brought Ariel home from TED she was 6.5 pounds - he
is appx. 18 pounds, almost 3 times her size, but he is scared of her.
Yeesh.  We are still having so much trouble integrating Ariel (since
December 1st, and we *still* can't leave them together unsupervised!)
that poor Meezie is stuck on the porch, having to wait to be introduced
inside.  Hubie doesn't like her either.  ;-) "