Family news

No internet today because they are fixing the hole in my bedroom/sitting room ceiling which had a hole in it from the roof leaking.

Quite a mess, but cleaned up now. Tomorrow? The hole in the bathroom ceiling will be replaced.

Now is the time to do it, before it gets too hot in February and before the rainy season starts next June.

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Ruby is back to college from visiting her aunt, and is starting the short (6week) mid winter term, where she will only take one course instead of two and put in some hours working for expenses.

She had a nice visit, but did not visit her other grandmother who was sick and refused to have her meet her for the first time when she was sick (yes, I know: Doesn't make sense, but she's proud).

Ruby had been stressed out with starting college but seems to be adjusting better now: Minnesota is friendly, but not as warm as Filipino culture.

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In other news, one of our cats, Ninja, was mauled by the dogs and disappeared, and came back two days later with a draining wound on his leg and dehydrated. Usually our tom cats simply disappear when they are mauled, and either never come back or come back when they recover, but Ninja came home dying and we found him by his odor in the closet.

When I took him to the vet, she pointed out that he had necrotic ulcers in his mouth  (AKA trench mouth, aka necrotizing ulcerative gingivostomatitis), probably because his immune system was messed up (cat leukemia? uremia? Cancer?) which might have been why the dogs, who always had left him alone, attacked him: They sensed he was sick.

so we put him to sleep, alas, and buried him in the garden.

Sigh. The last of the black cats that moved in with us when the grocery store next door closed (they were allowed in at night to hunt for mice in the store room and fed by the owner) .

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in other news, Kuya's timid white dog had a puppy last night. She was brought here from the farm, where it seemed that the other dogs terrorized her, because she is afraid of both people and the dogs here.

This is her first litter.

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