Missing Kitty

Bri (the cat) is missing.  Well, not so much missing as...well, first i need to explain that our "custody" of her has been sort of a grey area.  She technically belongs to our neighbor's daughter-in-law.  When she and his son moved in, they brought along this cat that was her mother's, because the old lady didn't want it left with her.  They didn't feed that cat, when she found us she was skinny and sick-looking (the neighbor also confirmed this, along with the fact that they closed her in their car at night sometimes, with no litter box!).  Bri obviously favored us, she'd come to any of us that called, and begged for a scratch on the tummy, she ate our food, and played with our kids.  The neighbor said she wouldn't go to anyone, and when we told him she did come when we called, and even when we didn't, he said as far as he was conserned, she was ours.  Well, three or four days ago, i was leaving to pick up some groceries, and i saw that the neighbor's wife, son, and his wife were all outside, calling for "kitty" and looking around.  Strange, thought i, since up to this point they ignored her.  Maybe they were taking her to the vet or something?  I don't know, but i haven't seen her since, and i'm afraid the kids are coming very close to suspecting something.  I've been holding off their questions with "well, you know, sometimes she stays in the woods and doesn't come when we call" and "maybe she's napping somewhere."  Argh.  i'd at least like to talk to the neighbor about it, so i know to tell the kids that she went to live with someone else, or if she was sick or whatever.  i don't want to lie about something like this.  Ugh, if they did take her somewhere else, that was really mean, because they KNEW we were taking care of her, and would have kept her in a heartbeat.    i'm just not looking forward to whatever conversation is in the future on this one.

First Letter

	Ryvre wrote his first letter last night, to my husband's friend in Canada; it said: Dear Kimmy, Thank you for the stickers! Love, Ryvre First, i wrote my own version of the letter, and he copied it letter-by-letter.  He kept looking up at the alphabet poster though, and couldn't keep track of which word he was on, so instead i spelled each word out to him, and he wrote them much better.

Crabs

We have hermit crabs now. My FIL brought them back from Florida, and bought us a 10 gallon fishtank to put them in. Seems like overkill to me, but there are 8 of them (crabs, that is), so i guess they do need room to run. The kids LOVE the little critters, they change shells all the time, crawl around, dig, and climb on the rocks and sticks and stuff in there. We're still trying to figure out the temperature and humidity thing, but they seem happy and we have no mold growing *yet* but we're working on getting some kind of heater, because our house is really cold, and it seems inhumane to keep the lights on in the tank 24/7 like we are.