A Construction Tail

When Saint Pius X Church started "Making a Place at the Table" for all in our parish, we never expected to have this unusual family take us up on the offer.

A feral cat who has long visited our church grounds, created her own "Place at the Table" when she delivered five kittens behind an AC unit beside the Kloster Center. When workers lifted that unit this week, they found the three-week old kittens huddled together.
The workers used materials at hand to keep the kittens safe, while calling the church office with the news.


Teresa Marie Vestal and Jeanine Lazusky grabbed a mail carrier box and a towel to collect the kittens: three boys and two girls, all in great health. You can see how cute they are in these photos. All together, there were two calico females, two orange males and one black male with white paws.

Just look at those faces! Teresa and Janine spent about an hour with them, showing them to the Saint Pius X school office staff. That's when first grade assistant Mrs. Holly Fortun called her neighbor, Cynthia Johnson, who quickly came over to bottle feed the new kittens. Not only did she feed them lunch that day, but she also made arrangements to have the kittens receive their first shots, get dewormed and even found a home for one of the orange males.

Monsignor's veterinarian, Dr. Tina, took on the kittens as new patients and cleared them to be placed in homes once they can eat on their own.

Meantime, we're so grateful to Cynthia Johnson for her time and effort to keep our new parish pets healthy until their adoption days come.

One of our parishioners, Peggy Delisi, has tried to catch the feral mom for several years, and owns several kittens from the mama cat's previous litters. The Feral Cat Society has been called, and together we're trying to ensure the mama cat is spayed and then released.

After the kittens' nine lives were spared, construction workers resumed their installation of the new AC units behind the Kloster Center.

Special thanks to Teresa Marie Vestal and Tom Martin for their pictures and accounts of the kittens' tail ... I mean tale.

*** Edited to add update.

If you'd like to adopt one of these kittens when they are old enough, please contact Teresa Marie Vestal. You can email her at teresamarievestal (at) gmail (dot) com.
And I am deliberately spelling out her email address so she is not added to many, many email lists by robot spammers. You would write it in the usual way when you send the email, though.

Sacred Salvage: stained glass windows

Lance Waggener who oversees sales at Statesville Stained Glass walks Connie Book through the process of refurbishing stained glass. Statesville Stained Glass is refurbishing the windows the parish purchased from a church being closed.

In this video clip, Lance explains how workers make an etching of the window, disassemble it and then rebuild the supports.



There are 21 of these century-old windows that will be installed in our new church. They were crafted in Bavaria by Oidtmann & Company, the oldest continuous manufacturer or stained glass in Germany.

Connie also wrote an article about her visit to Statesville Stained Glass in our parish's Echoes newsletter.

Grading the site

If you haven't stopped by recently, there have been some big changes at Saint Pius X. The first photo is taken next to the columbarium, towards the driveway and Fountain Manor (basically, looking north along Elm Street. The school is behind me.)

The backhoe and bulldozer in the second photo are in the center of the site, with the driveway behind them. That large pile of dirt you see in this photo was a mini-mountain earlier this week. It dwarfed my car as I went through the school's carpool line. And I have a tallish baby SUV.

All this work is being done to create a strong foundation for our church. This month, several goals will be accomlished, according to Tom Martin, Building Committee Chair:

During February the remainder of the storm water system will be installed, dirt will be brought in to set the grade, and the building pad will be readied. The basement will be dug and and the footings for the foundation of the church along with the concrete walls will be poured.

We're all committed to keeping you in the loop as we make progress. This blog, the parish bulletin, ECHOES and other channels are being used to pass along the latest information. We also welcome your comments here.