Pet Pictures

Because really what else do you want to see while surfing pre-New Year's intoxication?

Did I post Me and My Shadow yet? Well, either way, it's so cute.



Honey got How to Teach Physics to Your Dog for Christmas but Irish got a hold of it first.



I think Irish is trying to steal the book from Honey by scent marking it here.

Here's Honey reading it:


Taking a break to ponder bunnies made of cheese:


Here she's pouting because I took the book away.


I'm anxiously awaiting my turn at reading the book. :)

Wedding Weekend

I'll get the sad news out of the way first, then talk about all the fun stuff.

Q-tip wasn't around Sunday or Monday and I was starting to get worried because she's always around the house, hoping to slip in the door. Last night she drags herself up the front steps and she's all beat up. Her face looked funny, the right eye mostly swollen shut, cut at the tear duct is pussy, she's not closing her mouth... She sniffed at some food and took a lick or two of water and later some milk but not much; all she seemed to want was loving and to curl up somewhere soft. This morning she demanded attention. Her right eye was now open but obviously badly infected and so was her mouth. (WOW is that some seriously bad morning breath, btw.) She didn't protest one bit when I put her in the car or when we got out at the vet's. On top of the infection she had lost weight, was very dehydrated, and her jaw was broken. (The later probably the primary cause of the former two.) After talking to the vet and considering her age (about 14), I had her put down this morning. If she'd just come home Sunday maybe she'd have been alright. She was such a sweet kitty and her lack of grooming meant she didn't make me itch much. I'll miss her but she had a good life.
OK, done with the sad stuff.

Saturday my nephew got married. OMG, they are all (my nieces and nephews) so grown-up! The bridal couple looked very happy and in love. I managed to not actually bite my tongue or massively roll my eyes when the preacher read and talked about 'man being the head of his family the way Christ is the head of the church...' (I think it should be an equal partnership, regardless of what Paul wrote nearly 2000 years ago.) It was a nice ceremony. The only thing I really would have changed about the reception was the location; the room was too small. The groom's cake was deliciously sinful. The bride seem very sweet with, maybe, a feisty side. (The only problem I see there is that her father's name is "Rob" and we don't need any more Roberts in our family*.) And while I would never wish a baby on a pair of newlyweds they have several months to get used to being married and get settled a bit before my grand-nephew is born. After the wedding, we met at my SIL's parent's place for dinner, my family and hers, which was, as usual, very nice. Lulu, also as usual, cooked a fine meal and Sally made some wonderful brownies served with strawberries and real whipped cream. I was actually chocolated out after that. Then my bros, SIL, niece, and 2 nephews went to Nana Funks (in Lakeview (?), on the recommendation of the bartender at my big brother's hotel). NF has, I believe, the smallest dance floors I've ever seen but we cut a rug and had a good time. I think my nephew's were a little embarrassed by us but they stayed at our table. I decided to sleep at my brother's because after riding back to their house (and my car) the thought of driving almost 1.5 hours home was not appealing.

Sunday was Pentecost and we sang some pretty music and the choir is off all of June. (Yay! no rehearsal tonight!) Later I took Honey to the river for a quick walk and swim. Apparently the river is much more fun than the pond in our yard. Monday was a holiday, too. Officially it is Jefferson Davis' birthday but I was celebrating National Go Barefoot Day, which is appropriate because I stepped on some of glass in my kitchen despite not having broken a glass in months, and may still have a sliver in there. Alternative celebrations for Monday are:

International Children's Day
Festival of Carna (either one works)
Discovery of the Magnetic North Pole
First recorded batch of Scotch Whiskey
the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band
Birthday of Marilyn Monroe, Andy Griffith, and Morgan Freedman
Death of James Buchanan, and Helen Keller
(all from the June 1st Wikipedia entry)

So other than the glass and being worried about Q-Tip, it was a good weekend.



*We had 3 RTMs there (Jr., III, and IV/father, brother, nephew); I also have an uncle and several cousins named Robert. At a family reunion if you say "Bob" a quarter of the men turn around.

Random things I've been doing

Here's what I've been doing lately:

Getting sunburned

T-town Airshow

Alright gardening hasn't really taken up that much time but I have been planting stuff with help from Nettie. Someone's also been helping unplant things and it better not be one of my animals!

2009 Garden

I went to the TBDC's The Roaring 20s dance weekend before last. I didn't have a costume for that one. (Flapper stuff was so boxy.) But I did have a costume for another one Friday night.
70s Dance (@Forest Lake Meth.) I was going for the late 70s disco look. I'm not sure anyone appreciated it. (And I remembered my camera had a timer.)

I finished two books last weekend (yay 3-day!) and throughly enjoyed both The Engine's Child by Holly Phillips (deadwood) and Farthing by Jo Walton (free e-book from Tor). I'll be looking for more from both authors. (Best line from Farthing "he wished that people would read the rest of the things Jew aren't supposed to eat and take to serving us buttered lobster or shrimp on toast." Out of context they may not be so funny, even in context it's not LOL-funny, but it still has me giggling.)

Oh, and knitting (and some sewing but that's not quite done yet)A week and a half to Mother's Day and only one hole left to fix.

Sucess, sort of.

As threatened here are some more pictures of my first real knitting project.
Here's the early stage I posted before:


I forgot to take a photo of the finished knit piece before sewing. A question for any knitters out there - is it normal for the edges to roll in (towards purl side) or did I do something wrong? (pull the end stitches too tight?)

All sewn up, pre-felting:


Post felting and in need of a hair cut since there was some lint in the washer:


All done:

I learned that the item shrinks more lengthwise than widthwise, and if I'd thought about it that would have been obvious (it started out 'looser' lengthwise). But that meant that my nicely proportioned triangular flap became almost not big enough to fold over. Oops. So a partial success; it will still be given as a present because I'm not sure I have time to make another better one.

Now I'm trying to master vertical ribbing and figure out how to do a checkerboard pattern. I have to go to Virginia Monday and back on Wednesday so I should have lots of time to practice when the boss is driving.

And because she's just so darn cute - Q-tip sleeping in my suitcase

It's a box and it smells like Mom!

Love at first sight

Photo by Patrick

Can you say chick magnet?

A guy surfing with a cat - that has to be even better than a dog at getting girls. It'd work on me*. I'm guessing 'surfing cat' is probably just below 'cute baby/little kid in the stroller at the mall' on the guaranteed-to-get-girls to stop and chat list.



*assuming the cat seemed to like the water, as this one does, and didn't act like it was being tortured, like mine would.

Dirty Dirty Storm

For your weekend viewing pleasure:


Dirty Lightening, Chaitén volcano, Chile

I'm a couple days late posting but the next one should make up for the delay.

Kitten's and boobies.

What more do we need to do for world peace? (even if some are photoshopped) Except maybe take pictures of really cute smart guys with kittens and/or puppies.

Here, I've done my part.

OMG, a 2 1/2 Stone Cat!

And you thought your cat was big.



That's 35 pounds (or 15.8 kilograms) for us non-Brits. He really likes Italian fare.

(Courtesy of Cute Overload.)

Wednesday

Sunday before riding, because he is often a bit high spirited when first saddled, I longed Patches. Sometimes instead of making a nice circle he tries to run straight and jerks the line. One of those times I must have pulled something because my back is killing me. Monday I was a little stiff and I thought maybe I slept funny or instead of cramps I would just have a sore back (sorry, I know, TMI). Yesterday it was worse, but I used a couple of hot damp washcloths* on it and it felt a little better before bed. I think it may be worst today. Yesterday it only hurt when I moved (like stood up, sat down, or bent over), today it hurts just to sit here.

I brushed Q-tip last night. She doesn't groom herself much and is shedding like she wants to be bald. I brushed her for a good 45 minutes, filled the little brush with white hair, then ran my hand down her back to watch a couple of little clumps of cat hair float off. I changed shirts after I tossed her back out there was so much hair on me. She didn't mind too much my brushing her hair backwards (sometimes helps loosen up more hair). A couple times I just moved the brush back a forth a little bit and she rubbed her jaw on it, just where she likes to be scratched. One advantage to her lax grooming is there isn't much cat saliva on her fur so she doesn't make me itch as much as her sister. Irish can be a bit obsessive about grooming.

That's where I am this lovely Wednesday. Not much going on. It's still freezing in my office. It's warmer outside so I can go outside and warm up in a bit.

*Finding my heating pad would have required much bending, stooping, and crawling, none of which is going to happen when I actually need to use the heating pad. It was on the floor beside my bed before I moved it, but didn't look like it was in that corner yesterday. Not that I got down on the floor to really look. When I find it I will be putting it in a more accessible place.

Cats with Engineers.

This is soooooo funny.

*

3 = The guy with all the cats? Does having 3 cats make weird chick with all the cats? Does having a dog mitigate this?

My cats' yodeling skills: Q-tip wouldn't be a good cat yodeler; she hardly has a meow. She says 'meh' a lot. I bet Irish could join the cat opera. Stubby's not to talkative.

In other news, Nettie and I rode Patches yesterday. We brushed about 10 pounds of winter fur off of him, leaving only another 20-30 pounds for next weekend, the next weekend, and the next weekend...until it seems we must have brushed him completely bald, except he still has a lovely white and tan coat. (Don't ya just love shedding season?) Because of all the curring this required, my arms are as sore as my legs.

We went to the Arboretum's Spring plant sale before riding. I bought too many plants, that I can't plant until later this week due to our late cold snap. While in the yard I pulled a few Spiny Sowthistles and stepped in an ant bed. The hydrocortisone I slathered on this morning doesn't seem to have helped. My foot itches like a son of a bitch. (I'm not exactly sure how much an SOB itches but it must be a lot.) If it weren't so cool today I'd've worn the same shoes I was wearing yesterday because they didn't get me under the strap, so I think the shoes wouldn't have rubbed the bites. I succumbed to the pleasure of scratching in the middle of the night - ahhhhhh, ummmm, right there, ohhh that's the spot, oh yeah, ummm - then stuck my foot out from under the covers in hopes that the cold air would numb it. (Sorry, but Honu-Girl is on jury duty and Sarah's gone to Atlanta, so I don't have anyone to complain to.)

*Thanks SOMC.

Nifty Photos

Nettie (with her new bike), Honey, and I went to the park Sunday. I decided that Nettie will never make it as an actress unless she learns to smile more convincingly on cue. I tried to get her picture while she was laughing but then she'd freeze in this very fake smile. Oh well, another dream of being related to someone rich and famous* goes down the tubes.

Here are some of my pictures.

Ripples; Nettie and her bike waiting impatiently for me and Honey; Forsythia; Honey deciding if the water was too cold to fetch the stick in.


I think the first log looks a bit like a seal or walrus or a giant snake. The second and third pictures are the same log but from opposite sides. It's hard to see but I think in the second picture the end of it looks like a dog's head (you can't see the "ear" in the picture, but there is one). In the third it still looks likes a head/face but this one more like a dragons, maybe?



This was the sunset I had to drive into. That thing attached to the sun visor is my hand trying to block as much of the sun as possible and still see where I was driving, in the first pic. The second one is the sun through the train trestle. Nettie did a good job while I drove.

This is what we did Monday.

I aired out the house this weekend and it got COLD Sunday night. I joined the animals out in the sun for a while, until I closed the windows and turned the heat back on.

*I am, through my brother's wife, related to someone famous, but I don't think professional flutists are very rich.

Too cute.

This morning when I finally got downstairs Honey was just going down the porch steps as Irish got to the top. I watched as she leisurely walked to the middle of the yard and sat down. Irish followed her out there, walked up to her, meowed loudly at Honey, looked like she was going to wind around her legs, and then sat down right in front of her. I was to cure for words. Irish, supreme ruler of her sisters, was following Honey, a mer dog, around looking for love. Awww.

(Sorry it's so dark, I must have accidentally had some weird setting on the camera.)

Wowzers

We humans like to be able to relate something unfamiliar to something more familiar. When a huge piece of the ice shelf in Antarctica breaks loose it might be described as being the size of Rhodes Island. There can be a danger in doing this since if one looks at a map the Ocean State looks really small, possibly leading one to think that the piece of ice is small - it's not the size of New Jersey even!?. Or, Germany may be described as being about as large as New Mexico or Montana, which is true for area but it has a population more like New Mexico, Montana, California, Texas and New York combined.

In this vein I'd like to give a shout out to Sarah for having now lost a Honey and Q-tip.(At least that much, and probably an Irish, too. I don't know how much my cats weigh and I'm not sure exactly how much Honey weighs.)

She's had some help. But I'm still impressed. I mean WOW, the weight of my dog and two cats! Or 1.25 of my little sister. Or a crap load of cans of Crisco. WOW.

I can't motivate myself enough to lose one cat much less the two-two and a half I should.

(I'm not sure how it would have happened but I think I have lost a puppy or so.)


Oh, in somewhat related news - I've started letting Q-tip and Irish in for short periods of time. Q-tip runs upstairs and curls up on the day bed; Honey forgets she's in the house. Irish was very vocal when I let her in and Honey wouldn't leave her alone. Last night when honey went out after dinner I let Irish in and loved on her. I had to wash my face and neck afterwards but she got to be loved for a little while.

My Kitties

(The adventures of TempCat™ being chronicled over at the Whatever has got me thinking about my cats.)

About 12 years ago my brother and his first wife were living in Fort Payne. While there they acquired two cats (Irish and Q-tip) and a dog. Later they lived at my parent's house while the house I now live in was being built and my SIL's DIL left her cat (Tom) with them when she (with the son and their baby) moved to the Seattle area. While living in their house my SIL continued to collect kittens until they reached a total of, I think, nine. Stubby, one of the subsequent six, was found in the yard one day being attacked by their dog. (Very unusual behavior for Scooter.) She's never been very social, I don't know if that had to do with her introduction to the family or not.

Q-tip and Irish started out as indoor only cats. They perfected their mousing skills in Fort Payne but Q-tip, a very young kitten when taken from her mommy, never did quite grasp the finer points of washing. After moving into the new house they became indoor/outdoor cats like Tom. And all the later additions were indoor/outdoor, too, except one who was rescued from a house where she was getting beaten up on by the other cats. (She got out the door once and never returned.)

My SIL had been depressed and hadn't been keeping up with the housework. My brother can be blind to the need for cleaning. Unrelated to the number of cats in the house or the state of the litter box my brother and SIL got divorced. The cat litter got bad. Then the cats stopped using the litter box. Sometimes they were outside, sometimes not. In an effort to make the house livable again my brother kicked all the cats out. Again, unrelated to the cats, he met someone new, fell in love, and moved in with her.

Meanwhile I was going to graduate school and living with my parents. So I started feeding the cats over there. By now, through cats finding new homes and at least one getting run over there were five cats. My bro tried to move one (Spot or No-Spot, I can't remember, one of the The Squirts) to his new place but less than 24 hours later he was back on our parent's deck looking for supper. The Squirt didn't last long, I'm not sure what happened to him.

When I moved into "my" house, the cats followed me, at least at dinner time. Q-tip and Stubby mostly stay around my house (and are they glad the little dogs are gone.). Irish often spends her day at my parent's lurking around the garage, back door, or front porch because there are lots of small spaces that small critters can hide in. Tom hung around at my parent's house most of the time. He'd never really moved to the new(my) house the first time around.

Tom was a troubled kitty. He'd been abandoned by his first owner. Then he settled in with my bro and SIL only to have them move, but only a few hundred yards. And then my SIL left. He just wanted love but didn't know how to accept it. (He'd rub his chin on your hand and then all of a sudden bite you.) He lived in my parent's attic for several months before my Dad chased him out and sealed up the hole. He take to disappearing for several months. Tom would show back up for supper on night skinny and sickly, hang around for a week or two and put back on weight, then disappear again. About a year ago he disappeared before he'd put any weight back on. I don't know for sure but he was about 15 years old.

In addition to Q-tip, Irish, and Stubby I've feed a few stray cats (not the kind that play rock-a-billy) who would hang around for a while then move on, up to 10 raccoons at one time (left over pet food and a water dish makes for a raccoon all-you-can-eat buffet), several possums (did they ever get the short end of the pretty stick!), and some birds.

My three cats have to live outside for now. I'm allergic and, even though I think I'd be ok as long as I kept them off my pillows, I'm nervous about letting them in again. Besides, this way there's no litter box. I feed them every night and they scare the small rodents away. It's a wonderful arrangement, I think. They all seem quite happy and healthy. And I feel bad when it's cold out and I leave them out. They are pretty and sweet and lovable and sometimes very silly. So, while I wouldn't get another cat (except as a stray who stays) I'm glad I have them.

p.s.- pictures can be found in just about any post with the "kitties" tag.

Some pictures

I keep thinking of a post topic and then forgetting it again. So here are some pictures from recently.

My kitties have become quite the home bodies since they got chicken for Christmas. Canned food never got this response.














Irish is never home during the day. She hangs out at my parent's house where, presumably, the hunting is better. But here she is between Stubby and Q-Tip hoping for food in the middle of the day.


It's been cold.
.



Christmas at Matt's.

Christmas at Matt's

Lounging

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Picture someone or something in the act of lounging about or slacking off. Naps, loitering, general loafing -- it all works. Show yourself, show friends, show pets. All this shoot needs is to have them not doing much at all.

Exhibit A: Q-tip on the porch


Exhibit B: Honey on the couch

She's saying, "You go on to work Mom, I'll stay here and keep the couch from floating away." (I really need to put the cover back on the cushion, goodness that thing is ugly. Oh wait, can't do that 'til the cushion stops smelling like puppy pee.)

The Red Eye

Actually mostly green ones.

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Show off a recent picture that is chock full of red
eye. Because there's nothing more amusing than light reflecting off retinas,
making folks and animals look like demon spawn! Admit it, sometimes it just
gives you giggle. For the purposes of this photo shoot, other reflective eye
colors work too, so if you've got green or yellow glowing eyes (or some other
color), bring 'em on.

Here's Stubby, glowing in anticipation of supper.


Q-tip has one green and one blue eye. I don't know if this is why she always has one green and one red "red-eye" or not but she does. Here she is looking very devil-spawnish at having her picture taken.

Here's Honey getting fed from the table , with one bluish eye staring lovingly at Ellen. (Bad dog! Bad Ellen!) I'm not sure what she was just handed but it makes her look like she has no teeth and an orange mouth.


And Irish, in a unusually good night picture of her, eating supper be herself because the Queen does not share.