Okay, but this time, I’m driving
Arrrr…I’ve just spent an hour on the phone to my elderly father trying to talk him through a YouTube search. It’s such a shame…dude was a huge gadget and technology guy back in the day. If the internet had hit him a little earlier in life, he’d have been all over it.
Oh, he’s not senile. He’s doped up and crabby and hears that clock ticking all the time. As in, “consarnit, how many dubyas I got to poke before I git pitchers?”
Between you and me, I bet anything he worked out how to get porn years ago.
Anyhow…this happen to you? Leave the door open, and the next thing you know, the car is full of stray cats.
February 2, 2012 — 11:02 pm
Comments: 27
This cat has never been out of this tree
Never. He was born in the tree, the other kittens grew up and left, then his mother did. So Wisconsin man Ron Venden built him a shelter in the fork and began feeding him a diet of meatloaf and salami in milk. Cat’s name is Almond.
Yeah. I wondered that, too. The article doesn’t say, but I bet Mr Venden is very, very careful how he walks around that tree.
What? Yes, that’s it. It’s Monday and I’m damned if I’m going to write about Rahm Emanuel.
January 24, 2011 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 20
My secret shame
Yes, that’s a gnarly feral tomcat. And yes, that’s a blankie. And a hot water bottle.
It’s Christmas, dammit!
We call him Asbo. He’s been hanging since Summer. Maybe before. Nipping in the kitchen door when we leave it open. Stealing food. High-tailing it out again if he hears us coming.
Probably peeing on stuff; he’s an intact male.
He’s not completely feral. He won’t let us closer than a few yards, but he seems to like being near us. In warm weather, he’d doze nearby in the grass while we were in the garden. He likes the sound of our voices. He’ll walk up to the window if we speak to him, and sit looking up at us for as long as we do.
At first, he stalked the chickens with apparently evil intent, but somehow he got the idea that would be Trouble. Now, he often lazes on top of the henhouse, alternately snoozing and watching them peck around in the grass.
All growed up, the chickens bully him now. If we feed him near them, they will run him off and steal his Friskies.
Yep. When the cold weather came, I started feeding him. He comes to the back door and calls loudly for his supper. Yowly boy. Like he has some Siamese in him.
I feed him under an old enamel table. He feels safe under there and will come up quite close for his plate. A few times, I’ve reached out and stroked his head, but he doesn’t like that at all. He gives me this horrified look like, “hey lady! You touched my head. With your hand.” Not a stray pet, then.
We worried about him when the snows came. I didn’t have much hope he’d accept shelter, but while he ate, I put down near him an old cat carrier with a blanket in it. He finished his supper and walked straight in.
I suspect he has a real home. He disappears days on end, but he’s getting downright fat now. All things taken into consideration, I believe he’s probably an untame barn cat from the horse farm next door.
A serious working farm animal that we have utterly ruined by keeping him fed.
Heh heh.
December 20, 2010 — 10:22 pm
Comments: 36
Catmind…
Yay! The election is over and I can go back to catblogging. Popular, lucrative catblogging.
I try not to anthropomorphize my cats. I know what passes for feline thought processes is pretty basic stuff. On the other hand, I’m not one of these faux-scientific types who think animals are unfeeling machines and all behavior is mere tropism. Haven’t these dingleberries ever kept a hamster, for cri-yi?
But every once in a while, we who serve pets are rewarded with a little glimpse into the mysteries of petbrain.
This cement cat? We call him Monsieur le Grumpypuss (yeah, sick-making, isn’t it?). I bought him because we don’t have nearly enough statuary in our garden, and this bad boy looks thoroughly cheesed off. I like that in a garden ornament.
Problem — Charlotte thinks he’s a real cat. It simply never occurred to me she would react to a badly cast lump of cement, at least after she got a good look, but she spent a week creeping up to it in…horror? Fascination? Who knows?
Even after I pushed him over and patted him in the face and demonstrated to her in every way I could think that he was a lump of inanimate crap, not an actual animal of any kind, she still acts damn strange around him.
On warm days, she sits with him and keeps him company.
November 10, 2010 — 11:30 pm
Comments: 53
Hey, they never let me take home medical waste before
Poor monkey. Now she’s down to two teeth.
See how there’s really no root there at all? That’s down to the dental resorption problem she’s had for years. The vet said it was the easiest dental procedure he’s ever done. Pop.
So they sent her home with antibiotics and instructions to let her rest for a bit. Said she’d be groggy and probably not hungry until tonight.
Sure enough, she was a bit unsteady on her feet when she got out of the carrier, but she did cry to go out, so we let her. Half an hour later, Uncle B sticks his head in the door and says, “you won’t believe this — she’s at the back door with a big fat mouse in her mouth.”
So the answer is yes — she can kill and eat mice with just two fangs. While bombed out of her skull on kitty smack.
Incidentally, August 20 is World Mosquito Day. Sir Ronald Ross of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine discovered the role of the Anopheles mosquito in the transmission of malaria on this day in 1897.
Not so long ago, malaria was endemic in our little corner of England and in the rural South of the US, where I was born. My grandfather lived with the malaria he caught in New Orleans in the 20th Century.
Worth remembering that the Third World really does have legitimate grievances against us in the Industrialized West, one of which is we won’t let them use some fucking DDT just until they can get their malaria problem under control. You know, like we did. In my lifetime.
I’m guessing if the dreaded dengue fever continues to turn up in Florida, it’ll be “second look at DDT” before you can say “Western hypocrisy.”
August 20, 2010 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 36
Ringling Brothers’ amazing weasel-stretching lady
Just kidding! Ferret hotel.
And speaking of goofy animals, my cat Charlotte broke one of her last four teeth some time between last night and this morning. It’s poking out of her face at a stupid angle.
“You just want to grab it and give it a…you know?” the ridiculously young vet said to me, making a yoinking gesture.
Not funny, though. It clearly hurts something fierce, because she’s drooling in lieu of eating. First thing in the morning, I have to bundle her off to the vet for a bit of hack ‘n’ slice. How on earth she’s been down a mouse a day with only four teeth, I’ll never know.
Now we’ll see if she can do it with three.
August 19, 2010 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 25
Help a brother out?
Anybody got a good home remedy, repellant, preventative or treatment for flea bites? Second year running Uncle B’s been eaten alive with fleas. Really, his ankles are a mess.
They go after him in preference to the cat.
Me? Not a bite. Same thing for mosquitoes, which season we’re just coming into — he gets bitten all to shit, I haven’t had a nibble since I’ve been here.
We’ve got the cat on Frontline (the back-of-the-neck thing) and Program (screws with their eggs; goes in her food). I’ve vacuumed and sprayed the carpet (semi-)regularly. He’s tried tea tree oil, lavender oil, antihistamine cream, rockinghorse shit. About the only thing giving him any relief is some calendula hippie crap.
Any suggestions?
July 20, 2010 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 52
Why, thank you
Ah, the fertile earth, freshly tilled, dark and friable. Waiting…waiting…waiting to receive a big fat cat turd.
Poor old Uncle B, when he looked around to see Charlotte balanced happily athwart his newly dug pea patch. I don’t know which was more precious: the look of horror on his face, or the look of bliss on hers.
And that’s the sort of day we’ve both had: a bit in the shitter. He’s picked up a really enthusiastic bit of malware and I’ve been fruitlessly chasing bureaucratic moonbeams all day. Thus, blogging will consist of this single inspirational moment, frozen in time.
The chickens? Bright spot of the day, bless their little beaks. Growing bigger and bolder all the time.
May 24, 2010 — 9:35 pm
Comments: 19
I fought the cat and the cat won…
The cat has fallen in love with my new seat cushion, so she nicks my chair every time I get up. I’ve taken to leaving Rubber Rat in my place to guard it — not because I thought she’d be afraid of him, of course. I thought he would be uncomfortable to snooze upon.
Ha! Foolish hu-man. Now she and RR are BFF’s.
(If you wonder why I don’t just pick up the damn cat, she’s the world’s stubbornest ornery shit-bag. She’d clamp that fluffy cushion tighter’n an alien face-hugger).
That’s a really splendid rat, isn’t it? Uncle B bought him for me in London. Which is weird, because somebody in the IT department at my old job in Rhode Island had one just like it. We reckon he must have been an advertisement for rat traps; he’s big, old and fierce.
Many, many years ago, when the internet still had that new car smell, I read on Usenet that 70% of all computer monitors had a rubber rat on top of them. It was surely just a silly sig line, but the thing is, at the moment I read it I totally had a rubber rat on top of my monitor.
And, until flat-screens, I made sure I had a rubber rat on my monitor forever after.
April 7, 2010 — 10:52 pm
Comments: 70
Partners in crime
They work as a team. Dude on the left pinches scones; dude on the right clotted cream. I don’t think the lady who owns them spends a whole lot on chicken feed or Friskies.
Heh. Yeah. That’s right. I managed to screw two posts out of this one time a few weeks ago when we stopped for tea. That’s what a lazy sack of shit I am this week.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
July 3, 2009 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 26