Last Day of 2016

So, 2016 has been a roller coaster for most of us (including me).  Some really great things have happened, and there's also a lot of things that were bad.  I'm not entirely sure if 2016 was exactly bad for me though.

At the beginning of 2016 I had been in my 'new' position at work for about six months, doing the same work I had the year before but for almost 2/3 less pay.  I was miserable.  I didn't have to deal with the regional manager as much, but things were falling apart at work and I was on a job hunt, trying to find something else that might make me happier.  I was depressed for a good portion of the beginning of the year.  Eventually spring hit and things got a wee bit better and I spoke to my doctor about the possibility of taking medicine.  What I discovered though, was that a lot of my bad mood was between medicine I was already taking and the lack of creative things to keep my mind busy.  So during the spring/summer I was still sort of miserable, but learning to cope.  I got into following the political race and watched the news regularly and started to learn more about things that were going on around me.

Mind you, I was also stressed out about a ton of things and it was still mostly miserable, but I coped, I got through, and even though my candidate lost the election, I felt like I tried and that was good.  On the plus side, we still had Obama through 2016, so in reality, 2017 will probably be worse.  But I digress....

Life did get better or maybe worse at the end of 2016.  I got my 'old' job back, but with less pay, but with the option of eventually making that same amount again given enough time.  I lost a bunch of co-workers (including the regional manager) so things changed quite a bit.  The stress of Christmas and the holidays still weighs on my shoulder as we try to get over the hump and get going on our next season, but I've found I can work at fighting my depression a bit better than I had at the beginning of the year.

Looking on the bright side of things, since Pokemon Go came out I've walked a whole lot more.  The summer was a pretty fun time for me and I met a lot of people out on the streets.  Not so much now, but that's okay because I got out and walked.  Even now that it's cold outside, I'm still walking.  I'm down 16 pounds from spring and I can see a definite change in my photos from a year ago.  I still have a long way to go, I'd still like to lose another 20 pounds and see what it feels like to be 'skinny' and I'm planning on starting up my exercise routine again come the new year.

I'm not making it a resolution though, I'm making it a 'health decision' as 2016 has thrown a number of things at me such as sore wrists (from something like carpal tunnel) and also a bad elbow (most likely arthritis) and a bad heal (bad shoes...can't seem to get that one right yet) and a hernia in my lower intestine (which I have a plan to talk to my doctor about in the next couple of months) and this strange heart murmur thing when I have gas buildup in my stomach (thanks acid reflux!) so I'm not even 40 years old and it feels like my body is already saying 'enough is enough!'  So that's why I think getting into something low impact like yoga and my Pokemon Go walks is the right way to go.

Where will I be a year from now?  I'm not entirely sure.  I hope 2017 will find me in a good place, but I may have to just drop off from following politics for awhile and sort of ignore the world for awhile.  Maybe 2017 will be a time for ME and getting myself centered as a person.  I felt that I was always a happier person when I'm creating things, so working on that might be the way to go.  At least giving myself meaningful projects (I was given a dollhouse to work on this year) might be something that I can work on to keep my mind busy.

As the sun sets in about an hour or so, and the last few hours of the year draw closer, I do hope that I can make a good attempt at enjoying my year in 2017, and I will wave farewell to 2016 and hope that it doesn't prove to be a better year than we had thought.

Olivia's Journal #1

The cat journals this week conclude with Olivia; cat number one.  The story of this little gray fluffy cat starts when we bought our home.  In fact, maybe even before we bought our house as I was dreaming of a cat from the moment I moved into a cat-free apartment building with my then boyfriend (now husband) who also wanted a cat.  We waited out the three or so years in the apartment until we could afford to get married and get a house of our own.  And in January of 2011, we walked through the house that would be ours and I could picture certain places in the house and how a cat would be in those areas.  There's a small ledge at the top of the staircase that I imagined a cat sitting on waiting on us to come out of the master bedroom.  I imagined how they would like to wander up and down the stairs and peek out through the railings.  I got pretty sentimental about the house even before we were finished house-hunting.  This wasn't a beautiful home by any means as there were so many things that needed to be fixed before adding a pet to our home.

But by spring, we were popping into pet stores and looking at adoptable cats.  I saw a particularly cute one around April or so of the year and begged my husband to let me fill out the paperwork to adopt it.  I'm going to put this right out there though - adopting through a pet store that's just showcasing cats for other shelters is a bad run.  It took us a lot of time to even get the paperwork from a cashier who said it wouldn't get faxed in until the morning, and then we waited a week to find out that they had never faxed it in, nor had they even any record of us filling out the paperwork, and oh...by the way...the kitten was already adopted.  Too bad, so sad.

Frustrated by the whole thing it would be another week or so of visiting the local Humane Society and a last-minute evening trip that would give us only about a half hour of looking time when I spotted the kittens in the front glass enclosure.  A gray kitten!  Just like the one I'd seen at the pet store!  I rushed in, almost bumping another woman out of the way in my efforts to grab for the kitten... and some how this little gray furball actually came up to me.  I scooped her up and except for when we got to play with her in the little bonding room, I hardly let her out of my arms until the paperwork was signed and she was in the new carrier on our way home.

As you might be able to tell, Olivia is my first child and my favorite.  Mina might be an adorable, purring cuddler, and Tenchi might be a rough and tumble head-bumper, but Olivia is my buddy.  Her name at the Humane Society was "Brioche", although I have no idea why they'd name a gray kitten after a type of bread.  We were fans of the television show "Fringe" and that's where Olivia's name came from.  She was every bit the strong female lead in the story that would become our family of cats.  She still is, in fact, as she's able to strand lying near Tenchi and jump neatly away from his advances of playtime.

Brave cat that she is, Olivia scales the highest heights of the house, managing to climb on just about anything in efforts to get to a good vantage point.  She climbs the rafters in the basement, managed to get up to a ledge at the top of our cathedral ceiling bedroom by balancing on a bedpost, can make it to the top of our kitchen cupboards...well, you name it, she's gotten up there.  She's lightweight, and small, only about 7 to 8 pounds on her heaviest days.  Small pink toes, a warm pink-gray in most lighting situations, and an extra-thick layer of fur that is almost wavy.  Unfortunately that also comes with a ridiculous penchant for shedding and even worse when she lays next to my face in bed and I get a mouth full of fur!

When Olivia was a kitten we would get up every morning and make an effort to play with her.  Sometimes she would get so excited she would start panting and have to lay down.  It took us awhile to figure out this was normal and even good to wear a cat out like this, but our first time cat-parent selves were always cautious of her.  She fell off a tall shelf in the basement at one point, hurting herself and she limped for a day.  Another week or more went by with Olivia squinting and barely opening her eye.  This was followed by a week of wearing a cone and putting in eye drops prescribed by the vet.  And then followed by the realization that Olivia squinted with that eye when she was irritated with us for bringing home Mina.  In fact, she squinted more for putting the medicine in her eye so that when the cone was removed and the drops ended, the squint only reappeared when she was irritated.  That was a couple hundred dollars and lots of cat humiliation that could have been avoided!

Olivia still likes to play, but she doesn't like to do it around Mina.  Even when Mina was a kitten Olivia wasn't a fan of her younger sister.  They would tolerate one another at windows and in sunny spots, but if Olivia was playing with a feather toy in one room and Mina popped in, all interest in the toy dropped and Olivia simply walked out of the room as if she were never playing at all.  It took nearly a year before she would return to asking for playtime in the mornings and they went from long, pant-inducing bird hunts to short, crazy jumps until Mina joined the fun and then she would watch from nearby until Mina tired out enough for Olivia to return to her playtime.

 Introducing Tenchi a year later after that and Olivia returned to her snooty "I don't want to play now that that is here," attitude, and again she fell silent to asking for playtime for nearly another year.

Jump back in time now since I forgot to mention how much of a vocal little thing this cat can be.  She asks to play.  She asks to have her 'snicky-snack' (aka hairball medicine which I'm sooo glad she takes on her own since she has such problems with hairballs).  She asks to go out to the garage.  She asks for closet doors to be opened.  She meows at ceilings and random spots on the wall.  She meows in the half-bath on the first floor where, for some reason, she'll howl for fifteen minutes straight if you let her an we're still not sure why three years later.  She chirps when you wake her up from a nap.  She meows to make me roll over to cuddle with her.  Oh yes...she won't shut up until I roll to face away from my husband in bed so that she can knead on my left arm until she feels it's soft enough to curl up against and shove her face in my face and nibble on my nose.  That doesn't happen every night...but it used to before Tenchi arrived.

For the most part, Olivia is a cuddler.  She likes cozy spaces like piles of warm laundry, and my computer chair or now, most recently, my lap.  The two girls fight over it, but refuse to share it.  If Mina is on my lap, Olivia will come up and meow at me and sulk off.  Mina will come up to sniff Olivia if she's in my lap and then go lie on the floor with her head on her paws looking at me all pathetic like, as if she were saying "Why don't you love me anymore?"

If Olivia gets chased off of my lap she might go into CRAZY CAT MODE.  I'm sure most cats have this, right?  That moment where the energy builds up so much they just have to release it by running around the house at full tilt?  Some do.  Mina and Tenchi get out most of their tension by chasing after one another through the house or chasing Olivia.  Now, Olivia on the other hand, barely ever instigates a chase (once in awhile, but not usually) as instead she enjoys suddenly going crazy, meowing her head off and doing kitty parcour against the back of the sofa.  Then, if you turn to look at her, she'll go wide-eyed and high-tail it out into the kitchen.  Eventually this act, plus running into the bathroom and meowing to high-heaven, will get her a playmate of one of the other cats and they'll go racing out of the room and upstairs.  There will be the sound of a great thundering stampede in the ceiling until eventually they race back down again and into the basement.

 Cats are weird that way, I cannot deny it.  Olivia is for the most part, very sweet.  She doesn't mind her toes trimmed.  She loves to be petted in the master bathroom, even my husband gets love from her there.  She loves to meow at us after we come out of the shower until she gets to rub all over our ankles and hands.  She stays out of the way most of the day by finding a nice place to nap.  She doesn't struggle when picked up, but doesn't like it either, usually using it to her advantage to get a good spot on top of our shoulders to see if she can find a good jumping place somewhere she couldn't reach before.  Her main flaw, I suppose, is that she teaches the other cats bad behaviors like trying to get into the catnip (which we've had to lock up due to Tenchi's aggressive nature and fact he's chewed his way through the butter-tub shaped container we have it in).  But because of her bravery, she doesn't hide from storms and gets to play while the others are hiding.  She will bat at the vacuum cleaner if you get the hose too close to her, but she doesn't stand down.  She enjoys spending time watching TV as well, and I've caught her more than once, en rapt with the moving objects on the screen.

And that about does it for now on the three cats in my household.  I hope you've enjoyed reading about them!  If nothing else...this is my own personal memory at this point in time of my three cats.  As other events happen to these sweethearts, rest assured that there will be new journals posted with new adorable photographs.  I hope you have enjoyed what I've posted as well.

Next time on WhatcherStudios... most likely something about backyard birding as I've been doing a lot of that lately.

Mina's Journal #1

 In part 2 of the cat introduction, I present to you the black cat Mina.  She came to us a bit of a raggedy kitten, found as a stray by a different coworker.  It does seem like cats come from people you work for - they always seem to pawn cats off on unsuspecting people!  But that's not where Mina's story begins...

In October of 2011, we had settled into our new house with our new cat Olivia.  I'll tell her story in the next blog, but it's important to note that Olivia had been an 'only child' for a good six months before Mina came into her life.

We run Tsubasacon, in Huntington, WV, so when the convention was over that year we had talked about getting another cat to keep Olivia company.  Perhaps, we thought, having another cat would keep Olivia occupied so she wouldn't constantly bug us to play with her.  Maybe a buddy would help?  Well, I told my husband that if we were to get another cat, it would have to 'come' to us.  I know there are a lot of people out there who don't believe in God, but for those of you on my side of the fence, I believed that God would bring me another cat if that's what was to happen.  Not two days after I got back from my leave from running the convention, a coworker said to me, "You have only one cat, right?  Weren't you talking about getting another cat?"
            "Yes...we were talking about getting another eventually," I replied, wondering where this conversation was going.
           "Well, I have this stray running around my house, and I've been feeding him but my cats don't like him and I can't have another right now... He's a real sweetie."  We talked about this kitty and my coworker told me about how she'd seen him being dragged around in the arms of a toddler a few houses down when he wasn't fending for himself out and about.  Of course when you hear about a cat being tortured by a child I immediately went home and told my husband about this desperate situation.  He agreed we could go look at the cat.
            After a week or so we arranged to go to my coworker's house and she arranged to catch the kitten and have him ready for us to look at.  We made the almost a half hour trip out to nowhere land and there was this kitten in a carrier out on my coworker's back porch.  She brought the cat out and he wove in and out around our ankles and climbed around the back porch area.  I looked up at my husband with big eyes, and begged to take him.  He called the vet on the drive back, because he knew he didn't have any argument about the little raggedy black cat with the silly white hairs sticking out of her chest and back.
              At the vet, just as I'd already assumed after seeing the cat in person, that 'he' was actually a 'she'.  My coworker didn't realize it with how long haired she was, but I knew immediately.  We passed back and forth dozens of names on the drive to the vet and already had a name picked out by the time we got there to have her checked out.  "Mina" was a character from an anime (not originally an anime though, an opening sequence anime to a Japanese drama called "Densha Otoko").  I'd wanted to use the name when we got Olivia, but didn't due to other reasons.


 Olivia is a pretty easy going cat, but for some reason the moment Mina came into the household she lost interest in playing.  Mina basically took over being the kitten with all of the energy.  She'd silently run into a room while we were playing and take over the battle over the birdie or mousie, or whatever feathery toy we would be waving around.  Olivia would sulk out of the room and let Mina have the run of the place.  When they were younger, Mina and Olivia would spend time near one another and sometimes even sleep near one another.  Unfortunately upon the entrance of Tenchi, they lost interest in cuddling together and everyone took up their own territories in the house.

Mina's territory is the first floor.  She rarely comes upstairs to the second level.  UNLESS of course, there's playtime going and she comes running.  She can appear mysteriously wherever a feather or string object is being thrown around.  Occasionally she'll come upstairs to check out if everything is okay, but Tenchi usually runs her out.  Where she shines though is the first floor where she loves to look outside and watch us when we're in the yard.  She stalks the birds and the bird feeders.  She runs in and plops down on the living room floor and will roll over to show you her belly.

Unfortunately a few quirks still exist from her kitten days.  Mina does not like to be picked up.  Almost immediately this normally quiet cat will start to yowl like I've pulled out a toenail or something.  She absolutely hates to have her claws trimmed, which is sort of ironic as she also doesn't use scratching posts so if I don't trim them, they curl back on themselves.  I'm not sure why she has such an aversion to having her feet touched, but the only time she allows them to be touched is when she's completely asleep or she's forced into the trimming.  Luckily she only struggles and yowls, doesn't bite like Tenchi will try to do on occasion.

Mina also hates the sound of thunder.  We discovered this the spring after we got her.  The first thunderstorm that rolled through and she hid herself under the television stand.  She still does it even a few years later, and she'll stay there until long after the storm has passed.  We're not sure where this fear came from as neither of the other cats have a problem with storms and even though Mina used to run from the vacuum cleaner, she mostly stays put now that she's older and won't leave too far from her perch in the front window.

An unusual thing happened when Mina would hide under the television:  Olivia would play again.  In fact, I sometimes think that Olivia enjoys feeling like she's the only cat in the house during thunderstorms because she will play and snuggle up to me on the first floor when Mina is no where to be found.

Then, after Olivia was just starting to act a bit more normal (at least back to her six months of being an 'only child') we introduced the kitten Tenchi.  For some reason he clung onto Mina like they were going to be the best friends in the entire world.

That, of course, was not the case.  Mina hissed, howled, growled, spat, clawed...turned into basically the most nasty sounding evil cat I'd heard - all coming out of the sweetest cuddly thing you can think of.  She didn't want to have anything to do with Tenchi.  (Olivia, on the other hand sniffed at him, but overall just avoided the kitten.)  But Tenchi was enthralled with Mina for some reason.  He would find her sleeping up by the window and curl up next to her.  If she was sound asleep then he could be near her, but the moment she woke up she would sniff at him in disdain and leave.

Even a year later, Mina's admirer still takes time out of his busy schedule of eating and being an overall pain in the butt (walking his bulky 14 pounds of bony feet all over me, bringing toys to fetch and eating when he's bored) to annoy Mina.

Mina's schedule is usually like this - she sleeps on the couch, or the cat tower, and when she hears her humans get up she runs out into the living room floor and throws herself down for scratches.  If we take too long to get up she might run up to investigate which causes Tenchi to chase her out.  Then she rubs around our ankles in the kitchen, throwing herself down on our feet if we stand in one place too long without petting her.  Tenchi comes in and chases her out of the kitchen.  If I don't have to go to work and take up residence on the couch, Mina plops herself on my leg until it goes numb (about a half hour or so) and then plops down on the floor to the left of the coffee table and sprawls out until I get up and walk around.  If I sit down again she'll be on my lap within 5-10 minutes.  Repeat, lots of times through the day.  In the evening, Tenchi comes out from hiding and will lie on the floor and copy-cat her position in the floor, both of them showing off their bellies.

Mina stays downstairs when we go upstairs as that is Olivia and Tenchi territory.  Now, if we've left something on the floor - Tenchi's blue rubber bracelet for example - we'll hear her meowing to tell us that it's been left on the floor.  Mina also has a cute habit she started as a kitten, and that was fetching small objects that DO NOT BELONG.  I say this because she makes a point of making a ruckus if one of these objects is found.  The first was a bit of cement from the basement floor; she brought it up in her mouth, carefully dropped it in the living room and meowed at me.  She rarely speaks, unlike Tenchi and Olivia who are avid talkers.  So it's quite a shock, and the first time she brought me something I thought she had hurt herself.  But eventually we figured out what the meow meant.  "This does not belong on the floor," she seems to say.

Mina has brought up a list of things from the basement and also warns us if we've dropped items that could potentially be harmful to step on.  Maybe it's her foot thing, I'm not sure.  But her list includes: cement, stone, shards of mirror, screw, twist tie, some strange velcro thing and Tenchi's bracelet.  We're not sure why she's so bothered by that bracelet as it's a human object, yes, but my husband has worn it only once and Tenchi took over carrying it around ever since, so in essence it's become a cat toy.  But not to Mina, even though she's played with it herself.

It's taken nearly a year to get 'used' to Tenchi enough to get back into the routine of disrupting play time again.  Olivia got fairly used to the new boy in the house, but Mina stopped playing when we got him, all but on occasions, and maybe it's because she's got such short legs she doesn't run very fast.  She runs with all claws and can't jump very high.  Most of the time she stays on at least two feet to catch birds.  She's scared of heights as well.  She will get to the top of the cat tower, but it took months to get over wobbling with fear when we'd put her at the top.  She started lying on the bottom, then the first ear, then another until finally she would sleep at the top.  She can't jump up on counters, her legs just won't let her jump higher than a foot or so.

I don't mind that she doesn't climb (Olivia is enough of a hassle to chase down off of things), because she's quite the cuddler.  When she's on my lap, if she's really loving she'll start up this little motor going (Tenchi, I didn't mention before, doesn't purr.  He has a tiny little rumble that will come for maybe five seconds at a time when he's feeling cuddly, but it only happens maybe once a week.  Olivia purrs, but more about her later) and put her paws on my shoulders.  She'll rub her face in mine and bury her face in my neck.  She doesn't do this to my husband (only rarely) but she cuddles with me at least once a day.

She also begs for food.  She's the only one of my three cats that care at all about people food.  She LOVES it.  Oh wait... LOVES it.  She'll plop up next to me on the bench at the kitchen table and put her paws on my shoulder and rub the side of my face and then reach over to the dish that I'm eating.  I give her occasional table scraps, but only meat, and only tiny bits as she won't eat anything over the size of a pea.  But she's insatiable.  She'll beg until every scrap of food is cleaned off the plate.  Then she'll turn around and get annoyed that I didn't share anything and leave dejectedly.

And there you have it, Mina.  Next Journal up:  Olivia, Cat #1!

Tenchi's Journal #1

 This is Tenchi.  I was thinking about doing a journal for all three of my cats at one point or another to give a basic introduction to their weird quirks so that I could have it for reference in the future.  Any why not?  There are a ton of people out there who have blogging cats and they get tons of hits on the internet from people who like cats.  There's whole blogging sites dedicated to blogs about cats and cat owners and everything in between.
       I thought to myself as I was going through the sites the other day that I really should at least set it in stone (or digital stone so to speak) who my family is living in this little two-story house.  So, why not start with cat number three and work my way backwards?  Maybe then you can get a good idea of what a cat household is like.  Cat households are different than dog households or children households, in case you were ever wondering.


Cat number three came to us in May I believe, or 2013.  The reason I can't remember Tenchi's date exactly was that I have his birthday memorized as being Feburary 21st.  His mother was a stray that followed a coworker's male cat home one day.  She had four kittens in the litter, two females and two males.

The two black females and one tabby male were named Izzy (long fur), Squeak (short fur) and George.  They wound up staying with Tenchi's mother as my co-worker adopted her after Smudge, they're supposed father died after being run over.


Having been an indoor/outdoor cat, my coworker decided from that point on she would not allow any of the kittens go to a outdoor cat home and refused to adopt any of the kittens out unless they were to be inside cats only.  Tenchi would not ever run that risk as I don't like the idea of outdoor cats at all.  Two of my cats when I was growing up ran into trouble being outdoor cats.  One of which we suspected drinking coolant or some such nasty thing outside and died shortly afterwards.  Of course, in my mom's day, how you treated your pets is a whole lot different than people treat them today.  Even my coworker decided that it wouldn't be a good thing to let them have the run of the neighborhood.  She'd already saved too many strays and later remarked that Tenchi and George's dad may have been a different stray altogether as when a foreclosed house down the street was revealed to be a cat-hoarder's home, one that looked an awful lot like Tenchi wandered the neighborhood not long ago.

 Tenchi was the only one of his siblings to be adopted out, and he was the craziest of them.  My coworker called him "ornery" because he was constantly moving and meowing and running around playing.  We thought to ourselves that we have two cats who love to play and we already played with them quite regularly, so what harm would there be to adding a third to our crew?

WELL...  Tenchi doesn't tear up the furniture.

What he DOES do, however, is get himself torn up by the other two cats.  The moment we brought him home he was calm and quiet.  He had, after all, been worn down by us playing with him before we picked up him that afternoon.  I could have had my pick of any of the kittens.  I could have pulled out the quiet George or the scared Izzy, and if it hadn't been for Squeak being a black female (which I already had) I may have picked her because she'd come out to play when Tenchi was panting in the corner.

I never for once regret...okay...maybe once or twice regret bringing the Tench-meister home, but for the most part I love him.  He IS a bit ornery though, and he can get a bit grouchy.  He's also FAT.  He's managed to get himself up to about 14 pounds of cat now, double the size of our smallest Olivia.  Olivia, for her part, is a jumper so she can get away from him and he's got multiple wounds to prove that she's gotten him from time to time.  But for some reason he likes Mina the most.  He loves to bug her.  Mina is about a pound heavier than Olivia and she's sweet and gentle.  Unless Tenchi gets up in her face and then she growls like nobody's business.  They tear each other up, black fur and white fur everywhere.

But...they live in peace most of the time.  I can't deny that when Tenchi isn't eating (which he does every time he gets bored and there's no one to play with) and when he's not tearing around the house trying to attack the girls, he does get sweet.  He'll bump into my face like a bowling ball though (I swear I've bruised my nose sometimes when he bumps it hard enough) and he's gotten to the point that if he wants to be petted, he'll grab your hand with a paw so he can push his face into it.  However, he seems to only like to be petted on the sides of his face.  Occasionally a stroke down the back or a scratch on the rump.  He'll bite when I try to pet his belly so I have to keep his claws trimmed back.  Luckily it's never a super hard bite, and only once he broke the skin.

Unfortunately, even with Tenchi being a sweet cat, I've had my moments with him.  If you have ever watched "My Cat From Hell" with Jackson Galaxy, you'll know that cats can snap from being treated wrong.  I know that from time to time Tenchi gets this expression on his face and it feels like he's just not there.  It's almost as if a demon has taken over my cat and if I do the wrong thing or act the wrong way he'll just snap and I'll have to make a phone call to the Cat Daddy myself.

So far, it hasn't happened.  Thank goodness.  But he goes through these moods where I swear he's had enough.  I'm not even quite sure what tips it off, although I do know that he's a MEAN drunk - or should I say when he's got catnip he's really mean.  He goes for blood when he's on the stuff, and even though my other two cats are perfectly sweet and adorable and it puts them to sleep...he just wants to tear into everything.  So I have to be very careful about the 'nip.

Tenchi is hit-or-miss when it comes to strangers.  Sometimes he'll be all over them, curious and playful, but for some reason larger men really scare him.  He acts like he's never seen another human before besides my husband and myself.  He'll run and hide from our best man David and he was scared to death of the cable guy last week.  Sometimes he'll get a wild, fluff tail pose on him and scurry away like we're complete strangers too, which is that part of him I wonder if his brain has flicked over to a different cat setting.

The last thing I'll talk about is how our cat thinks he's a dog.  In fact, I compare his actions (even the crazy wild-eyed cat thing) to things I've seen dogs do.  He'll be sweet one moment, wanting to get petted, then bat his paw at me when he's had enough.  I've seen him just randomly lash out at the girls because he wants to play.  And he has favorite toys that he loves to play with.  I don't have pictures of these things, unfortunately, although I do have video I've thought of posting on my YouTube channel (which might get linked someday if I can get things together) but he has a blue, rubber bracelet and a blue chair cushion tie (that he chewed off the cushion and I never bothered to sew back on) that he drags around the house if he wants to play fetch.  He'll also play with these items on his own if he's really desperate, but most of time they wind up next to the couch where I'm sitting or on the bed when I'm sleeping, only so I can throw them across the room and he can fetch them back three or four times.  He does get bored of this, but he has been known to do it for a half hour or more if he's in the mood.

So there you have it.  Tenchi in a nutshell (or at least in ten or so paragraphs).  I think that covers all but the fact that he likes to sleep at my husband's feet at night, he LOVES fresh water out of the tap (we have a separate bowl in the bathroom just for him even though we have a perfectly good fountain) and that he hates to be picked up, held or have his claws trimmed.  Also isn't much of a height cat due to his fat, although he did just make it up on the counter the other day, much to our dismay.

Next entry will be on Mina - Tenchi's arch-rival and best friend.

Tidbits around the House

There's no real purpose to me having a picture of Olivia on here except for the fact that she's adorable and fluffy and even though she sheds like crazy, she's still my favorite cuddle cat.  Lately, she's starting to come out of her shell a bit more again since we brought home Tenchi, the littlest addition to our crew.  Of course, now he's not exactly little anymore, as he's just as tall as Olivia and only a pound away from her at 6 months.  I have a feeling he's going to be our biggest cat.

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As I was wandering about the house yesterday, fighting an infestation of ants trying to eat the cat food in the kitchen, I recalled the fact that we had a package of ant traps under the kitchen sink.  I hadn't even had my first cup of coffee for the morning as I swept, mopped, and eventually set down the traps in the corners where I saw them coming from.  I think after having our new patio built that they had a new way to get into the house.  My husband was a bit wary about using traps since they kill off the entire community of ants, but as I reminded him, if there are so many ants in the yard that some find a way inside, then there are too many ants.  On the plus side, this morning I have not seen any ants, and maybe it's because it's finally stopped raining for more than two hours (the sidewalk is actually dry the first time in almost a week).  But I'm happy that they've decided to move on...

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Here's a helpful tip if you ever buy a milk carton that's the old fashioned cardboard kind.  If it doesn't have a screw cap, then use a paperclip to seal the opening shut again.  It'll keep things like creamer, heavy cream, and even regular milk good longer than just closing it and shoving it back in the fridge.

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What really irritates me about working retail sometimes is the fact that people have the tendency to look down on you.  Not sure exactly why that is, because I know people who don't work retail and make less than I do, and really, if you don't have a college degree of some sort, most retail stores won't hire you for a management position, that's just how it is.  But just the other day I was calling out for the next in line.  "I can help who's next!"  I said cheerfully.  The woman that came up put her items on the counter and practically growled at me, "URGH!"  I blinked a couple of times thinking she was irritated for having waited too long (which is usually why they get mad...or it's because they couldn't find something.  Usually I can either apologize to make them feel better or find the item, at least, usually.)

"Is something wrong?"  I asked, almost hesitating to find out what was going on.

"It's NOT, 'Can I help whose next?', that's NOT proper English.  And you people always say that, every time I come in, it's just wrong."  I stared at her, tried to explain that not everyone said it that way, but then it occurred to me that I wasn't wrong, because, in fact, I was saying the contraction of "who" and "is" - hence, "who's".  She was still going on about how it was the "English teacher in her" that couldn't stand to hear it said wrong.  I rung her items and said, "May I help the person who is next in line.  Is that better??"

"Yes, that's better."  The woman then left and I shook my head, because it really wasn't any different than saying "May I help the person who's next in line?"  And the fact that she had to jab in there that she was an English teacher, as if all of us working in retail are stupid.  I, in fact, have a degree in English as well.  I've thought at various times that maybe what I was saying wasn't correct, but the truth was, I even looked it up in the Associated Press Handbook to see if the contraction was real.  It is.  But for some reason I think she thought I was saying "whose" which would be incorrect.  Unfortunately with the English language, the two words, "whose" and "who's" sound identical.  The fact that she got upset and didn't say, "are you saying the contraction?" means that she got angry without thinking it through.  It was worse than when someone has to point out the distinction between "can you" and "will you".

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Speaking of English pet peeves; I have a few of my own.  Recently, it's mostly to do with when people add an "s" to the end of a word that isn't supposed to have one.  A few examples:  Targets, Walmarts, Meijers, JCPennys, HotTopics, and Krogers.  I've noticed that oftentimes it comes more frequently in Southern areas, but then again, everyone at home up North used to call it "Meijers" too.  Now, I have thought about it a bit to think that perhaps this comes from our past when places were named after a specific person.  And maybe back in the day it would have been "Kroger's Grocery" meaning some person named Kroger owned a grocery store.  So, perhaps, as stores eventually grew big, they dropped the possessive "'s" and stuck with the last name by itself.  Not all stores did this, I know that, but I wonder if in the collective conscience, some people still think of the stores as belonging to someone.

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I wish it were possible to just become immune to Salmonella poisoning or whatever other bugs exist on food that make you sick.

The reason I say this is because I just came back from a trip to West Virginia and while there ate at a Chinese restaurant that my husband loves.  He's been eating there for years, and now I sort of have been too, but things were getting a bit sketchier over the last few visits, and then suddenly a friend and I both ordered Egg Drop soup and we both got food poisoning pretty bad.  Seems that I keep getting it once every few months to the point where I just don't want to eat anywhere that I feel a bit weird about the food.  This time it was a slightly suspicious green colored egg in the soup.  Didn't think too much about it because I've had odd colored pieces in the soup before without much trouble.  However, what should have made me stop eating it was the fact that the soup wasn't broiling hot like they usually get it.  Usually they're bringing out your egg roll or your meal by the time it cools down enough to eat without scorching your tongue.  This time, no such luck, which meant that whatever was in that bad bugger was still alive.  SO...  A note to you, if your egg drop is not scalding hot, don't eat it!

As for the picture above, this was the sunset above my in-law's house on the night before we left.  I was recouping from the food poisoning by that point, thankfully.  I'm just glad it hadn't been so bad that I couldn't go places, because I've been sick like that and on vacation, it's just not any fun.

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On a last note, I think because we've been having almost monsoon type weather (which, for the record, I actually like rather than last year when we got only a couple rains during the whole summer), we've also got a bunch of bugs.  With the hoard of bugs (remember the ants I talked about?) there are also a ton of birds.

I've heard a saying once that "you never see baby pigeons".  Well, these aren't baby pigeons, but a close cousin, the mourning dove.  Each year we have at least one pair of mating doves that hang out in our yard, and usually they find themselves a nice spot on our fence to build a nest.  This year it was in the back corner above a lilac bush.  The reason you "never see a baby pigeon" is they usually stay in the nest until they almost look like an adult (only a bit smaller in stature) and then they're let out to fly.  Unfortunately I'm pretty sure only one of these little ones survived, as I only saw one of them after this once it was able to fly.  The other probably went to a neighboring cat.

We have two, a black one, and a calico-looking tan stripe/white cat, both pretty fluffy.  I call them "him" and "her" consecutively.  "He" will come up and stare in the back door at my cats and since he looks like my Mina, sometimes I get a heart attack thinking she's gotten outside.  "She" will roll around in the catnip growing in the back yard.  Both of them, when they get too close to the Mockingbird that lives around here, will get attacked and chased away by the little gray bird!

And the robins around here....Oh I swear to you those things are horny.  Already they're on their second brood this summer.  First set had one baby, and now we have two hanging out on the fence pooping everywhere.  At least it's better than the first one who chose to sit on my porch chair and I had to scrub that bugger like crazy.

I will leave you with one last thought:  Have you ever seen a baby pigeon?

My Two (Furry) Daughters

I have two precious daughters.  Olivia, the eldest of two years and three months, and Mina, two years, or maybe just shy of two years.  They are two of the most precious things to me in the world, and I love them dearly in their own, separate and special ways.

Of course, you probably already guessed that these daughters are not human since they are so close in age to one another.  And perhaps by the title of this writing which has "furry" in it.  If you guessed they are most likely cats or dogs, you would be correct in the former.  My daughters are my fuzzy kittens.

There are a great many people now who treat their animals as children.  I would never go so far as treat them as spoiled children, nor would I dress them up, carry them around in designer purses, or speak about them as if they were the only things in the world that I care about.  I do care about people, although I don't care very much about human children.  They have their moments, I will admit.  Hidden smiles behind Mom's legs, a wave or a "Hi!" from a cheerful one at the store, or the way they're always curious about things.  But then, so are cats.  Cats also don't scream and yell at you that they hate you.  They don't require your attention 24/7 (well, some do) but especially they don't require schooling, helping with homework, separate rooms for themselves (they don't, trust me on this) and they don't need clothing which has to be in the newest fashion every other week.

I grew up with pets.  I didn't grow up around small babies.  My younger brother was born fifteen months after I was due to my mother believing that as long as she was breast feeding she didn't need to be on birth control as well.  Hello!  I was just barely out of diapers by the time he was, so I only had a few months of toddling around after the young one with clean diapers to help Mom change.

I had dolls growing up, but my favorites were always stuffed animals.  I had a duck given to me at a very early age by my grandmother, and by the time I was five I was naming my stuffed bunny "Morning" after the thought that mourning doves cooed outside during the spring and it was spring when I received my bunny, and also it was first thing in the morning when I was asked again what her name would be.

It's sort of rare for children to come up with names for toys nowadays.  I digress in my writing since I notice that if a little girl or boy comes up to me to show me their brand new doll or stuffed animal and I ask for its name I usually get, "I dunno," or "I haven't given it one yet," or in my most recent case, "Well, she is a Barbie, so that's her name."

All the way through my childhood and teenage years I liked horses.  If you asked me what my favorite real animal was, I would say "horse".  If you asked my favorite non-real animal, "unicorn."  But I was very rarely attached to actual pets.

My first two childhood pets were Sammy and Trapper, two orange stripe cats with bits of white on them.  They were indoor/outdoor cats so they were pretty wild as most of those kinds are.  After Sammy was put down when I was six or so, we had a bought with a fish tank.  When I reached about seven or eight I begged my parents for a black cocker spaniel I dubbed "Stormer" after a character in "Jem and the Holograms."  Stormer lived to the ripe old age of fourteen before dying of a cancerous lump under her tail.

By then I had already lost my father, and with his death, Mom felt it fair if I had a cat replacement since I'd been asking for one since I entered college.  Alex, a grey and tan stripe tabby, was found across the street from my aunt's house, so we adopted him.  Two years later near the end of college a guy I dated for a short time offered me one of his cat's kittens, and that is when I had black Neo.

Strangely enough, all three animals, Stormer, Alex and Neo were buddies.  Stormer would crawl up onto the couch to fall asleep, and in would come Alex, and finally Neo, all cuddled up together in a fluffy pile.  We're pretty sure both cats felt somewhat sad when Stormer died, but as they had one another, they seemed to get along fairly well.

Alex wasn't as much of a cuddler with other cats, however, so Neo would spend much of his time with me, as was right since I had adopted him and Alex, after my adoption had taken a liking to my brother instead.  Sometimes I think it was because of his mysterious closed bedroom door.  My brother would only open it on rare occasions when the funk was too much to bear and Alex would high-tail it in there and find himself in a wonderland of smells and sights.

When I moved away from home four years after graduating college, I was unable to take my cat with me.  I regret that decision even now, seeing as though not long afterward a disease took him and he died of kidney failure.  Neo wasn't very old, only seven or eight years, which is a relatively short time for an exclusively indoor cat.

So I vowed, as did my husband, that we would do our cats right in the future.  Both of us had grown up with cats in the household, so when we moved away from home into an apartment complex that refused pets, it was a shock to our systems.  We could see our cats in pictures, visit them after a four hour drive, but could not bring them with us or even adopt new ones.

Neither of us regretted the apartment we lived in when first moving to Ohio.  It was a spacious two-bedroom, two bathroom, ground floor with a nice large patio and space for me to plant.  It overlooked a beautiful pond that always had ducks floating around on it, and it was a short walking distance to the pool.  The only times we really wished we had cats in our lives during that time was when it got super cold outside, and when we'd occasionally see a stray running around outside chasing the mice and voles our bird feeder encouraged up to the building.

Then our neighbors moved upstairs and in came the loudest couple we'd ever encountered.  They'd yell and fight all hours of the night.  We were never quite sure what their problem was, but then the neighbor beside us moved and in came a hoarder.  In came the mice too.  Up came our lease and out we went into our new home on the other side of town.

We spent about a month repainting everything, cleaning carpets and putting in new appliances.  Washed windows, hung shades and curtains, moved in a few weeks before we were even due out of the apartment.  Spring was just starting to arrive when we said goodbye to our first home in a new state.

I promised myself that I wouldn't ask for a cat until my birthday in June.  I really only made it until about April before I was begging for a cat.  We went to every shelter, Humane Society and pet store in the area.    I wanted that beautiful fuzzy grey ball of a kitten at the pet store where they kept cats from local shelters.  I filled out that form with my heart beating heavily and we waited.  We visited that little ball of fur every few days thinking we'd get a phone call.  Nothing ever came.  My husband called the shelter.  "Oh, that one was adopted already.  Did you submit a form?"

Heartbroken, I found out the big box pet store had never even faxed in the form for the kitten, instead losing it in the shuffle somewhere.

Almost the very next day we were at the Humane Society.  We had only fifteen minutes to look around before they closed for the day.  I raced in, heart pounding again, this time we'd find one, I knew somewhere deep down.  Right in the front display were kittens.  I didn't want an older cat, although I had thought about it a few times, and was just about to settle for one we saw the week before if she was still in her cage...  I rushed in, not even asking to open the display door, and immediately this little gray ball of fluff ran right over to me and I scooped her up.

"Yata!"  I proclaimed, and even though neither I nor my husband are Japanese, we both knew the "We did it!" proclamation.  We retired into one of the play rooms and she skittered around the floor chasing after balls and fuzzy things like a pro.  She calmed down when I held her in my arms, and my husband ran out at the closing call to grab the adoption forms while I held my kitten in my arms unwilling to let anyone else even see her until I knew she was mine.

Olivia was brought home April 29, 2011.

Olivia was princess of the household for six months all by herself.  We followed a routine of getting up first thing in the morning, running downstairs to play with her for ten or fifteen minutes.  Then she'd eat, then she'd ask to play again.  She asked constantly.  She loves playing with humans.  She would play with herself from time to time, but more than likely, she'd run over and run back to wherever it was we were keeping her toy that week until we finally followed and started to play with her.  It was, quite frankly, pretty exhausting.

Our little ball of fur, however, had very few quirks.  She liked to climb under cabinets, and up on things.  She liked to explore and loved anything new.  She still does.  Most cats like routine, she likes new.  She likes to play the game of "cleaning the house" or laying on new laundry.  She has a strange obsessions with yowling at us as we've gotten out of the shower.  If you bring a new box into the house she'll want in that one rather than the five others she has around the house.

So, we thought a few months later, maybe she would like a new kitten.  But only after we had finished up our convention that year, since it took up a lot of our Olivia play time as it was.  And strangely enough, even after I had just had a conversation with my husband that we would wait until one just sort of 'showed up', the week after the convention took place a co-worker told me she had found a kitten and would we want to adopt her?

Mina was brought home on October 15, 2011.  The vet, at the time, said she was probably born sometime around June, and thus would have some time before she could be spayed.  Okay, thought I, we'll let her settle into the routine and then get it done in another month.  Only we found out in November that she'd already gone into heat, putting her closer to six months of age at that time.  Strangely enough, our daughters were only a few months apart.

Our new black cat with the semi-long fur that resembled a "Chantilly/Tiffany" cat to nearly a 't', was full of affection and curiosity.  She didn't like being picked up, and she'd make it known by a deep, blood curdling growl.  But otherwise, she was quiet and she liked to sit on your lap.  Loved to purr and wanted attention all the time.

Olivia hated it.

She didn't, I should clarify, hate Mina.  She was curious about Mina, sniffing her any time she could and wanting to be near this strange creature at all hours.  She kept an eye on her.  I sometimes think that Olivia didn't know she was of the same species.  Mina would growl and hiss and act very catlike to our spoiled princess, but Olivia didn't know any better.

What Olivia hated, was the fact that this new, what-ever-it-was swooped in and played during her play times.  She didn't get a chance to go after the feather on the string or the little mice we'd throw about.  Olivia didn't get a chance with all of the tassels and balls and spinning things because the moment any of them would come out, Mina would be on them instantly.

Eventually Olivia stopped playing all together.  We could sometimes lock her up in a room by herself to play for short bursts, but eventually she started looking for Mina even in a locked room.  And forget about the old toys, because those didn't hold her attention at all.  Only something new would do.  So we bought a laser pointer.

It was with the advent of the little red dot that both cats would play at the same time.  Olivia would find herself so intrigued by this strangely elusive fly that she would completely forget about Mina.  It worked for awhile until the battery wore out and the cats couldn't see the dot anymore.  Even when we replaced the thing, Olivia had then realized it was an 'old toy' and only Mina would go after the mysterious bug.

If we zip forward to today, things are still fairly similar.  Olivia doesn't like to play when Mina does.  But she has gotten into the habit of asking again.  Mina learned to meow like Olivia, but she does it for generally more odd requests than food and play.  She likes to bring us "hazardous-things-to-step-on".  She totes it from the basement or some corner of the house, sets it down on the floor in the living room and goes, "Meep!"  To which we rush over thinking she's going to swallow it and realize it's a piece of broken mirror.  Or maybe it's a shard of cement.  Today, for example, it was a very sharp wood screw.  I have no clue where she got this screw, but it was her most recent find and she received a treat in return.

Mina doesn't like jumping very much.  She's not exactly a heavy-weight but she does have rather short legs.  She shakes as she goes up the cat tree, and she's never attempted to get up on a countertop, and I sometimes doubt that even if she wanted to jump straight up onto the bed that she would be able to without the aid of the wicker trunk that sits at the end. She makes up for the short legs with big ears.  Those ears can hear us coming from a mile away and she's always there at the door to greet us home.  Or they're causing her to run in fear from a thunderstorm and send her hiding beneath the television cabinet.

Olivia, on the other hand, has small ears and long legs.  She's hurt herself a few times jumping up too high, but we've found her up in the basement ceiling on occasions, or on top of the kitchen cabinets near the ceiling, oftentimes confusing us as to how she even got up there.  But a loud noise doesn't affect her at the least.  She'll follow the vacuum cleaner around, brave the sound of the loudest train or thunderstorm, and barely flinch when I clap at her for scratching up the furniture.

My two fuzzy "daughters" bring me joy every single day.  I do understand sometimes how people get so caught up in animals they tend to forget about humans.  I'm not like that, don't get me wrong, but I also don't have an inclination to go out and have young humans around me for extended periods of  time either.  I wouldn't carry them around or dress them up or treat them like people.  Well, except of course for talking to them when they are around and of course scolding them like they would actually understand what was coming out of my mouth.  It would be nice, but I know deep down they don't completely comprehend what I'm saying.

And most recently I've worried about what adding a third child to the mix would do to this family unit.  My mother of course, would like it to be a human child, of course, and so would the in-laws.  But there's a slight possibility of a new kitten being added to the mix in another month or so, and yet for some reason I'm hesitant.  I'm sure we would settle into a new routine, maybe the girls would find a common ground and maybe some of them would become buddies.  Who knows?  But what would happen to Mina's constant begging of human food?  Or Olivia's demanding play at certain times of the day?  What would adding another litter box to the basement do for the smell?  And what about cleanup?

I suppose I won't know until it happens.  And if it does, Lord willing, we'll be able handle it.  Why did I even want to add a third to the mix?  I'm not even sure now, so I suppose we shall have to wait to see.

Cats in Closeup

If you've never been to my house (which, most likely you haven't) you'd notice that I decorate with a lot of cats.  I've got cat figures, cat pictures, cat lithographs, cat statues, cat frames...well, you get the  idea.  Point being, my favorite display of cats in my house are the photographs I have taken of my own cats.

If you have multiple cats like I do (or dogs, I suppose heh heh) and you want an instant conversation piece, think about displaying pictures of them in similar frames together on the wall or on a bookshelf somewhere.  Closeups of our furry friends are very beautiful, and even though they might be a bit difficult to get at first, the final product is extremely satisfying.

Photographing cats can either be extremely easy (if they love to lay in the sunshine and sleep) or extremely difficult (if they're in constant motion and like to hide).  So it's always a challenge when it comes to getting that perfect portrait of your favorite cat in the household.


My first cat photograph was of my Mom's cat, Alex when he was around 8 years old.  Alex is now around 14 years of age, but still plays around like he's a kitten.  Thankfully, even though this striped tabby is in constant motion (especially when he spots a wrist strap on a camera like he did in this photo) he also loves to sleep in sunny spots.  The different stripes and gradations of his fur, and his beautiful yellow-green eyes pick up the light for just about any photo I've taken of him.

The second photo of Alex shown here was taken this Christmas when he was going on 14 (as of January 6th or thereabouts).  The camera has changed, but Alex still has always taken to having his photo taken and will usually give you a fair number of opportunities for a good shot to be taken.  If you have a cat like this, you're lucky!

The second cat I photographed was my Neo.  He's been deceased now for about three years, but I still have his photograph on my wall because he was a dear, sweet pet and an awesome companion.  Neo also loved to sleep in the sun, but because he had deep dark brown fur (you'd call him black normally, but with all "black" cats they very rarely have actual black fur, it's usually very deep brown), it was hard to get a good shot of him.  Dark animals such as Neo should be photographed when they're in good lighting and you have to be patient for a good photograph of them at times.  You'll see what I mean later when I show you a picture of my other black cat, Mina.

Obviously, lighter colored cats, cats with stripes, etc, all pose their own specific challenges when taking photographs.  Take my husband's parent's cat, Maggie, for example.  Maggie can have her picture taken in sun or shade (as you can see here, slight shade is preferable since sun tends to make her washed out), however, Maggie is an ornery cuss.  You wouldn't know it by this photo, but the next day she swiped me across the face with her claws because I leaned too close to her to look at her without my contacts and she didn't like me looking at her 'funny'.

But closeups don't have to be close, as long as they are clear and have an obvious subject.  Don't aggravate your animal too much when taking photos either.  If they're starting to get irritated, stop, wait for another day and try it again.  Maggie, for example, will start to growl and swipe if you try too many times.  I've spent many trips to my In-Laws trying to get another good shot of her without much luck.  In my last attempt she started to give me 'crazy eyes'...so maybe next time!

Obviously lighting makes a big difference in photographs you take of your animals.  A nice sunny day will probably produce better results than a a shady one.  But we won't go into it too much because I'm not a professional photographer, I'm just a novice who likes to take pictures of cats.  So, if you aren't happy with a particular picture, wait until you get one that you're really happy with before hanging it on your wall!

Olivia is my first cat in my new home.  She is solid gray with light yellow-green eyes.  She photographs extremely well when she's sitting still.  In this shot she was in her cat tower watching for birds out the window.  I'd recommend getting a bird feeder if you want good shots of your cats being still.  There is nothing like a cat holding still to try and pounce on a bird that can get you a good opportunity for photographing them!  They'll hold still in sunshine for minutes on end, and even if you irritate them a bit with your constant nagging with the camera, they'll tolerate it to get a chance at that next bird!

As I mentioned before, cat photography doesn't have to be close up.  The idea though, is to capture a moment that really defines your cat's 'essence'.  Okay, this probably sounds stupid, but what does your cat (or dog, this works for both I swear) like to do most?  Do they lay around or do they catch frisbees?  Do they scratch up chairs or roll around on the floor a lot?  Catching them in their natural state might be difficult without a good action shot camera, but give it a try.  It might take a good many photos to capture them in that 'just right' moment, but it can be done, and it's worth it.  Especially in the age of digital cameras, just snap and delete away until you get just that moment of awesomeness.  The photo of Olivia on her stand was one of these special moments for me because she reminds me most of "Happy Cat" in it.

Now, lastly, the hard pet to capture a photo of.  You'd think a cat that likes to lay around like this would be easy to take a picture of, right?  Throw in the fact that the moment the camera comes out, Mina is running around after the camera cord, or she's running off to plop down somewhere else, or if you get near her near the door while bird watching she's off to see something else...well, this is where that patience I was talking about with Maggie comes in.  You can have a loving, adorable pet who will come right up to you in numerous situations, they can get right up there in your face, and yet, you can't take a clear picture of them if your life depended on it!

Mina is definitely THAT pet.  My husband and I used to joke when we first got her as we'd show each other photographs of spaces of empty floor, "this was where Mina should have been, but she moved."  Or "this is a picture of Mina's ear" or "here's her tail".  Yeah, you get the picture.  If you have a cat who likes to hide a lot, I'm sure you know the feeling.  You might love them to pieces, but sometimes you just want to glue them down!

Even when Mina is sitting in the sunshine, she's extremely hard to photograph.  As you can see by this photo, she's different than my first cat Neo because her hair tends more toward black/white/gray than it does brown.  Her 'mane' or ruffle around her neck is a bit more brown, but she has little white hairs throughout her body and if you pull out her tuffs they're a dark gray rather than brown.  It makes for very difficult photographing.  As you can see by these photos, I'm still trying to get that perfect shot of her.  However, I did give up just recently and use the bottom photo as one I have on my wall.

Try it for yourself.  Especially if you are a pet lover like me.  Make your own calendar, send out picture cards, etc.  Just... don't take pictures of them in hats or clothing.  PLEASE.  And the reason I say this isn't because I'm against dressing up animals.  I've done my share over the years too.  No, it's mostly because, just as with humans, certain styles of clothing will date a photo more than anything else.  Capturing an animal the way they are most of the time around the house, that will make a better artistic display than putting a hat and cape on your dog.  (Unless they're a shi tzu and they're always wearing a bow to keep their hair out of the eyes...then well, maybe.)  You may not believe me, but try to trust me on this one, you'll be happy if you do.

Feel free to send me your own cat/dog photos.  I'd love to see your closeups too!

It's Christmas Time Again

The holidays for me have changed a lot since I was a little kid.  Maybe I have to clarify that to the year 1999, just as the New Year had rolled in, because I remember very distinctly playing one of the Legend of Zelda games and fishing, showing my Dad how cool it was, very shortly before he died.

When you lose a parent at the age of 19, things can get pretty weird very fast.  Luckily I was still in college and even though I had an on-campus job, it wasn't a real job by any means so there wasn't a big disturbance from being gone for awhile.  My mom told me I needed to stay in college and that summer I picked up my first job where I'd put up a Christmas tree on Halloween, find myself in a mall on the day after Thanksgiving and find only one parking spot at the far edge of the property, and I had a Mom who didn't want to decorate for the holidays anymore.

My brother and I took it upon ourselves to pick up the holidays.  That was the first year that I made an effort (in the freezing cold and rain) to string lights up outside my house, to decorate the Christmas tree, and to get my Mom going when it came to making Thanksgiving dinner.  In fact, not too many years later, I'd started doing Thanksgiving all by myself (with a few helpful tips now and then) and eventually Mom even started decorating and getting into the spirit again.

But ever since that first Christmas in retail, I've been there, putting up trees around Halloween and not being able to enjoy a Christmas carol or tune because it's been played 50 Million times before December even hits.  Being one of the retail people can really suck any fun that Christmas once held for a person.  I try not to get into the spirit some years because I worry that I'll just wear out too quickly, and I usually do.  I wait until the last week or so before Christmas to shop, wrap presents, mail cards, etc. just so I don't get burned out.  It's hard being the numb one when everyone is having parties and exchanging gifts.  But I guess that's just the person I've turned out to be since my Dad died.

Maybe it would be different if we had a big family.  In fact, our family is so small now, at least the amount that can travel, we can sit around our little kitchen table.  I made Thanksgiving dinner in such a blur this year that I'm not sure how it all came together at exactly the same time, or how it was over so quickly.  I even got to watch the parade this year, albeit, mostly on the TiVo, fast-forwarding through commercials  Basically just my Mom, my husband's parent and grandmother, and besides a few aunts and uncles who all live out of state, it's a pretty small family, so holidays are rather brief I guess.

This year I decorated as I always do.  I think I get more enjoyment out of the process of decorating than I actually do enjoying the decorations.  Mind you, I do like looking at decorations I only see once a year, and maybe that's the reason I deck the walls like I do.  But we have very few people over to enjoy them, and when I mention 'oh, I should take a picture to show you', even my Mom shrugs and says, 'that's okay'.

But, even without people enjoying my decorations, at least I know that the cats are enjoying them.  They enjoy playing with the strings of lights in the windows...they enjoy chewing on the Christmas tree, they enjoy the copious amounts of treats that I've been giving them randomly...you know, the Christmas spirit and all.  They even have a stocking of their own we're working on putting stuff in.  It's the little things that count you know.

Boy....this really makes me sound pathetic.

I guess I should go work on Christmas cards.

A Two-Cat House

I find it amusing how cats can look pretty angry at certain angles even if they're purring away and happy as can be.  Mina is pretty much always happy, except for when she doesn't want to go into the carrier to go to the vet, or when she's being picked up when she wants to be running around the house.  I've heard her growl a few times, but overall she's a pretty happy cat.  I wish sometimes that it would come through in her photographs, because she really is pretty sweet.

Having two cats in the house is a lot like having two kids.  They have two distinct personalities and two distinct schedules that they run on.  Mind you, both cats want to play first thing in the morning (maybe some cuddles if I'm lucky) and then food.  Then it doesn't matter what you do, unless they're in the mood to play.  Mina will play all by herself.  It's probably because she was a month older than Olivia and out on her own for at least awhile.  Olivia, on the other hand, spent much of her life in captivity with humans playing with her off and on, so she's pretty spoiled.  Olivia will tear up the couch merely because she wants someone to play with her.  She'll attack the blinds if she's feeling you're not giving her enough attention. The couch is taking the most wear, unfortunately, and I've debated the difference in cost between getting claws removed in comparison to getting a new couch.

The problem with Olivia wanting to play all the time is that she won't play when Mina is around.  In fact, she gets downright angry if Mina comes in after the string when she's been setting up for an attack for the past 20 seconds.  Olive is a huntress.  She will stalk string for minutes before pouncing, will come at it from different angles, hiding in different parts of the living room, until finally the right moment and....  Mina swoops in, gets it instead and Olivia makes a "MRAF" sound and walks out of the room, sitting with her back facing the situation as if to say, "Forget this!"

In the meantime, Mina doesn't care.  I don't think Mina really even pays any attention to Olivia most of the time.  Oh sure, she knows she's there, but she doesn't fall for the grumps and huffs that Olivia puts on.  She'll swoop in wherever to play with one toy or another and then swoop out again in order to find something else new to play with.  But...she'll drop whatever she's doing if someone tries to play with Olivia, wrecking the poor cat's concentration until Olivia finally gets angry and hits her with a well placed paw to the face.

Mina, meanwhile, really doesn't care.  She'll chase Olivia around until both of them are worn out, throwing themselves into little piles in the living room across from one another.  Then Olive goes back to scratch on the couch or the blinds and things start over again.

Squirt bottles don't work against this habit.  We even put deterrent on the couch, put a scratching post right next to where she scratches...she knows she's getting our attention and it doesn't matter if she actually won't play when we try to play with her, she's getting attention.

As I said to begin with, having two cats is like having two kids.  The smaller one always looks up to the larger one for how to act, what to do, things to get into, and the smaller ones tend to be the ones that we forgive faster than their older siblings.  It's just the way it is.  Or maybe it's just how Mina plops up in a lap, purring, looks at me with those big round eyes and says, "Hi, I'm cute, gotta love me!"  And Olivia has always been a princess since the day we brought her home.

I'm just glad they aren't real kids, otherwise I probably would have strangled one by now - you should know better!!  Kids push buttons but they have true intelligence.  Cats have smarts of their own but in a different way altogether.  It's all a matter of training I suppose.