Category: Pets

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Server Not Found

Shelly

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It’s hot in here (or maybe it’s that I just chugged a huge cup of coffee?), the server is down system-wide, I overslept, and I’m tired and cranky.

I put $20 worth of gas in my car this morning, and the tank wasn’t even half full. There was a long line at the gas station because some jackass was buying lotto tickets–one of each kind, no less. Why, oh why, do people need to buy dozens of scratch-off tickets at 5am? I think maybe there should be separate gas stations for people who–wait for it!–actually want to purchase gas. And, if lotto tickets weren’t enough of an aggravation, they’ve installed a hot food kiosk in the center of the main aisle for breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, and some sort of hamburger-y monstrosity. With “fix-ins” bar. O ick. Who in their right mind buys shriveled up hot dogs from a gas station? I suspect, whoever they are, they’ve got a death wish.

On the other hand, gas in Spencer was 17¢ cheaper than in E-ville or B-ton, so it could’ve been worse. And, at the Spencer Bigfoot, you aren’t subjected to hipster music. I win!

Speaking of cars, I looked at my pay stub yesterday, to see how much my pitiful raise actually amounts to in take-home dollars. I’m still being charged for an A tag, even though I down-graded to a C. An A tag is about 3x as much as a C, so the difference is substantial.

Photo: Harriet Brown blowing drooly spit bubbles while staring at french fries

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Smacking

Shelly

There are certain human behaviors that drive me batshit crazy. One of them is smacking and generally making excessive noise while eating. It’s nauseating. This is why I find the new KFC commercial to be both perplexing and offensive. Why would anyone in their right mind prefer the sound of chomping and smacking to that of polite dinner conversation? I mean, the whole point of sitting down to eat with others is that it’s a social experience, right?

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This revulsion of mine is not consistent across species, however. What is sickifying in humans is thoroughly charming in, say, canines. Miss Brown gets her evening meal split into two portions: an after school snack and a bedtime snack. When I get home from work, I let her outside to potty while I put kibble in her bowl. When she comes back inside, she goes immediately to her bowl, grabs a mouthful of food, shoves her nose in my face, and proceeds to rub her kibble-crumb-encrusted lips all over me. While wriggling euphorically and chomping and making all manner of otherwise smicky-smacky lip noises. Ah, Teh Cute! It is to die for! Truly, it is about the most adorable thing in the whole wide world, as far as I’m concerned. But, if a human did that to me, I’d have to kill them.

Pets, Photography

Thursday DogBlogging

Shelly

Harriet spent last night’s storm crashed out on the couch. She was lying on top of her sleeping bag, which I’d just washed. It, in turn, was on top of several folded blankets. At one point, she attempted to re-enact a scene from The Princess and the Pea. Or, perhaps, Bitch of the Hill? It was quite fun to watch her trying to get comfortable on top of the mound of bedding. Just when she’d get everything scrunched to perfection, she’d try to lie down and would be foiled by the slick surface of the sleeping bag. After several attempts, she finally gave up and crammed herself between me and the blankets.

You can see, I think, that she is not much bothered by storms.

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Did you know that dogs have eyelashes? I don’t mean the whiskers above their eyes, I mean actual lashes. Miss Brown’s are not long and glamorous, but they’re fairly easy to discern.

Pets

A Most Contagious Game

Shelly

I did a little more tweaking to the blog template, in order to add a links menu and banner image to the header. This involved more hair pulling, while I tried to add a button menu widget to my template. The guy who created the Tiga theme has updated it, and it now has that capability, but making it work is beyond my skill level. I ended up dumping the links into a table, then dumping that into my header.php template.

In other news, my old cat, Pandora, continues to take her job as Entertainment Coordinator seriously. This morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I heard a racket in the bath tub. I opened the shower curtain, and there was Pan, maniacally chasing her tail. She was having a spectacularly good time, which made me laugh. I nearly choked on my toothpaste. Harriet overheard (the laughing, not the near choking), and came into the bathroom to see what the commotion was about. She promptly picked up the silly vibe, and started kidney beaning, play bowing, woo-wooing, and basically behaving like the deranged-but-goofy Boxer clown that she is. It’s hard to resist such a delightful invitation to play, so I got a little sidetracked.

I sometimes wonder what people without pets do for entertainment.

Meta, Pets

Random cares and truant joys

Shelly
  • Via Boing Boing, there is a guy who recreates artworks by painting them in the dust on car windscreens.
  • I had my hands in bleach water for a long time on Monday, and now they’re peeling. Ugh.
  • I suddenly had to cut my hair this morning. Why on earth does that sort of urge always seem to strike at 4am?
  • Slathering your hands with lotion, then picking up a sweaty beverage, is not a good idea.
  • Also, averaging 4 hours of sleep per night is not a good idea. I feel a little bit like this.
  • Speaking of which, is Bea not the absolutely sweetest looking thing you have ever seen? I may need an insulin shot.
  • But, wait! There’s more! And more! And more! (Simone is just unbearably cute.)
  • Now, as an antidote to anyone who might be seduced by the siren song of The Terribly Cute Boxers: Meet Lilly. Lilly reminds me just a tiny, wee, itty, little bit of Harriet.
  • Speaking of Miss Brown… She just keeps getting more and more entertaining with every day that passes. She lives for car rides, so our new routine is for her to accompany me to the mailbox. We’re using it as an opportunity to work on automatic sits, waits, and whatnot. She knows this stuff already, but keeping that knowledge fine-tuned is a good idea. This entails making sure that her butt is always on the ground while I’m putting on her leash, that she always uses the same car door (rear, passenger-side), and that she doesn’t leave the gate or car without permission. She’s a funny, funny dog, so this refresher course has been a total riot for both of us.
  • It’s currently 78F and sunny, which in Indiana means we should be having tornadoes and floods by this evening.
  • Also via Boing Boing, an amazing website of lightning photography, including tips on how do your own lightning photography.

And, now, fun with Stats (a semi-regular feature):

  • nude blog? I expect the searcher was sorely disappointed at the lack of hot porn action hereabouts.
  • victorian punishment for wayward girls? Really? I don’t want to know what, exactly, they were searching for. Let’s just hope that it was scholarly research.
  • half cat half women drawings? I’m reminded of a furry freak who used to plague the dog newsgroups. He was also an amateur artist, and had a bunch of perfectly awful drawings of mating werebeasties on his website. O ick.
  • george munro moravia sutherland earl kenneth 4th halidon? Say that 10 times fast.
  • nathan dicks 1727? I’m guessing this–like the former query–must come from the Esther genealogy.
  • why would a kitten not use the litter box every time? I swear, I get searches like this all the time. Folks, take your cat to the vet! If it’s not using the litter box, it could be a serious–and very painful–medical problem. It’s far better to rule that out, then look to potential behavioral issues, than the other way around.
  • 87 files in 7 albums and 9 categories with 0 comments viewed 0 times? M’kaythen! My guess is that this was a cut-n-paste mistake. But, if so, how it got someone to my website is a mystery.
  • nick cave his son jethro? Now, I can understand Googling for Nick and Jethro. I’ve done it myself. However, the wording of the query is a little amusing.
  • jethro nick? That’s a little more to the point, but it’s gone a bit far in the other direction.
  • jethro lazenby? Now, that’s more like it.
  • psittacism? This one makes me inordinately happy.
  • civil war male wasp waist image? Sorry to disappoint, as I have no images of such.
  • the state hospital by ed kienholz? I get a lot of Kienholz queries.
  • precolumbian artifacts for sale stone heads? I also get a lot of hits returned for searches on Precolumbian art. Ironically, the essay in question is partially about why trafficking in antiquities is a Very Bad Thing. So, no, I don’t have any stone heads for sale.
  • maya penis? No, really.
  • funeral remember with with laughter as that is how i will remember you? Another fan of the original CuddlyGoth? Or, a Little House fan? Or, something else altogether?
Art, Collage, Journals, Pets

Rory (Composition Book Journal)

Shelly

Farewell to Rory (Composition Book Journal)
Rory, 9 3/4 x 14 1/2 inches, 8 June 2006
acrylic paint and metallic gel marker, photo, receipt, and Gepe mount containing fur

I hid the journal entry behind the receipt. The fur in the Gepe mount was shed at the vet, while I was petting Rory. I made a little pile of it and brought it home with me. The rest of the page is just doodles I did that evening while watching television.

Pets, Photography

And then there was one

Shelly

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I just got back from the vet. Rory had another blockage last night, so I took him in as soon as they opened this morning. After sitting up all night with him, trying to decide what to do, I felt like the best thing for him was to have him put to sleep. I’d hoped that the PU surgery would stop the blockages, but it didn’t. I couldn’t stand the thought of him having to go through this over and over and over again, especially knowing how painful UTIs are, and how excruciating a complete blockage must be. I just didn’t feel like his quality of life would be acceptable.

This is the first time I’ve had to make this decision. The rest of my animals have had the good sense to choose their own times and to leave on their own terms. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be–not the procedure itself, which was amazingly low-key and uneventful–but the stress of having to make the decision to have it done. I got to stay with him while he was sedated, and for the final shot to make his heart stop. He was calm about everything. The initial shot didn’t bother him, but then he’s been poked with so many needles, I’m sure it was old hat. He curled up on the table, with his head shoved under my arm and his body resting against me, and started purring gently. It may have been stress purring, but it didn’t seem frantic enough for that. His breathing eventually slowed, then nearly stopped. The vet came back in to give him the final shot and that was that. I paid the bill and brought home an empty carrier.

Now we’re the house of girls, which feels very odd. Pandora is my sole remaining cat. First and last and always, I guess. She outlived three younger cats–Echo, Polkadottie, and Rory–and one dog–Elliott. I sometimes think she might outlive us all.

So goodbye, Rory O’Nubbin. You were one hell of a cat: sweet, feisty, exasperating, and endlessly entertaining. You should have had a long, long life, dammit.

Pets, Photography

Harriet! Har-ee-et, Hard-hearted harbinger of haggis

Shelly

Dogs are dangerous to live with. Sure, they might look all cuddly and harmless, but lurking behind the cute nose and delicately wrinkled brow is a wild beast who will stop at nothing–nothing!–to slake her thirst for BunnyBlood.

I give you Miss Harriet Brown. (No, really. I’ll even pay for shipping.) Do not, I beg of you, be fooled by the silkiness of her whiskers, nor the velvety softness of her nose. Harden your heart, lest you, too, fall victim to her evil devices.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was minding my own business when Miss Brown insisted that Bunny Mayhem was occurring in her yard. Yes, her yard. I opened the door to investigate, while Harriet sat, wiggling and whining impatiently, beside me. I think it is only fair to give the bunnies a heads-up, so I shouted, “Run away, run away.” The bunnies scattered, and I released Harriet. Powered by jet propelled rocket boosters, she peeled out, taking half my left foot with her. Or, rather, puncturing it in multiple places and bruising the living hell out of it. But still, ow. I had to sit down in order to catch my breath.

The immediate pain passed, so I didn’t think too much of it until the next day. Again, ow. The entire top of my foot was covered by a lovely pattern in black and blue. It was impressive looking, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. The bruise itself wasn’t particularly painful, and that soon healed.

However, even after the visible bruising is gone, it still hurts to put pressure on the top of my foot, and to flex it. Hmmm. I wonder if there’s just deep tissue bruising that hasn’t healed yet? Or maybe a bone is cracked or broken?

Anyway, dogs are trouble. T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Trouble. If they try to tell you otherwise, don’t believe a word of it, because they also lie like, um, dogs. They sure are cute, though.

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