The Blog Pound

Monday, January 19, 2009 , evening

Amazing replicating puppies

When I first watched this video, I thought someone had used special effects to duplicate the image of the puppy. Nope, there are really all those puppies! They think the game is in good fun, but the kitten isn’t so sure:

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/19 at 09:09 PM
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Shopping at Trader Joe’s

For Christmas we were given a bit of money, which we decided to use on a shopping spree at Trader Joe’s. While the food there isn’t overly expensive, it’s not really a place where it’s practical for us to shop, and we find that we end up buying a lot of items which would otherwise be considered “luxuries”. A few things we purchased ended up being incredibly wonderful, and I have to recommend that you try the Spicy Spinach Flatbread pizza (add grated parmesan), green chile and cheese tamales, the frozen chocolate croissants (you let them rise and cook them yourself), the raspberry creme brulee, fresh scones (if they’re available at your store—I enjoy both the current and lingonberry), and the peach/blueberry panna cotta (yes, we like our desserts!). We also really enjoyed the strawberry kefir, which was like a yogurt smoothie, and supposedly quite healthy. I can’t recommend the Olympiad Greek pizza… blech. It was supposed to be roasted peppers, olives, feta, and mozzarella, but it was was so lacking flavour that it wasn’t much different than a REALLY cheap frozen generic pizza. In fact, that’s what both Flippy and I thought it tasted like… crappy frozen pizza, like the kind available thirty years ago. We were also torn about the Ham and Gruyere flatbread “pizza” that we tried—the crust was very thin, flaky, and tasty, but the cheese ended up being really greasy and a bit overwhelming. It was a nice taste combination which just didn’t present very well.

I guess TJ’s can be happy that we only had complaints about two items, and otherwise, we’ll buy all the other products again. We still have beef/red chile tamales in the freezer, as well as little escargot brioches that we need to try.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/19 at 05:50 PM
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Marci Forbes, sculptor of dogs

Our longtime online friend Marci is an artist who paints incredible artwork. However, she’s also been doing sculptures of dogs, and I just love them! Here’s a link to her website with tons of photos: Papier Dog. Personally, I’m kind of fond of Gidget…

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/19 at 05:42 PM
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009 , early evening

Master of the answering machine

This is Bunny:

Bunny has a special talent: she’s learned how to deliberately push various buttons on the answering machine to make it play back messages, page the handset, or make other beeping sounds. It’s adorable and annoying, but mostly adorable, because I love Bunny and anything she wants to do is okay by me. However, there are times when her talent is less than desirable, for example, at 5am. I’d like to find her some sort of toy that works on a similar principle (it makes noises in response to different actions by the cat), but I haven’t been able to find anything. Before I resort to buying her something from Fisher-Price (perhaps this baby blanket is right up her alley), does anyone know of a cat/dog toy with parts to push and step on? I know there are bells that dogs can use to indicate they want to go outside, but Bunny would probably like something more intricate. If you have any suggestions, please post them in the comments so I can shop for my brilliant feline child.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/14 at 07:43 PM
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Sunday, January 11, 2009 , late afternoon

Auditioning a new vet

Our vet clinic is hiring a new veterinarian, and we’ve been invited to help “audition” one of the hopeful applicants. The new vet will have two “tryouts” with us, next Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, and we’ll be taking in eleven cats for exams and vaccines. I’m exhausted just thinking about the logistics of catching and crating all those cats for travel, but in exchange for the effort, we’re getting the vet services for free. I did a bit of online research about the new vet and she owns a few disabled cats, so I’m hopeful that she’ll be competent, and good with cats. Our regular clinic always has highly skilled vets on staff, unlike another (cheaper) clinic we’ve visited and where I think I’m more qualified than some of the staff.

Our lastest stray, “Kevin”, will be one of the cats we’re taking in for shots. He’s quickly gone from living on the street to living in our garage to living in our laundry room, and he doesn’t seem to have any desire to go back outside (smart cat). Once he has his shots, and I confirm that he’s neutered, I can work on finding him a home. He’s a beautiful, affectionate guy who has good litterbox habits, so I’m hoping his good looks and charm will quickly win over an adopter. He almost looks like he could be a Maine coon, or at least, that he has some of that breed in his genes.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/11 at 05:28 PM
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Saturday, January 10, 2009 , the wee hours

Talented kitten

Looks like I’m almost two years late in finding this adorable video, but better late than never:

Update: Here’s a nice story about Lola’s new life post-adoption.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/10 at 01:12 AM
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Wednesday, January 07, 2009 , lunch time

Most popular pet names

VPI has published their list of the ten most popular dog and cat names for 2008. I wonder if people who don’t insure their pets have different ideas about popular names? VPI also included what they felt were the top ten most unusual dog and cat names… I love that someone named their cat, “Spatula”!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/07 at 01:58 PM
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Feline Fat Farm

As I’m a soft touch, I agreed to foster two cats for a family who lost their home to foreclosure, and who need to live with family for a month until they can afford first/last/deposit on an apartment. Then they plan to take the cats back. I agreed to help because I liked that the family was exploring options to keep their family together, and didn’t just want to give the cats up completely. The people brought the cats over on Saturday night and I was shocked and appalled by the size of the cats, the second I saw them.

Buddy weighs 26 lbs., and is roughly the size, shape, and density of an ottoman or footstool:

Wilbur is slightly slimmer at 21 pounds, and it shows in his agility. He can jump up on the desk from the floor, but Buddy cannot. When Wilbur jumps, his belly bumps into the edge of the surface he’s jumping to.

Perhaps their respective weights don’t sound outrageous, but these guys are so obese that it borders on cruelty. If they were human, they’d need a special crane to lift them out of bed to take them to the hospital. Neither cat can groom itself completely, and neither can do something as simple as scratch an ear—their feet don’t reach. Both have matted coats on their lower backs because it’s another area they can’t reach, so I brush them for at least 10 minutes per day, trying to clean them up. My guess is that they’d ideally both weigh about 10 lbs., and I know that won’t happen overnight, but I’ve started to change their food routine and I hope it will make a difference for them. I also hope I’ll be able to convince their owners that fat cats aren’t cute. Buddy, the fattest of the two, can’t do anything but walk three or four feet and then roll over onto his side, so their hearts must be under a lot of stress, too. Let’s hope these cats drop some pounds and then keep it off, so they’ll live a long life instead of a half-life.

Thanks to Victor Tabbycat’s mom for the “Feline Fat Farm” moniker.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/07 at 03:35 AM
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Monday, January 05, 2009 , late evening

Meet Kevin

Here’s are a couple of photos of “our” stray cat, who I’ve tentatively named Kevin. He didn’t like me poking around his rear end, so he could possibly end up being a Katie, but I think he’s a neutered male:

I’ve been feeding him at our front porch feeding station for at least the last three or four months, and he’s never had a collar, and doesn’t have a microchip. I feed him quite a lot of food (he gets about twice as much as I give our pets), and he’s not getting fat, so I have to assume I’m the only person feeding him. He’s completely adopted our property as his own… he has a nest in a bunch of tall grass, he has a den under some palm fronds, he drinks from the pool, and spends afternoons waiting for me on top of one of the concrete walls. I could never get more than about four feet close to him until the day I brought out the miracle can of wet food, and that day he ate from a spoon I was holding, and within three days I was petting him and picking him up. Our daily feeding routine includes me bringing him into the laundry room for a few minutes of “cuddle time”, then he trots back outside through the garage and eats on the porch. I’ve tried to convince him to just stay inside the garage, because I hate how cold it gets at night (and I assume he’s outside), but he won’t have it, and I’m not in any position to insist right now. I’ve put a collar on him with our phone number as a way to try to contact any possible owner he might have (and to save him from our deadly city shelter), but I’m assuming that soon we’ll end up taking him in for vaccines and a microchip. If I didn’t have our current fat farm fosters I’d bring him inside, but for now, I only have room for him outdoors. I hope he never goes missing without explanation, as I’d have a tough time forgiving myself for leaving him outside. He’s a gorgeous, friendly cat, weighs about 15 lbs., and has beautiful teeth (so I assume he’s young). Let me know if you’d like to add him to your family and I’ll arrange his transportation!

On a related note, I’ve been using a large Rubbermaid dog house as a cat shelter on our porch, but it’s really too large to be practical, and it’s tough to keep warm. Instructables.com has this plan for making a small cat shelter out of an insulated cooler, so it’s something I’m going to try to make before next winter.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/05 at 10:58 PM
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A long time coming

This is one of those blog entries that I’ve written in my head every day for the past four weeks, but have never actually typed out on a keyboard. I’m finding that just thinking about blogging, and not actually doing it, isn’t getting much accomplished.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday… Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, etc. It was a quiet year for us (poverty will do that to you), but we had good food and the company of family, so I’m not complaining. What I am complaining about is the weather, because Las Vegas has been FREEZING since mid-December. We’ve had multiple snow days, we’ve had tons of rain, and tonight we have a temp of 31, with a wind chill which makes it feel like 21. Maybe that’s practically balmy in other parts of the country, but we’re not used to it, and we’re all miserable. We’re bundled up in layers, wearing fuzzy slippers, using space heaters in a number of rooms which seem drafty. I think Flippy wrote about the small fire we had from one of our electric heaters, and while that was almost enough to turn me off portable heaters, the cold won me over. We’re back to using heaters again (although not in the wall outlet which is black, melted, and full of fire extinguisher residue). This winter has been more cold and damp than anything I can recall since I moved to Vegas, and speaking as someone with arthritis, it’s somewhat uncomfortable. Last night we had to make an emergency trip to the store in our new used car (a 2001 Pontiac Aztek which is lacking a driver’s side window), and wow, that was a BRISK drive. I have no Canadian blood left in me… it’s all thin desert southwest blood now.

Lots has happened over the past month, although I know that Flippy has been keeping you up to date on most of news. Our nice, still-like-new car was repossessed, so now we’re driving an old clunker (but to be fair, it’s a clunker we kind of love and adore, if only we could get the window repaired and get it to stop dripping oil). We were gifted with some very handy cash around the holidays, and used it to replace our old demonic microwave oven with a brand new one (although when I got the new one home, I realized it was the same brand as the demon, and had similar features, so let’s hope we don’t get a double feature of “the microwave which cooks when the door is open”). We were able to make a fun shopping trip to Trader Joe’s as one of our Christmas gifts, so we stocked up on some amazing food goodies (like frozen, bake-fresh chocolate croissants), and it was nice to have food in the house again. Honestly, early December was kind of frightening where money is concerned, and it was the first time we really had to limit what food we could buy, and we even started to check out food banks and food stamps. Both of us being out of work since June is taking its toll, so I no longer take things like groceries for granted.

Without trying to offer TMI, I’ve been suffering from terrible anxiety/panic issues since about October, and they really left me feeling crippled the past couple of months. I couldn’t sleep, and awoke every day to a sense of terror and fear about financial issues. Just making it through the day was a challenge, and blogging was a bigger challenge that I didn’t feel up to. I’m now finally back on Cymbalta and I can already tell I feel better, so I hope this will be a light at the end of the tunnel. If I never have another panic attack, I’ll be thrilled. Not a fun way to spend an hour, let alone a few months.

To keep my mind occupied, I’ve been doing tons of reading. Of the 30+ books I’ve read since October, the one I enjoyed most was probably “Wesley the Owl”. If you’ve ever raised an orphaned animal, or have an affinity to birds, or just like animal books, I highly recommend it. The story is quite remarkable and the author is very likable, too.

On the Wee Paws front, we’re currently caring for one stray who lives outside, and who I’ve named “Kevin”. I’ve put a collar on him in case he’s picked up by animal control, and soon we’ll take him in for shots and a microchip. I can’t bring him in off the street right now, though—I’ve got no where to put him. Our guest bedroom is still the occasional home of our last rescue, Skyler, and as of yesterday we’re temporarily fostering two cats for a family who have lost their house to foreclosure. They will be renting an apartment next month and can move in and take their cats, but for this month they’re staying with a family member who is allergic. I offered the cats a place to stay, if only because I was impressed that the family wanted to find a solution so they could keep their cats—they didn’t want to just give them away, as most people who contact me seem to do. The cats, named Buddy and Wilbur, are wonderfully and adorable and like giant mutant creatures from a distant galaxy. I’ve never seen cats so fat… they’re so fat that all they do is loll around on their sides, because it’s the only comfortable position for them. They are currently on diets, ahem. I’ll come back and add some photos, but Flippy has some in her Flickr account if you want to see the beasts. I’ll have to weigh them in the next day or two… they’re both at least 25 lbs., if not more.

That’s a super-quick rundown of the last month around here… aren’t you glad I didn’t waste time writing about this stuff every day and dragging it out?! I’ve got tons more I want to write about, and my one New Year’s Resolutions is to try to blog more, so i hope this is just the beginning of new entries from me. I’ve missed you all so much… I miss reading your blogs and hearing from you, too… so I’m going to try to jump back into the saddle again. Now that I’m finally medicated, perhaps there’s hope for me! If nothing else, today is my 43rd birthday, so perhaps I’ll finally be older and wiser and more reliable (not just older and more senile).

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/05 at 03:57 AM
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