Life – Page 20 – Bitchypoo

9/7/11 – Kitteh Wednesday

Last night Cilantro, the lickiest kitten in the South, was…. ADOPTED!!! About time, I’d say. Now that the seal is broken, maybe the other three will find their forever homes too. Fingers crossed! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ … Continue reading “9/7/11 – Kitteh Wednesday”

Last night Cilantro, the lickiest kitten in the South, was….

ADOPTED!!!

About time, I’d say. Now that the seal is broken, maybe the other three will find their forever homes too. Fingers crossed!

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Last week, the shelter manager sent out an email to the usual suspects, asking if anyone wanted to take a bottle baby. Since I haven’t had a bottle baby since (I think) the Bookworms, which was the Spring of 2010, I offered to take her. I was all set to bring her home, but then the people who’d found her had fallen in love with her, and decided to keep her.

I was like “Wah! MY baby!”, but really I couldn’t complain because that meant that baby has a home!

On Sunday, we were watching TV when Fred paused the show and said “I think your cell phone is ringing.” It was, indeed, but by the time I got to my phone, the voicemail had kicked in. A moment later, I had an email from the shelter manager with the subject, Want a bottle baby? Of course I did. I got the woman’s number, and Fred called to see when we could get our hands on this kitten.

We left the house almost immediately and set off to meet them in the McDonald’s parking lot in a town about 20 minutes away. Fred said that the woman said the kitten was “really, really tiny.” He also said that she sounded really relieved that we were taking the kitten, because they’re dog people.

We met them in the parking lot of McDonald’s – they were waiting for us – and she handed the kitten, who was wrapped in a warm towel (which had been warmed in the dryer) over to me, then signed the release form. The entire time, she was thanking us effusively for taking the kitten, and how the kitten had been so cold when they found her. I got into the car with the kitten and Fred got the bottle of kitten formula out of the back seat, and I put the nipple of the bottle in the kitten’s mouth. She looked up at me with startled eyes, and she wouldn’t latch on, but she drank every drop of formula I squeezed into her mouth. Once she was full, I burped her, and then I opened the towel to get a good look at her.

“Huh,” I said. “I thought their ears were more rounded than that at this age.” I opened her mouth gently (she had a cut under her lower lip) and looked at her teeth. I looked at her eyes. “This,” I said. “Is not a bottle baby. I think she’s got to be at least 5 weeks old.” No wonder she’d looked so startled when I tried to bottle feed her!

She sat quietly on my lap the entire drive home, and when we got home we set up a cage for her in the guest bedroom. Then I popped open a can of kitten food and put it on a plate, and she gobbled it down. Then she climbed into the cat bed and fell asleep.

A few hours later, I was scooping litter boxes when the phone rang. Fred answered it, and when I got downstairs, I said “Who was that?”, then realized he was still on the phone.

To back up for a moment, when we were getting the kitten, I’d given the people who’d turned her over to us, our home phone number and my email address in case more from the litter showed up. (If this were a movie, now-Robyn would build a time machine and go back in time in a futile effort to stop then-Robyn from handing out her number.) As it turned out, the kitten we’d gotten had been part of a litter of two, whose mother had given birth to them under a trailer. A neighbor of the people who turned kitten #1 over to us got our number from them, and wanted us to take kitten #2.

Which of course we were willing to do – obviously we’d want the two kittens to be together!

Fred could tell that the woman was driving while she was talking, and he said “Can you bring the kitten to us?”

Which is when she told him that no, she was too busy to drive to our house and bring us the kitten. She wanted us to come to her to get the kitten. She told him three more times how busy she was.

I mean, of course, WE weren’t busy at all. We were in fact just sitting around waiting for someone to do us the favor of allowing us to come get a kitten from them. OUR LUCKY DAY.

After the woman told Fred how very busy and important she was, he asked if she could at least meet us part of the way between where she lived and where we lived. They set it up so that we’d meet at the same McDonald’s we’d met the people who’d given us kitten #1, and off we went.

(No, of course we weren’t making rude and judgmental and profanity-laden comments about self-important “busy” people our entire drive there, why do you ask?)

Fred told me the woman had said that she “would” keep the kitten except that her daughter had allergies and THEN not two minutes later said “I just want to get rid of it” (“it” being the kitten). Well. I hope you weren’t trying to swear Sunday afternoon, because we were using up all the profanities.

We got to McDonald’s, and then had to wait, though admittedly we didn’t have to wait long. When the truck we were looking for pulled into the parking lot, I got out of the car. The back window rolled down, and a 6 or 7 year old kid held the kitten out to me. In one hand. No towel, no blanket, no BOX, just the kitten. Hanging out the window. In the rain. Fred came over with the carrier and got the kitten, then put it into the car while I handed the release form over to the woman.

She filled it out and I got the apologetic “Oh, I’m so sorry I can’t keep it, but my daughter has allergies and -” and I took the form and walked away because I had what I needed and I didn’t think I needed to stand around in the rain and be best friends with her. Fred stood and talked with her a minute longer because he’s polite like that (I’m usually very polite but y’KNOW…), and then we were on our way. She, I noticed, pulled into the drive-thru.

“I note she’s not too busy to go to the McDonald’s drive-thru,” I said uncharitably.

Fred did ask her if she had any idea where the momma cat had gone, and she said she didn’t. He also asked if she was sure there were only two kittens, and she seemed to be pretty sure, so that’s good at least.

When we got home, I weighed kitten #2, and found that she was only 13 ounces. She had all the same teeth #1 had, though, so maybe she’s the runt. Or malnourished. Or who knows? We put the two of them together and gave them a plate of food, and they hoovered it up and then curled up together.

We’d been calling kitten #1 “she” because the people we got her from told us it was a girl, but when Fred did a check later that evening, he told me that #1 was a boy and he thought #2 was also a boy but he wasn’t even close to sure about #2. I took a look yesterday morning and I thought #2 was a girl, but then I looked at pictures online and I thought maybe a boy and then I gave up and decided to ask them to sex the kittens at the vet. (Turned out, #1 was a boy and #2 was a girl.)

I dropped them off at the vet yesterday morning, then headed into Huntsville to go to Sam’s. I assumed the kittens would be there most of the day (they didn’t have an appointment, they were just working them in among the other appointments), but I was just about done at Sam’s when my cell phone rang and they were calling to let me know I could pick them up.

These poor kittens are loaded down with every parasite you can imagine, which did not surprise me at all. They’re on medication, and I’m hoping that in a few days they’ll be feeling better and will feel like doing more than just laying around sleeping. They’re a mess, but let me tell you – I love them already. (I know, you’re shocked!)

Meet Charlie and Patty Peppers.

That’s Charlie in the back.

Poor little Patty is just a straight-out mess. Her eyes are goopy and she needs a bath, but we decided to wait ’til tonight to bathe them.

Charlie’s a mess, too (little cuts around his mouth and his left fang is chipped off at the end). But here’s my question: does he remind you of… anyone? Anyone… with attitude? Anyone… Bookwormy?

Bolitar/ Buster, perhaps?

Only time will tell whether he has the Buster sass.

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Everett and Harlan, hangin’ on the stool. (Everett is actually not bigger than Harlan – it’s the angle of the picture or the way they’re sitting or something.)

Everett took off to parts unknown, and Harlan decided to…

..sharpen his claws.

And sharpen them some more.

Meanwhile, Sally’s wondering “What ARE you doing?”

“Just how sharp do you need those claws to be?”

“And why’s your back end still on the stool? Why are you half on and half off?”

Harlan tells her “Because I CAN.”

And then he couldn’t hold the position any longer.

The end.

PS: The Peppers Gang is off for spaying and neutering in a bit. Wish them luck!

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Joe! Hey, Jobey!

“Yeah?”

Someone requested more Joe Bob in their day!
“Someone? Someone who reads your blog thingy?”
Yeah.

“WELL.”

“CLEARLY…”

“They have EXCELLENT taste.”

“Smilin’ Joe makes everyone’s day a bit brighter.”

So true.

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Previously
2010: OH MY GOD DOES IT SEEM TO YOU THAT I AM BABBLING AT YOU IN A BABBLING AND UNORGANIZED MANNER
2009: I like to think that the chickens are sitting on their eggs thinking “Why do I keep craving birthday cake…?”
2008: No entry.
2007: Pretty good for kittens I was absolutely positive would be unadoptable due to their feral nature when I first saw them, ain’t it?
2006: Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straightened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin’?
2005: I didn’t get any pictures of it, but last night the stank coming off Rambo’s hindquarters was so strong that we finally gave in to the inevitable and gave him a bath.
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: IT’S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS WHO IT IS.
2000: Am I not an ass-kicking WalkAerobics diva?

9/6/11 – Tuesday

It’s been raining like crazy since Sunday evening, but I am NOT complaining. I can’t remember the last time we had a decent amount of rain around here, and the garden desperately needed it. I’ve been watering every other day for the last week (and twice a week before that), but there’s just nothing like … Continue reading “9/6/11 – Tuesday”

We went up to Lowe’s Sunday morning so I could buy a rain gauge. I’ve been wanting one for a while because knowing how much rain we’ve gotten seems like a handy piece of information to have (don’t judge me), and we found that there was one single rain gauge left in the entire store – and luckily, it was only $5. Between Sunday night and Monday morning, we got 2 inches of rain. I haven’t been back out there to see how much we’ve gotten in the last day, but it’s been raining pretty steadily.

Fred doesn’t care about any rain gauge, but he wanted to make a trip to Lowe’s for his own reasons, so he was happy to go with me. What, you ask, did Fred need to buy at Lowe’s?

A pool for the ducks, of course.

Saturday, we went up to Dog Days in Tennessee – an outdoor flea market (I took pictures; you’ll see ’em on Thursday) – and we didn’t get anything but ducks. Four of them. Rouen ducks, I am told, and we have no idea what the male-female breakdown is (with our luck, we’ve got four males – or four females, which sucks because you KNOW Fred Anderson wants him some baby ducks).

Meet Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Bob. Don’t ask me who’s who, they all look alike to me.

After we got the ducks, we went looking for something to use as a pond for them for the time being (we’ve got a guy coming to talk to Fred at some point about digging us a pond. Let’s see if this one shows up.), and bought a big Rubbermaid container. We got it set up, and it worked okay, but I thought we needed something a bit deeper since they could actually stand on the bottom of the container rather than swimming around.

Fred was skeptical that Lowe’s would have a kiddie pool, but I told him I was sure they would, and I was right. We got a nice little pool for less than $10, and Fred set it up right next to the Rubbermaid container.

(Side note: Who you think is going to be cleaning those pools out? Mmm hmmm.)

The pool worked out well, and the ducks seem to be happy enough. They hang out under the coop most of the time, coming out now and then to take a swim around the pool. They know the sound of scratch hitting the ground, and come out to partake of snack time with the chickens. They’re a close-knit little group, and spend most of their time clustered together, walking around (or swimming around) and chirping.

More duck pics on Thursday, of course.

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Over the weekend, we watched all of Season 3 of Sons of Anarchy.

Now, there’s a character in Sons of Anarchy played by the actor Jeff Kober. Every time I see Jeff Kober’s name, I exclaim, excitedly, “Dodger!” because he played Dodger on China Beach, and OH how I loved me some Dodger. Fred has come to recognize Jeff Kober’s name as well, and now when he sees it on the screen, he says “Digger!”

Anyway.

So Jeff Kober plays Jacob Hale in Sons of Anarchy, and his character is the brother of Deputy Chief David Hale. This is made clear pretty early on when Jacob Hale shows up in the show, that the two of them are brothers.

We were watching, I kid you not, show number 11 of the 13-episode season (and this is not the first season Jacob Hale made his appearance – he showed up somewhere in Season 2), and Fred turned to me when Jacob Hale was on the screen.

“His name is Hale, too?” he said in confusion. “Are they related?”

Seriously. Just when I think that 60% of the show is going right over my head, I have to explain the most basic stuff to Fred, and I think I’m maybe okay. I’m pretty sure that he sits and watches the show and has a vague idea of what’s going on, but he’s also thinking about something else, so doesn’t catch the obvious things.

Last night, Fred was reading about the characters on the show, on Wikipedia.

“Huh,” he said. “Piney is Opie’s father!”

Sigh. “I know,” I said.

“Stahl’s first name is June!” he announced.

“That must be why her lover repeatedly called her ‘June,'” I said.

“Is Clay’s last name Morrow?” he asked.

“I imagine that’s why they answer the phone at the garage with ‘Morrow-Teller,'” I said.

I might not be one to talk, though. It was well into the season when I twigged that there was actually not a guy named Sam Bell who was in charge of the motorcycle club, that it was actually SAMBEL. I’m also pretty sure, back when we were watching the first season, I had to Google SAMCRO to find out that this Sam Crow guy wasn’t going to ever show up and kick ass.

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The Peppers Gang is off to the vet tomorrow to be spayed and neutered. They’re just under three months old (they’ll be three months on the 12th) and even the smallest has more than made weight, so it’s time. Once that’s done, they’ll be ready to go. But don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be here for a little while longer – none of the Spice Girls or Ciara has been adopted yet. Adoptions did pick up on Saturday and there were several adoptions, just none of them were my girls.

(Fred is incensed that Clove, his little girlfriend, hasn’t been adopted yet. “Can’t they TELL what an awesome kitten she is?!” he says.)

These mice with the long tails are particular favorites among the fosters lately (Cilantro especially loves them).

I don’t know which I like more, the Ears of Concentration, or the stretched toes.

::SNIFF::

“What?”

Lucy, amazed by everything, always.

“What? We talkin’ ’bout you. Go ‘way.”

“Why you takin’ my picture, when you could be pettin’ me?”

Everett shows off his fearsome claws.

“What doin’, lady?”

Molly reaches for the feather teaser, but there’s no joy in Peppersville this evening. The mighty Molly has struck out.

::chomp::

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Sugarbutt really enjoys hanging out on that shelf over the doorway between the kitchen and laundry room.

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Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: “Ah can only deal with zee – how you say? – anguish by napping. A lot.”
2006: People Are Assholes.
2005: How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a “fuck.”
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: I think that, much like dreams, the only person interested in hearing the myriad details of drug stories are the people involved.
2001: I don’t use the “c” word lightly, y’all.
2000: No entry.

9/5/11 – Bobby Brady!

Happy Labor Day, Americans (and Happy Monday everyone else!). For today, just a quick update on the foster formerly known as Bobby Brady! Do you remember Bobby Brady? He was the sweetest little mess when we got him. This is what he looked like the day we got the Brady Bunch: He was the smallest … Continue reading “9/5/11 – Bobby Brady!”

Happy Labor Day, Americans (and Happy Monday everyone else!). For today, just a quick update on the foster formerly known as Bobby Brady!

Do you remember Bobby Brady? He was the sweetest little mess when we got him. This is what he looked like the day we got the Brady Bunch:

He was the smallest of the litter (well, he and Cindy were) and he had such bad diarrhea that I had to bathe him at least once a day to keep him clean. With every single litter we’ve had, in the past two years, there always comes a point when I am dead certain that one of the litter is going to die. Sometimes – most often – I’m just being (in retrospect) silly, but sometimes they are really quite sick and not doing well at all. With Bobby and Jan Brady, I actually said to Fred one Saturday morning “I think they’re dying and I don’t know what to DO.” We ended up taking them to a vet in Decatur, and they tested them and examined them, and found that despite two rounds of medication, they were still parasite-ridden. Jan and Bobby had to be caged for a few days so they wouldn’t track diarrhea all over the place (actually, in retrospect, I think it was more like a week and let me tell you – it SUCKED keeping them caged).

DO NOT READ THIS NEXT LITTLE SECTION IF YOU’RE EASILY GROSSED OUT. OR EATING. OR HAVE A SENSITIVE STOMACH.

Upon looking back through my email, I emailed three different people to report that poor Jan Brady had pooped out at least 12 inches of tapeworm. Seriously gross (but honestly, kind of mesmerizing).

OKAY, IT’S SAFE.

Anyway, over the course of the several days of being caged, Bobby and Jan finally got better, thank god, and clearly felt better. Bobby’s sweet, friendly, playful personality came out, and he was absolutely a force to be reckoned with.

(That’s Bobby, front and center, complaining.)

And this is how I remember Bobby Brady the best, sitting on my shoulder:

And here, licking my finger:

Well, last week I got an email from Bobby Brady’s Dad – complete with pictures! He said:

Robyn and Fred – I adopted one of the kittens you fostered, Bobby Brady. I call him Buddy now. I was recently in touch with Susan at Challenger House, and she said you guys might appreciate word on how he’s doing. My sister volunteers at Petsmart, and she told me about some exceptionally well-mannered kittens she’d seen there called the Bradys. I got Bobby / Buddy the next day, and he has turned out to be a wonderful cat. I’ve had quite a few in my time, but never have I seen such a happy, gentle, playful, smart, alert, athletic, and especially loving cat as Buddy. I don’t know if it was your fostering, or whether he gets it naturally, or both, but at nearly 11 months, he’s quite a joy.

Interestingly, at about 6 months, he developed a pronounced belly flap even though he was quite trim. I know it’s not unusual for cats get them, but his was unusually large. Then after a lot of poking around on the net I came across a new cat species called the American Keuda. They have all of Buddy’s good traits, as well as the belly and front leg flaps, not to mention his exact shape, so I now believe he is all or part Keuda. Even though he was a long lanky kitten and the vet thought he’d be big, he’s currently only about 10 lbs and has remained long and lean, also the same as Keudas.

Anyway, thank you for your part in rescuing him; everyone who meets him loves him, and he’s definitely made the world a better place.

I’ve attached a few photos of Buddy.

When I emailed to ask if it was okay to use his email and pictures to update y’all, he added:

He really is a lot of fun. He’ll curl up and sleep on my face at night if I let him. He’s quite softly vocal, and frequently runs by me repeatedly making soft meow/purr sounds, often standing on his hind legs and bouncing off my knees trying to goad me into playing with him.

I just love getting updates on my fosters, and I especially love seeing them so happy!

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Tom Cullen loves hanging out under the Rose of Sharon in the back yard.

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Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: The kittens formerly known as River and Inara (they’re Nate and Dora now).
2007: I wanted to take a BATH in the stuff, I wanted to stick it in my purse and take it home, I wanted to marry it.
2006: Mister Boogers seemed to disapprove of the land, and at one point the seller of the land started having a discussion with Mister Boogers, only instead of “Mister Boogers”, he referred to him as “Curtis.”
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: It’s a good day, indeed.
2002: FUCKING telemarketers.
2001: I turned to Fred and said “He looks all dilemmanated, doesn’t he?”
2000: Trip to Tennessee.

9/2/11 – Friday

The okra talk reminded me that I wanted to ask about pickled okra. I made some last year that was really great, but can’t remember where I got the recipe. I don’t see it in your recipe list — did you post that or did I find it elsewhere? Thanks. P.S. I’m assuming “waller” is … Continue reading “9/2/11 – Friday”

P.S. I’m assuming “waller” is Southern Speak for “wallow?” Took me a while to figure out what waller meant.

I did pickle okra once, but neither Fred nor I cared for it, so I didn’t keep the recipe (and I never posted it), so you must’ve found it elsewhere.

And yeah, “waller” is Southern for “wallow.” I picked it up from Fred (who, I think, uses it ironically).

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Hey, whatever happened to the chicken with the crooked toes/feet? I seem to remember it not being around anymore, and am too lazy to search your site. It would probably take me HOURS to find the info. 🙂

Aww, good ol’ Charlie, with her twisted-up toes.

She died in June of 2010 and we buried her in the yard of the blue coop, where she was happiest. She was quite the character – when the blue coop was our maternity coop, she was the mascot of the maternity yard. The hens never considered her a threat to their chicks, and they never worried about her getting too close to the little ones. If any other adult chicken had gotten this close to her babies, Silkie Mama would have run them off, but she knew Charlie wasn’t a threat.

Good ol’ Charlie.

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If someone was thinking about starting a blog, would you recommend going with Blogspot or something like that, or is having your own domain name preferable? Didn’t you start right out with your own domain name? Any general thoughts about this much appreciated!

I think that I’d recommend starting with Blogspot (or WordPress – I like WordPress, I think it’s easy to use) and then, if you know for sure that you’re going to stick with it (not that I think you won’t – just, a lot of people start out strong and then fade away after a few weeks or months) you can buy your own domain and move your stuff over.

Why, back in The Day when I started, I had to buy an html editor to write my entries on, and then FTP everything up to my domain. It sure was a pain in the ass. It’s a lot easier these days, thank god!

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I think this may be the first banner I’ve seen without a cat photo in it. Is the world ending?

It’s not the first one – but it certainly doesn’t happen very often that I have a non-cat banner. This reminds me that I need to get my butt in gear and make a page where I can post all the banners I’ve used over the years. It’d be neat to have all of them in one place!

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Loony Jake’s loony face reminds me of Christopher Lloyd’s face in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” when he finally let his true, crazy, cartoon self show through.

I can totally see that!!!

Flixster – Share Movies

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Our Bailey is about the same age as the Peppers, but he is so much smaller than they are. I guess he was the runt of the litter and I wonder if he will be smaller all of his life. Any ideas on that?

It’s possible he might be smaller all of his life, but it’s not at all guaranteed. Sugarbutt was the runt of his litter, and was much smaller than his siblings, but these days he’s a very muscular 12.2 pounds.

Alice – remember tiny Alice, who we thought was 6 or 7 weeks old when she showed up in December and then found out she was six MONTHS old?

The vet told us that she didn’t think Alice would get much over six pounds – and she was almost 8 pounds at the end of June.

On the other hand, Beulah – remember Beulah? This is her, smack dab in the middle of her much bigger siblings:

Beulah, last I heard, stayed small. Here she is, near a year old, with her normal-sized sister.

So really, the answer is that it’s just a matter of waiting and seeing. Bailey may stay little, or he might grow to be normal-sized. It’s pretty much impossible to know at this point.

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de-lurking to share this video with you. it makes me wonder what would happen if the superbox was “right side up” instead of on its lid…

SO cute. I can totally see Elwood sitting on top of the box like that!

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You (or he) may have already covered this, but why did Fred stop blogging?

First (and foremost) he lost interest, and then when his company went out of business and he had to get a job working for THE MAN, he didn’t relish the thought of any new coworkers reading about how he farted out a walnut in the bath tub. So he shut it down.

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Did you recently have a cat with a name similar to Harlan? A Harley or Marlon, perhaps? It’s driving me nuts. Nuts-er. More nuts. Whatever.

The only kitten I can think of might be Martin – he was around a year ago, so if you’ve recently read any entries from this time last year, that might be who you’re thinking of.

Martin and the pink floof.

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In the second picture, it looks like the head of the black kitteh in the front has come off his/her neck!! Maybe it’s just me ….

I can see that!

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Now that I read about the fence you use I thought I’d ask you about what my cats do. We have the same brand as you, but the little fuckers know where it’s located, so they go and stand super close to it then make a run for it like the devil is chasing them and cross to the other side. I have its settings at the highest value for both the collar and the wire and they still go over it :S

Has this ever happened to you? Any ideas? 🙁

Well, we have an underground fence, but we also have a physical fence, too – the underground fence is at the bottom of the physical fence, so if the cats want to climb over the fence, they’ll be zapped the entire time they’re climbing up, and that doesn’t seem to be something they enjoy. Actually, the underground fence is buried at the bottom of the physical fence, and then Fred went around with more wire, and ran it around the fence at the top, too, so if they aren’t zapped at the bottom of the climb, they’re zapped at the top. (Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, let me know and I’ll take pictures to show what I mean.)

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Robyn, what do you use for household cleaner? I’m worried about one of our kitties, who likes to get into the shower after we used it and lick the shower pan. I use Tilex on it to clean it, but always makes sure I rinse it thoroughly. Still, I’m worried there is some residue left that could make him ill.

I think that if you rinse thoroughly, your kitty should be okay. HOWEVER, I use this bathroom cleaner that I found over at Crunchy Betty’s site, and it works really amazingly well. I highly recommend it – and she’s got a lot of great cleaner recipes over there, her site is definitely worth poking around.

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My cat vet has HSP. It’s why he specializes in cats, the noise dogs make really bothers him. His office is very quiet, the cats don’t meow much because he has a pet pigeon that flies around in the building. The cats (who are in cages) obsess on the pigeon and stay quiet.

If it weren’t for the bird poop, I’d totally demand that we get a pet pigeon in the house to keep the cats occupied! Well, except that they’d chase the damn thing all over the place, and you KNOW that Elwood would be hauling his big ass across my face in the middle of the night, ripping my cheek open with his long talon-like rear claws.

I guess perhaps it’s better that we don’t need a pet pigeon. (But still, that’s a neat idea!)

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Have you seen The Fancy Farmgirl’s chicken coop? She put more thought into decorating her coop, than I did for my house!

and Elayne said:

I can’t decide whether to be in awe of her obviously abundant and overflowing resources of time, money, energy, motivation, and creativity, or to feel that some people need to be locked away (in chandeliered chicken coops, perhaps) for the good of all humanity. To be honest, I feel both sides in equal measure.

I mean, I know it’s mainly envy and self-pity and bitterness taking (I’m having a really rough week, and might actually manage to take a shower today, if the pain pills kick in strong enough, soon enough), but if she channeled only one-third of the resources (time, money, energy, motivation, creativity) that went into that chicken coop into something like running a food kitchen, volunteering with the disabled in her community, working with at-risk teens or, say, fostering cats, imagine what an impact she could make on the world! (An impact beyond an obviously heavily-moderated comment stream, that is.)

On the other hand, what do I know – someone who has enough energy to clean out their chicken coop every day, with a thorough cleaning biweekly, probably already does all those things, as well as saving the whales AND the rainforest and fomenting a cure for cancer in her Crockpot (using organically grown vegetables, with a side effect of removing unwanted hair and regrowing that hair where it is wanted, even on other people), while spending her nights playing the Tooth Fairy so tired parents don’t have to stay up to sneak into their kids’ bedrooms.

Now that I think of it, it’s probably the useless unaccomplished folk like me who should be locked in the coop.

Which, hey, a chandelier! AND I don’t have to clean it – win-win!

Elayne said a mouthful there! I think that the fancy chicken coop is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want one of my own. There are places that I’ll

Okay, no. I just went and looked at it again, and that is some crazy-ass shit. Interesting to look at, but you keep that crazy far, far away from me. I have 138+ things I’d rather be doing than scrubbing out the goddamn coop every day. Bless her heart – I guess you decide what’s important to you and you go at it full-tilt, and artwork on the chicken coop wall is not even in the realm of… anything for me.

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One of my cats, Cassie, is a tortoiseshell, and I think she’s one of the most beautiful creatures in the world. My mother, on the other hand, constantly refers to Cassie as “that awful ugly monkey-cat” and says it’s a good thing I adopted her because she’s “so ugly” that surely no one else would ever have wanted her. What?? She’s GORGEOUS! Her colors blend beautifully, she’s got orange Cleopatra-stripes against dark fur on one eye, not a speck of white on her anywhere but rather a lovely buttery cream color as her lightest shade, and her fur is the softest, silkiest, smoothest fur I’ve ever encountered on a grown cat. Ugly??!?! (Obnoxious at 3 A.M. when she stands outside my bedroom door keening, yes, but never ugly.)

I quote this comment only so I can tell y’all that Fred once said that Flossie – do you remember Flossie?

Fred said that Flossie was “SO UGLY” because – I am not making this up – “her markings are asymmetrical.”

There’s no accounting for taste.

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Thanks for such a great post. I do feel compelled to say that those first two videos are the reason you have so many chickens!! The things which help with broody hens whose eggs you want are work gloves (esp. the ones with leather backs) and speed!!

Ha – no, the reason we have so many chickens is that after trying to break a broody hen (we have a cage he refers to as a “broody buster” that works about 3/4 of the time) for several days, if the broody hen will not be dissuaded from her broodiness, Fred doesn’t just put one or two eggs under her to sit on – he puts six or seven. He’s always worried, if he only puts one or two under her, that they won’t be fertile and she’ll sit there and sit there and waste away with the anguish of never having her own babies. And of course, the eggs turn out to ALL be fertile and hatch. I think we’ve got a pretty good number of chickens right now, though – enough to lay eggs for us, and some extras to sell!

I usually find that approaching the egg from the chicken’s back end – so they can’t see what I’m doing – works best. And even if they get me, it doesn’t really hurt. Well, unless they get a pinch of skin and twist. But that only hurts for a few seconds.

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I want to find who makes those boxes and send you a dozen. Get the printed with something like paws and fishes. Has Loony Jake always had such a loony expression? Does he look that loony in real life? His little mug cracks me up!

Oldcat pointed out: You could make one from a regular shoebox and lid by cutting off one edge of the lid and taping it to one side. Glue or use contact paper to make the patterns on the side that you want.

I had three of these shoeboxes in an area waiting for a use when she first wrote about them. They are pretty popular – even the ones that don’t sleep in them rub on the edges of the top.

Fred got some sneakers at Kohl’s – Sketchers, I think – and they come in the superbox type of box. We’ve got two boxes as backup in case (as inevitably happens) someone pees on Superbox.

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The Irene 6 — Nothing cuter than kittens and firemen, and it’s good to see a small bit of good news in Irene-damaged New England.

Love it!

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Is Elwood as big a lovebug as his brother is?

Except for Tommy and the occasional headbutting with Kara, Elwood prefers people to cats. He especially loves bedtime, when he climbs into bed with us and walks back and forth to be petted. Then, when Fred goes off to his own room, Elwood will lay right up against me, roll around, and purr and purr while I rub his belly. He looks very stern and severe, but give that boy a pet or two, and he loves you to death.

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Is it the lighting or is one of the Peppers a silvery tabby?

Molly Peppers is a silver tabby.

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So now that the kitty-cats are pavlov trained to their collars, how high is the fence they won’t go over? And how come Maxi was in the veggie garden with you?

The fence in the back yard is five feet tall. And they KNOW that those collars are what’s keeping them in the back yard. Last weekend, Fred left Tommy’s collar off all day, and after a few hours, I looked on the side stoop to see that Tommy had climbed over the fence and was waiting to be let back into the house. It’s definitely not a matter of them making the connection that the fence is a no-no; if their collar doesn’t warn them away from the fence, they’re OVER it.

Maxi and Newt are our cats who are free-roamers. They came “with” the house, and they freak out quite a bit if we try to keep them contained to the house and back yard. They’re not TECHNICALLY our cats (they “belong” to a lady down the street), but really at this point we’ve taken them both to the vet often enough and they spend enough time here that the case could be made that they’re ours.

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“Y’all can keep partying, but I’m going to bed. It’s exhausting, being this cute.” (Harlan really likes that bed.)

Lucy almost looks like she’s not cross-eyed here, doesn’t she?

::thlurrrp::

“Derpy der, I’ve got my Starbucks and the paper. I’m going to go poop in my water bowl and then smear poop around on myself with paper and then push on the lever to make a loud noise!”
Molly: ::giggle::

“Derpy der, ::giggle::, I’ve got to hurry, I’m late for work! I need to type and type and type! ::giggle:: Hand me my smartphone, I need to send an important text! I am very import–”

“Uh. Oh. Hi.”

“Uh. Just stretching my back.”

“Um…”

“I….”

“No, I wasn’t mocking how funny you look, walking around on two feet. Why do you ask?”

“Was there something you needed?”

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I’m pretty sure that you almost forgot how beautiful Corbie is. How COULD you? Hmph.

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Previously
2010: If you came sauntering across the room slurping on a Diet Coke right now, I would cut your throat and steal your Diet Coke as you fell to the floor.
2009: No entry.
2008: For the next half hour, it sounded like a TB ward in our house as we tried to expel from our lungs the fine powder we’d stupidly breathed in.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: My god, has Bill O’Reilly always been such a pontificating blowhard?
2004: (No, he’s not going to remove her eye. Thank god.)
2003: The first time I did actually inhale was the last time I ever put a cigarette to my mouth.
2002: “What’s “porn”, Mama?” she would ask.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

9/1/11 – Crooked Acres Thursday

If you’re trying to get to Nance‘s site and can’t get anything, worry not: it’s not you, it’s her. She broke her site when she was fiddling with files, and won’t have a chance to get to fixing it ’til this weekend. She’ll be baaaaack. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ … Continue reading “9/1/11 – Crooked Acres Thursday”

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Susan says:

Minn-Kota PAAWS, a place I volunteer at when I visit friends in Fargo, is up for a $25,000 grant from Markham Vineyards, which it could win if enough people vote for it (it’s a finalist). Think how many more feral cats and pets belonging to low income people could be helped. Please help spread the word and/or go register to vote and continue to do so once every day until 10/3/11 (or as many times as you can).

It’s a great place all staffed and run by volunteers wanting to minimize the number of unwanted cats.

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New month, new banner! This one comes courtesy of local readerfriend Jean, with whom I was having a discussion about tomatoes and how annoying it was to find tomatoes with a single bite taken out of them. That banner cracks me UP.

Thanks, Jean!

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Sights from around Crooked Acres.

These pictures are small so as not to freak out the more sensitive among you. Those are clusters of daddy longlegs-type spiders (I don’t know if they’re actually daddy longlegs – their bodies seem bigger than they ought to be), and the one on the right, I almost put my HAND in that cluster. UGH.

And another creepy one – Fred shot poison at this yellowjacket nest (which is inside the wood shed) and killed all the yellowjackets that were on it, but apparently there were plenty of them out running errands while he was doing it. Guess we need to knock it down rather than leave it hanging. I am skeered to death of yellowjackets. They’re MEAN.

Fred made pineapple-ghost chili hot sauce over the weekend. He tells me it’s hot. There’s a shock, no?

Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookie. I made a half-batch over the weekend. They were good the day I made them, but REALLY good after sitting for a day. Recipe is hither. The only problem is that I can’t eat a whole one without feeling ill (and I’m not saying that in that annoying “Oh, I ate a Lifesaver and I’m stuffed!” way. It’s a HUGE cookie.) Next time, I may buy a pack of those mini-Oreos and make much smaller ones.

Dried okra, waiting ’til the cats knock their current okra toys under the stove.

The okra plants are now my height (I’m 5’5″) or taller. We’ve gotten so much okra that the freezer is stuffed with sliced okra. Since I’ve gotten enough okra put away to keep us going ’til next year, we’re currently eating okra with almost every meal. My favorite way to eat it is roasted. It’s REALLY good – put uncut okra pods on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, cook at 450ºF for 20 minutes – and not at all slimy.

Ghost chilies, ripening in the garden. I’ve been told that I’m on tap to make a batch of cherry-ghost chili jam. I am not looking forward to this – but at least I won’t be eating any of it!

The butternut and acorn squash plants get wilty in the middle of the day, but perk back up overnight. We thought it might be bugs, but I really think it’s the heat. I’ve gone to watering the entire garden three times a week instead of two, because we haven’t gotten rain in weeks.

Morning Glory, vining up one of the squash plants. Fred hates Morning Glories, but I think they’re pretty and I don’t yank them out of the garden because I like seeing them!

Muscadines (wild grapes).

We’re gonna get a bumper crop this year. Last year I made a batch of Muscadine jam with them. I’m not sure what I’ll be making this year, since I don’t think we ate any of the jam. It’s funny how much jam I make, given that we don’t eat much in the course of a year.

Muscadine vine. I love vines. Is that odd?

“Thanks for watering the garden, lady. I needed a bath!”

Someone ought to prune that pecan tree. (That red shed is the garden shed. This would be an ideal place for a hammock, if we had one.)

There’s just nothing funnier than a running chicken.

The Rock Star (she’s a Golden Polish) is the absolute prettiest chicken we have, if you ask me. I love her colors.

This little rooster’s pretty, too.

She’s also pretty. I guess we have a bunch of pretty chickens.

The rooster counterpart to the hen in the previous picture.

Oh, Gracie. It’s a bale of STRAW. (Fred put it there to block the hole in the fence that the chickens were going through.) I don’t know what was freaking her out – there wasn’t a HOSE there or anything.

Two girl piggies in the waller.

Happy George.

I love vines, but that Wisteria vine, reaching across three feet of space to grab onto the back yard fence? Maybe not so much.

Someone mentioned last week that they’d like to have a “sounds of Crooked Acres” week, where I post videos of, oh, the chickens and the pigs and what have you. I thought about doing that this week, but I never did get outside with my camera to make the videos, so to tide you over ’til I do get that accomplished, I’m posting some older videos.

First, a couple of chicken videos.

Those are both from around 2007 – 2008. This last one was shot in 2008, and is a visit in the chicken yard, and you get to see the pigs, too.

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Harlan keeps an eye on the feather teaser.

These kittens are the standing-up balancingest kittens I’ve ever seen.

“Come HERE, feather teaser.”

Sally’s all “Get it! GET IT!”

Whoa!

So close and yet so far.

“Watch me, ladies. I’ll get it!”

“Oh, right, you got that one, didn’t you? I’m SO impressed.”
“Shut UP, I don’t see YOU getting it either!”

Lucy’s face is cracking me UP. She is clearly SO over me and my shenanigans.

I let Elwood in to meet the Peppers a few days ago. He was unimpressed, as you’ll see.

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Kara, snoozing on the dryer.

“What are you doing out here? You don’t belong outside! Get back inside, it’s safer!”

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Previously
2010: Jake of the l’Unervilles.
2009: Jon Armstrong was all “HEATHER INVENTED MAYTAG WHEN SHE WASN’T BUSY INVENTING BLOGGING AND BEING THE FIRST EVER TO EXPERIENCE NATURAL CHILDBIRTH.”
2008: I know. I’m an unreasonable monster.
2007: No entry.
2006: The truth is, Fred has been excitedly pricing tractors every minute of every day since our offer on the house was accepted.
2005: Ahhhhh, smell that fresh, crisp autumn air! Why, it’s down to 90 degrees today. I almost need a sweater.
2004: She turned 86 last Thursday. She’s the only grandparent I’ve ever really known.
2003: (and you KNOW he insisted on it, was all temper tantrumy, screaming and beating his fists on the floor, wailing “ACTOR AND NOVELIST! ACTOR AND NOVELIST!”)
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

8/31/11 – Loony Jake Wednesday

Yes, Jane has shut down her blog. She’s fine. Feel free to email her (jane @ her domain (plain-jane.com)), she won’t bite. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Susan says: Minn-Kota PAAWS, a place I volunteer at when … Continue reading “8/31/11 – Loony Jake Wednesday”

Yes, Jane has shut down her blog. She’s fine.

Feel free to email her (jane @ her domain (plain-jane.com)), she won’t bite.

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Susan says:

It’s a great place all staffed and run by volunteers wanting to minimize the number of unwanted cats.

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Loony Jake visits the Peppers.

That tail…

(LOONYFACE)

…drives them…

(“HI MISTER!”)

…CRAZY.

(LOONYFACE)

Jake sits there and gently waggles his tail back and forth, and the Peppers cannot take their eyes off it.

“HI MISTER!”

::BITE::

“No, guys, seriously! Just watch it! It keeps MOVING!”

They’re pretty fascinated by him.

Especially the girls.

Everett tries to sneak up on the tail.

“GOT IT!”

Now Lucy’s got it.

Molly goes in for the sniff.

Everett’s got the tail now…

..and Jake’s had about enough of the whippersnappers messing with his tail. “Sorry, Mister! I’m sorry!”

Which causes Sally to take offense.

Everett doesn’t easily learn his lesson.

And Sally decides the safest place from which to watch Jake is under the dresser.

Jake heads over to check out the food, but is distracted by a reflection on the wall.

Really, it’s a far cry from their initial reaction to him. Those pictures above were actually taken a week ago, before I moved them up to the foster room. Now when I let Jake in, they just follow him around and watch him. I think they have a collective crush on Jake – and really, who can blame them?

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Loony Jake is loony.

Jake loves the superbox.

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Previously
2010: “But is it ROBUST?” I ask him. “And more importantly, is it ELEGANT?”
2009: Thank god for patient geeks who put up with difficult women.
2008: No entry.
2007: I don’t get the Winehouse lurve, but y’all just rock on with your bad selves, I s’pose.
2006: That part where McMurphy is trying to take off her scrubs and the back of her shirt is glued to her back with dried blood brings me to tears every single time I watch it.
2005: Is it just me, or does Eric Schaeffer play an inordinant number of characters named Sam?
2004: My day, in progress.
2003: This entry is comprised of nothing but cat pictures, because I’m clearing off the memory stick to start September fresh, with an empty memory stick.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: He said “Maybe you’re losing slower than me because you BELIEVE you’ll lose slower than me!”

8/30/11 – Tuesday

Over at Daily Dose, Chrystal is taking orders for bricks to create a memorial walkway (Winnie’s Walkway) to the cathouse. All proceeds for brick orders will go to help with her rescue work (spay and neuters, supplies for the cats). There are a last few days of August, which is Winnie’s Wish month – you … Continue reading “8/30/11 – Tuesday”

There are a last few days of August, which is Winnie’s Wish month – you can read about Winnie starting here or read an overview of what Winnie’s Wish is all about here; there are links at the top of each page, click on the one to the right to go to the next post – and Chrystal is absolutely flooded right now with cats and kittens who need loving homes. She’s at full capacity right now, and concerned because September always brings more kittens who need help. If you might be thinking about adding another cat to your home, go check out her sidebar and fall in love, or see her Cathouse Kittens and Crowded Cathouse posts or, really, there are a bunch of cats and kittens in her August posts, you can scroll through them.

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This past weekend, I worked in the garden on Saturday morning instead of Sunday.

I KNOW, right? Total anarchy!

There’s not a lot of gardening to be done right now, aside from picking tomatoes, okra, and peppers. And watering, constant watering. I can’t remember the last time we had rain – two weeks ago? Three? – and it’s super dry around here. I’ve been watering twice a week, but decided this weekend, after the squash started getting wilty on Sunday when I’d just watered on Thursday, to bump it up to every other day.

So, Saturday morning I had finished picking tomatoes, okra, and peppers, and tossed the crappy tomatoes to the chickens. I had just watered the few baby cabbage that sprouted (I didn’t get a very good germination rate for some reason, maybe because the seedlings were sitting in full, all-day sunlight and I think they were sprouting and then promptly frying to death in the sun. I moved them so they’ll get afternoon shade; we’ll see how that goes.) and I glanced into the wood shed. Fred had pointed out that yellowjackets had started building a nest in the back of the wood shed, and that reminded me that I’d been wanting to check something.

Beside the wood shed is an enclosed hose reel, like such. There’s not actually a hose on it – the hose is kind of tossed on the ground because we’re constantly moving it to water the garden. Since anything you leave stationary for more than ten minutes around here ends up with a huge ant nest built up under it, I wanted to look in the hose reel and see if there was one there.

(Seriously – last week I left two empty buckets, one inside the other, sitting on a garden cart for six hours, and when I picked the top one up, there was a flurry of ants trying to save their, uh, whatever the fuck those white things they carry around when the nest is threatened are. They’d built a nest between the bottom of the top bucket and the bottom of the bottom bucket.)

I lifted up the lid, and found to my utter amazement that there was a goddamn YELLOWJACKET NEST, CRAWLING WITH YELLOWJACKETS attached to the lid of the hose reel cabinet. As I am not, I have mentioned 358 times in the past, very good in emergencies, what I did was drop the lid and utter a short bark of a scream.

Immediately, I got the idea in my head that those goddamn YELLOWJACKETS were going to SWARM out of that nest and come straight for the idiot who’d disturbed them.

Now, this is what I wear when I work in the garden: a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, a long-sleeved shirt over the t-shirt (there are prickly things on the okra plants that make me itchy if they touch any of the skin on my arms), and a pair of mid-shin-high boots that are slightly too big for my summer-sock-wearing feet (they fit perfectly in the winter when I wear thick socks).

So, to recap: I lifted the lid, saw the nest, dropped the lid whilst screaming. Then I began running like a great big dork in my big ol’ clomping boots. Fred was a few feet away, filling a bucket with water, and as I ran past him I yelled “OH MY GOD, RUN!”

To his credit, Fred didn’t start up with the “What? Why? What’s going on?” He just started running. And in fact, he ran past me. We ran in silence (except for the clomping of my boots) for about thirty feet. Then Fred stopped and turned around and looked at me.

“Why are we running?” he asked.

I stopped, turned around to look at the hose reel, saw a couple of things flying in our general direction, and yelled “RUN! I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE MACAULEY CULKIN IN MY GIRL!”

He joined me in running again, and we ran until we were at the front of the house, whereupon he stopped again.

“WHY are we running?” he demanded. I finally told him, and we stood at the corner of the house and watched for an angry cloud of yellowjackets to fly toward us. They never did – maybe, it being early morning, they were still sleepy. Or maybe yellowjackets don’t swarm.

We went into the house and Fred got the wasp spray and went out and sprayed both nests. That stuff works so quickly that he didn’t get stung by a single yellowjacket.

I sure never felt like there was always something trying to kill me when we lived in the ‘burbs, but here it seems to be an every day occurrence!

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Playful Peppers.

You can probably tell that I was waving a feather teaser around over their heads to get their attention. Lucy in the back was complaining that I wasn’t letting her grab it.

Everett’s all “I’ve got it, bro!”

“What?”

Molly monkey walked right into a belly flop.

“Hey! The lady’s here! Go tell her to give us snacks!”

Such a gorgeous girl.

Harlan and the spotted belly.

Sweet Lucy in the sun.

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Smilin’ Joe (Bob). I know I always say it, but it bears repeating: sweetest boy EVER.

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Previously
2010: Don’t make me say it, we don’t need to be talking in detail about that stuff so early in the morning, so early in the week, right?
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Jessica Simpson, if I want to see you doing the Tush Push for an entire song, I will go out and buy Nick & Jessica porn that your father will SURELY be flogging any day now.
2004: “SOMEWHERE WHERE I CAN GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE SOUND OF THAT TELEVISION!” I bellowed.
2003: Sometimes.
2002: Basically, I’m just a freak.
2001: Now I’ll never know if Lance was going to put the moves on me!
2000: Insects are invading our house at an alarming rate.

8/29/11 – Monday

Fred did, in fact, get himself a smartphone. A Motorola Triumph, to be exact. He ordered it last week, and it arrived on Saturday and OH is Fred is lurve. He spent all weekend downloading games and showing me how his phone could play videos like perhaps I’d never seen the like before. I congratulated … Continue reading “8/29/11 – Monday”

I congratulated him for joining this century.

Someone searched my site for “LG Optimus” recently, and remember back when I desperately wanted an LG Optimus, but Virgin Mobile was constantly out and so was Target, and finding the damn phone was like trying to find a damn Cabbage Patch doll back in the 80s? And THEN for a brief shining moment in time Virgin had them available again, and I quicklikeabunny ordered one and it arrived and… meh.

It wasn’t my thing. I ended up planning to sell it on eBay, but a reader emailed and asked if I’d sell it to her, and I did, and I got myself a Samsung Restore, which I’ve been using for about three months. The number one thing I use my cell phone for (almost the only thing I use it for, really) is texting, and I’ve got to have a QWERTY keyboard with actual buttons, the on-screen keyboard doesn’t work for me.

The problem with the Samsung Restore is that the keyboard is a little wider than I’d like it to be, so it’s kind of annoying to text with. I messed with the Blackberry Curve at Target last week, and I think it might work a little better for me. I’m considering switching to that, but I’m not in any hurry to do anything.

Fred called Virgin Mobile to switch phones, and asked if he could get the $25 a month 300 talk minutes and unlimited web, messaging, data and email deal that I have. That’s a monthly plan that’s no longer available (I was grandfathered in because I already had it when they eliminated it), but Fred pointed out that he’d been a “long-time loyal customer” and asked if he could get it as well. The customer service rep didn’t know if he could get it for good, but was able to give it to him for the first month anyway. The same plan is now $35 a month, which is still way cheaper than the plans at T-Mobile or Verizon, etc. Also, no contract with Virgin Mobile.

Fred spent Saturday afternoon scrolling through, and playing, ring tones to find the perfect one. He ended up with this one. As of Sunday evening, I think he’d watched that video clip about 300 times, laughing his ass off every time (it’s the dance that gets him. Me too, for that matter.)

Every day at work, Fred attends an informal meeting of all the guys on his team at 8:30. I do believe I’ll be calling Fred right around 8:35 to see what he wants to have for dinner tonight.

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Lately, one thing I’ve taken upon myself to do is scrub down the pigs’ water trough and the dogs’ water dishes, because if they’re not scrubbed down at least every second or third day, they develop a nasty thick film of algae and don’t the pups and the pigs deserve clean, fresh water?

I think they do.

Last Thursday I was out there with my tools – elbow-length pink rubber gloves, a green scrubby, and a scrubbing brush – scrubbing away. After they finish their afternoon snacks, George and Gracie like to watch me work, and then drink some of that fresh, clean water. George was standing there watching me, and I had finished scrubbing the pig trough and was refilling it, when Gracie came trotting over.

“Hey, Gracie Mae,” I said, and held out my hand to her. She started toward me, and then suddenly turned around and ran off as fast as she could.

“What the -?” I said. She stopped about ten feet away, glared at the ground near my feet, and started barking.

“Gracie, what are you doing? Come here!” I said. She barked a couple more times, and then backed off another ten feet and barked furiously some more.

I looked around on the ground, trying to figure out what had her freaked. George stood there next to me, all “What’s HER problem?”, and Gracie stood twenty feet away, barking continuously.

I finally realized that she was barking at the hose, which apparently looked like a snake to her. When I wound the hose back up on the hose reel, she gave a couple more nervous barks, and then came over to drink some water.

“You know, Lassie would have thrown herself between me and the perceived threat,” I told her. “She would have picked up that snake and bitten the life out of it TO PROTECT HER HUMAN. Then she would have thrown it down a well and NOT EXPECTED A WORD OF PRAISE, you useless brat.”

And Gracie was all “Yeah, whatebs.”

“HA HA YOU ALMOST GOT BIT BY A SNAKE AND I WAS OVER THERE KEEPING SAFE, DUM-DUM!”

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Ciara has finally gone off to Petsmart. She was a bit peeved to be stuffed into that carrier, and she might have called me every name in the book on the way there, but once we were there, she was a little concerned and a bit hissy, but she adjusted pretty quickly. I did take the camera with me, but didn’t take any pictures of the Spice Girls, because the morning cleaner was still cleaning, and I didn’t want to get in her way. Clove, Cilantro, and Coriander were their usual laid-back selves, and I was able to pick up and snuggle (and repeatedly kiss) each of them before I left. When I left, Ciara was sitting there looking annoyed.

As of yesterday, none of them had been adopted. Adoptions have been slow lately, likely due to school starting again. Once Labor Day is past, I’m hoping that adoptions pick up.

Ciara and the Ears of Annoyance.

She is such a gorgeous girl, isn’t she?

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Harlan keeps an eye on things.

Jake enjoys the sun, while Everett takes a quick sniff of his tail.

Molly, keeping an eye on me.

Everett and Harlan confer.

And….

attack! (Kong bird is appalled.)

Lucy’s all “What’s going on over here, Mister Bird?”
Kong bird’s all “Nothing you need to see, missy. It’s appalling.”
Everett’s all “I BITE YOU BUTT.”

“I SLAP YOU FACE!”

A brief break from the fighting while Harlan confronts Mister Bird.
“Why you not come save me, Mister Bird?”
“Mister Bird doesn’t get involved, sonny. Mister Bird is Switzerland.”

Everett decides to get into it with Lucy, while Molly LEAPS out of the fray.

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You know how cats stretch as they walk? We call that their monkey walk. Kara always monkey walks over to Newt, then head butts him. Then she might smack him, depending on her mood.

Newt likes hanging out on the patio in the back yard.

Note that Kara’s thinking about monkey walking over to him. You can see by her ears that she thinks he needs a smack.

::thlurrrrrp::

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Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: To say the air in the kitchen is spicy is understating it – I can’t take a deep breath in there without feeling like I’m setting my lungs on fire.
2007: It was someone with a vendetta.
2006: Time to give up the raw vegetables, at least for the time being.
2005: John Cusack, however, has become suddenly completely unappealing to me.
2004: No entry.
2003: I see a little silhouetto of a Poo,
2002: Damn him.
2001: Jayzus, I can’t wait ’til I’m Supreme Ruler of the World, and I can run around ordering the death of people who annoy me.
2000: Here we see Miz Poo at the tail end of a Fancypants swish-by. She looks none too pleased.

8/26/11 – Friday

Just so you know, those of you who asked, I haven’t forgotten that I need to post pictures of myself post-surgery, since it’s been almost 7 months. For the record, I can tell y’all that I’m going back in to have a neck lift revision in mid-October. I went to see my plastic surgeon earlier … Continue reading “8/26/11 – Friday”

Just so you know, those of you who asked, I haven’t forgotten that I need to post pictures of myself post-surgery, since it’s been almost 7 months.

For the record, I can tell y’all that I’m going back in to have a neck lift revision in mid-October. I went to see my plastic surgeon earlier this week to talk to him about my arms. They don’t look like I thought they would – for one, they’re bigger than I expected. He looked at my arms and told me that while there’s some “fullness” in my left arm, my right arm looks the best that he could make it. He told me that there was some work he could do on the left arm, but it would entail taking the incision down past my elbow, and after he explained that, I decided you know what? I can live with it the way it is. I just really don’t want to have to deal with another recovery, and honestly I don’t think that there’d be such a huge improvement in the way it looks.

So hopefully, once the neck lift revision is over in October, there will be NO MORE SURGERIES in my future.

(I can feel my appendix getting ready to make a liar of me.)

I’ll try to get pictures posted next week!

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Random question…is that wainscoat on the ceiling? I was thinking about doing that in my bathroom and wasn’t sure how it would look. Do you like the look?

I had to ask Fred, but no – according to him, that’s not wainscot on the ceiling, it’s beadboard. I like it well enough, but I think I’d really prefer to have the wood ceilings exposed throughout the house – the ceiling in the dining room, guest bedroom, and front room are all wood, which is original to the house.

I have no opinion on wainscot. 🙂

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Do you get crickets in the house and do the cats hunt and kill them for you? We’ve had one in here for a few days and none of my pets are trying to catch it. I am quite annoyed.

We get cave crickets in the house – they seem to congregate in the laundry room, though I don’t know why. Maybe they’re doing their laundry before they go exploring in the litter boxes and fall in the cats’ water dishes and drown. We don’t get a LOT (that I know of; it’s always possible and probably likely that the cats kill and eat cave crickets I don’t know about), one or two a week. I’d rather find them dead than alive, because they’re icky and creepier than regular crickets. I’d REALLY prefer the damn cats to eat them, and I’m guessing they at least partially eat them, because I’m not a fan of finding cave cricket legs in the middle of the laundry room floor (but it’s better than finding them in my bed, I suppose).

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OooOOooo! You know what’s awesome about ducks? Duck eggs! Our local Egg Man has ducks and we get duck eggs off of him from time to time. They are excellent to cook with (and are tasty too). Can’t say as I like duck for eating though…maybe you can find some immortal ducks or something like that so you can have them around forever and don’t have to send any to freezer camp. Duck is really greasy and there isn’t much on a bird.

Fred did mention the possibility of eating duck, but I find that I’m not really interested in it. He’s more interested in having them cluster around him and do that under-their-breath quack-quack-quack that they do when they know you have food for them and they want you to give it up. So they’d probably end up being pets, is what I’m saying.

I am interested in trying duck eggs, though – I know that occasionally Lisa mentions cooking with duck eggs and she makes them sound very tasty!

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If you could make a breed of fainting kitten-sized cats, you’d make a mint. I’d buy two.

My god, could you imagine? I’d have nothing BUT fainting kitten-cats in this house, and when they were all clustering around me and annoying me, I’d just yell and clap my hands, and they’d fall over and stop annoying me.

Crooked Acres Fainting Cats! (Not ever) coming to a farm near you!

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It just occurred to me that a cute idea for cat names would be ingredients that make up recipes. It just hit me as I read Cilantro’s name during this entry. Cilantro (the herb, not the cat) always makes me think of salsa, and then I thought “How cute to name a litter of kittens after all the ingredients that make up salsa: Cilantro, Tomato (Tommy), Onion, etc. I’m sure other recipes would yield cute names too, and then you could say “This is the Chocolate Cake gang!” or something.

That would be ADORABLE, and I’m adding it to my list of name ideas!

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When you said that there was a lot of gas in Ciara’s intestines, it instantly made me think of this and the follow up (no worries, both are fine for all but the most easily offended viewing audiences).

LOVE IT!

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Hey Robyn! Just to remind your readers of a little Humane Society information. There is the Humane Society of the United States and then there are lots of local Humane Societies and they are all UNRELATED to each other – they don’t share leadership, funding, policies, or information. So the behaviour of one HS like your other commenter described is unique to that HS and most of them are not like that. I volunteered for my local HS for several years and I can tell you that they were doing all they could to get animals into no-kill shelter and forever homes as well as a good spay/neuter program. I hope your readers don’t stop supporting their local HS based on this one story!

Very true, thanks for the reminder. 🙂

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Also, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you powder your tomatoes? Do you dehydrate and crush? Thanks!

Yeah, I dehydrate them and then give ’em a whirl in the blender ’til they’re completely powdered.

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I have never had a cat (but am enjoying vicarious ownership through your brood), so what I know about feline behavior will fit on the back of a postage stamp with room to spare. That said, I am positive I heard at some point that a cat only flicks its tail when irritated. However, I’ve met Labradors that wag their tails less often than Maru of The Many Boxes! What’s the real story with cat tail action?

Elayne had a good response to this (I should start paying you, Elayne. Do you take kittens? 🙂 )

I’ve always heard that the tail twitch or flick indicates a predator mindset. When the cat is stalking prey, or thinking about stalking prey, they tend to keep their entire body still, but the tail sometimes twitches or sweeps. When I see one of mine staring out the window at birds or leaves, watching their tail flick around while the rest of them is perfectly frozen, it always makes me think that if they were *completely* still they’d explode, that the tail twitching is sort of a pressure release valve.
And the predator mindset can be activated by irritation, of course: “Go ahead, puny human, poke my nose and make that ridiculous ‘boop’ noise ONE MORE TIME, just SEE what happens next.”

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What happens to the pigs? I may have missed it when I’ve been catching up, but are they going to be bacon, or have a permanent spot as trash compactors on Crooked Acres? Bill wants to get pigs to raise so we can have bacon. I think I would have an issue keeping them and then eating them. I’d invariably name one and think it was cute. 🙁

The pigs will go off to freezer camp in October or November. One of the pigs will end up in our freezer, one of the other ones will go to someone else’s freezer, and the third will be a world traveler, because she’ll be split between two freezers.

This is, I think, the 7th or 8th set of pigs we’ve had, and it’s not easy to send them off to freezer camp, but we do know that they’re spoiled every day they’re here with us, with treats and homemade cookies, and scratches behind the ears. The first set was the most difficult to send off; at this point I don’t get too attached to them because I know how much it sucks to send them off when you do get attached.

On the other hand, by the time it’s time for them to leave, they’ve gone from little and cute to big and absolutely incredibly fucking obnoxious and demanding. It’s kind of a relief not to have them out there squealing angrily at us every time they catch a glimpse of us and want to know where their goddamn food is.

In the past, we’ve raised two sets of pigs a year because they are so very handy to have out there to give the kitchen scraps to. But it’s a lot of work, and we decided this year that we’re only raising one set a year – which is why we’ve got three pigs this time around (we’ve always done two pigs at a time in the past). So many people are interested in buying a pig from us that Fred joked that in another couple of years, there’ll probably be TEN pigs running around out there.

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A little while ago you listed three anti-odor products (and one mix-at-home dealy) (yes, that was me searching for odor remover just now). I know you said they all work really well and that you listed the one out ahead of the others only because it has no scent of its own – my question is, do you know how well they work on KEEPING odors away? Not just covering up temporary odors but getting rid of lingering problem smells?

(The whole comment can be seen here.)

The information on the anti-odor products I recommended can be seen here, for those of you who missed it, by the way.

Earlier this year, we had a chair – a recliner – peed upon by one of the cats. We soaked it with Nose Offense and let it dry, and at this point, the smell hasn’t come back. Now, I don’t know if it might one day resurface, but it’s been about six months, and so far, so good. At about the same point in time, we soaked a couch cushion with the hydrogen peroxide/ baking soda mixture and let it dry, and the smell from that hasn’t come back, either. I haven’t tried the other two sprays on stuff that soaks up the urine smell, so I can’t speak to whether the smell comes back from those or not.

I’m throwing this open to the rest of y’all – anyone got advice on this topic? Is there something you’ve tried that worked for you, that you can recommend?

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What brand of electronic fence/collar do you use? We had a crappy one that had two settings – nothing at all or full-blast-scare-the-poop-out-of-the-dog. Could never get it to work right!

It’s a PetSafe underground fence, this one to be exact. It does a great job, but I’ll tell y’all that I hate those damn collars, I think they ruin the pictures I take of the cats who are wearing them. But the fence does work, and the cats who wear the collars – Tommy, Elwood, Kara, Sugarbutt – stay away from the fence, so I guess the collars are worth the ruining of the pictures!

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I always wondered why you planted purslane, it grows like crazy in our backyard and if I don’t get a chance to weed every week it takes over my entire patio! We named one of our cats Purslane after the character in “A Love Song For Bobby Long”.. Pursey for short.

I got all interested in purslane last year when Fred pointed out some weeds growing in the ditch in front of the back forty. He said he thought it was purslane, so I started reading about it, and wanted to give it a try. (I particularly liked that it’s high in Omega-3 fatty acids.) But the stuff in the ditch wasn’t purslane, so I kept it in mind to grow this year. Which I did – and apparently it IS aggressive as hell, because it’s growing all around the raised beds as well as in the one where I planted it. Maybe next year I can just harvest it from the yard instead of needing to plant it!

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GHOST PEPPERS! YIKES! My hubby loves some spicy peppers but while we were on vacation we went to a store called The Pepper Palace and he tried salsa made with ghost peppers and almost DIED! I had to get him some milk an his mouth and throat burned for hours afterwards! You are a brave woman working with ghost peppers!

Is that The Pepper Palace in Gatlinburg?? We’ve been there many times, and I’ve been having a hankering to go back (to Gatlinburg, that is, not necessarily The Pepper Palace.)

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Would you describe Ciara’s purr as “burbling”?

My Old Man Of The House, Packer, has a purr that sounds like a – I hate to use the word again, but – burbling brook, with a tiny hint of squeakiness thrown in. And it’s LOUD. When people hear it for the first time, they tend not to believe it’s all him; they usually think there’s some other noise going on in the background in addition to his purring, and insist on looking around for it even after I tell them, no, it’s him.

It actually makes me wonder sometimes if he might have asthma or something, though his unusual purr is the only odd sound he makes. Everything else (breathing, meowing, not-snoring) is all normal. I hear a hint of the same squeakiness in Ciara’s purr, though not quite the full burble*. But I know that when the camera’s on, they sometimes change things up…

*BRB, off to form a band.

That is a REALLY good word to describe it – I’d definitely call it a burble!

Elwood has a high-pitched squeak in the middle of his purr when he’s very very happy. And when Spanky’s purring particularly hard, he sounds like a cricket singing. (Note to self: carry the damn camera around more often!)

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For two people that don’t drink you sure have a lot of booze layin’ around!

I know! I was just telling Suzanne last week that two years ago I thought “Huh. Strawberry Dacquiris would be good!” and I bought the mix and the alcohol and… we just never got around to it. Both bottles are unopened still! We also buy vodka and… something else I don’t remember at the moment. Rum, maybe? … so I can make my own vanilla extract. I want to try using bourbon next time I make vanilla (which won’t be for a while, since I made a ton last year).

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As a Summer pastime at our house when we are sitting the backyard watching the squirrels grazing around the lawn we get long thin pieces of bamboo(13ft+) and gently poke the squirrels in to patooty. They jump straight up in the air about 5 ft. Yes it’s kind of evil but so funny.

I am pretty sure that if I were to see this in action, I would probably fall over and laugh so hard I’d die from asphyxiation.

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Maw Peppers is ultra-cute — and oh, that feathery tail! I’m not even going to go into how beautiful her children are, not when Ciara and her stash have stolen the kitty show. And don’t get started on joyous Jake; is he as kooky as he looks?

Jake is more kooky-looking than kooky-acting. Underneath the looniness, he’s just a sweet, social boy who loves kitten food (and will put up with kittens to get to their food) and loves all the other cats in the house. When Fred gets up in the morning, he puts the collars on the cats who need to wear them before he opens the door to the back yard. While he’s got Tommy (or Elwood or Kara or Sugarbutt) held in place so he can put their collar on, Jake KNOWS that the cat being collared can’t get away, so he comes right over and rubs up against them and purrs and purrs. That’s the best description of Jake I can think of.

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*snicker* I see cat-butt magnets on that fridge 😉

Are you implying that not everyone has cat butt magnets? 🙂 I also have a Crazy Cat Lady Action Figurine!

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Do people ever keep the names that you give the kittens? They always seem “just right.”

I for one can’t imagine Clove as anything but Clove. Her coloring, her button nose is just like a clove!

I heard that cats that are colored like Miz Poo are the most difficult to get adopted – true in your experience?

Sometimes people do, and I’m always a little surprised when they do – when I name the kittens, I always assume they’ll be renamed when they’re adopted. Reacher, Dorothy, and Bill all kept their original names, though!

I’ve heard that black cats – at least here in the US – are the last to be adopted, and right behind that are the torties. Which seems absolutely nuts to me, because I’ve had plenty of black fosters, and of course Maxi and Tommy are black, too. Every single black cat I’ve had has been absolutely awesome. And torties, well, Miz Poo is a tortie and she is AWESOME. I think everyone needs at least one black cat and one tortie!

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*delurk*

For whatever it’s worth, in regard to the thing about nervous cats: I discovered a few years ago that I am what is known in psychological circles as a Highly Sensitive Person (or HSP for short) which basically means that my nervous system is “hard-wired” to respond more strongly to stimulation than most. That is, my sight, hearing, etc. aren’t necessarily any better than anyone else’s, but my brain processes all the sensory information which does come in much more thoroughly than that of a non-HSP, so I’m more AWARE of things like bright lights and noises, and it’s therefore much easier for me to get OVER-stimulated (and tired, stressed-out, and grumpy) from simply being in an environment with a lot going on. Shopping malls and airports, for example, just wear me the heck out!

I want to stress, though, that being HSP isn’t a pathological thing. It’s not a “disease” or a “syndrome” or anything like that; it’s simply a trait, like hair color or eye color, and is probably genetic in origin. In fact, from the reading I’ve done, the tendency toward High Sensitivity seems to be present in approximately the same proportion (around 20% of total population) in everything from fruit flies to horses to humans, so it must have some kind of survival advantage or it wouldn’t be that prevalent. The lady who’s done the most research on High Sensitivity (Elaine Aron, you can Google her if you want to know more about her work) believes that those with the HSP trait are designed to be a kind of “early warning system” for others of their species–we’re the ones who NOTICE things, and so tend to spot the predator lurking in the bushes before anyone else does.

Anyway–given all that, it’s certainly possible that at least some of these “perpetually nervous even though there’s no reason to be” cats are actually feline HSPs, and thus the spooky behavior is genetic rather than learned, which also explains why it can persist throughout life even with an owner who’s never harmed the kitty in question. So I will second what Oldcat said about giving nervous cats a spot of their own where they can retreat when they’re scared, particularly if they live in a busy household with kids and/or other animals. Believe me, being overstimulated isn’t very much fun, even when you understand what’s happening and why, and High Sensitivity isn’t something that can be trained or conditioned away. As Brandy so elegantly put it, the best you can do is accept that this is just how Nature programmed some of us to be, and try to work around the limits it imposes. (And while I definitely don’t advocate trying to “cure” High Sensitivity with drugs, I will say that a little Rescue Remedy can be VERY helpful at difficult moments. I’m not a pet owner myself so I have no personal experience with using it on an animal, but I can tell you for certain that it’s a real lifesaver for a human HSP, and I literally won’t leave the house without it these days. I’m given to understand that some people/animals respond to it better than others, but it has no side effects and if you have a fur-kid that you think might be Highly Sensitive, I would say it’s certainly worth a try.)

So, informational message delivered–back to lurking.

I found this very very interesting. Thanks for delurking to share!

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Did you plant all the plants in at the same time? I love how staggered the harvest is, and can’t help but wonder if they ripen on their own calendar or by the time you plant them.

We planted the summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, and green beans at the same time. Oh, and the corn. The beans and corn have been harvested and the plants pulled up to make room in the garden, and we had to pull up the squash plants because they were starting to die due to vine borers. The tomatoes are still (kind of) producing (they’d probably be doing better if it wasn’t for THE BLIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT) and the peppers are still producing like mad. The acorn and butternut squash were planted about a month ago, and they’re doing REALLY well, as you can see.

Wait. When did we plant the watermelon and cantaloupe? I’m thinking at the same time as the tomatoes and peppers, etc. And we’re still getting watermelon, but the cantaloupes are mostly played out.

Basically, they ripen by their own calendar. Some plants just take longer – it seems like forever between the time you see a squash flower and are able to harvest your first squash from that plant, but the peppers and okra will just appear overnight.

So no, for the most part we planted everything at the same time (except the acorn and butternut squashes, and I think we waited a while to plant the okra), they just kind of staggered themselves. 🙂

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Do you eat the purslane? I’ve heard it’s good in salads.

We do eat the purslane! It’s good in salads and also good sauteed in some olive oil. It’s crunchy and has a very faint lemony taste. I’ve been known to occasionally pull up a stalk and eat it while I’m working on the raised beds.

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Miz Poo was laying in this bed, and Ciara was all “Hey, let’s snuggle!” Miz Poo growled and hissed and smacked, but Ciara just made herself at home. Miz Poo showed her displeasure by taking a bath.

“What’s YOUR problem?”

“I hate you.”

Ciara’s off to the place. You know. The place. etSmart-Pay. In a bit. I’ll try to remember to take the camera!

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“What’s she doing?”
“I don’t know. She’s weird.”

“WHAT YOU DOIN’, LADY?”

Sally Peppers has clearly gotten over her skittishness.

“I SAY, pet me, lady.”

“What’s going on over HERE?”

Hello, Lucy Peppers.

Lucy keeps an eye on me.

Yesterday, I finally moved the Peppers Gang upstairs to the foster room. They were a bit freaked out – the first couple of times I went up to check on them, they were hiding in the closet. By the time a couple of hours had passed, they were hanging out on the cat tree and yelling at me to get over there and pet them. I’m glad it didn’t take them two weeks to adjust to their new circumstances this time!

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Corbie and the Ears of Annoyance. Jake and the Look o’ Looniness.

Keeping an eye on the guy next door.

SO BEAUTIFUL.

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Previously
2010: How I have not squeezed the stuffing out of that boy, I do not know.
2009: Damn whippersnappers.
2008: I don’t know why he can’t just call it Demer0l or whatever the fuck other people call it.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: I sure do hate the hell out of housework.
2003: When I think of Judge Roy Moore, the phrase “Getting too big for his britches” comes to mind.
2002: If he didn’t do that creepy, over-intense stare all the time, he wouldn’t be so (you guessed it) creepy, but he does, so he is.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

8/23/11 – Tuesday

Y’all notice my fancy new banner up there? I made it myself. Jean made me a banner for September, which reminded me that I hadn’t switched banners at the beginning of August, so I whipped that one up to put up there for the next week and a half. You know you wish you had … Continue reading “8/23/11 – Tuesday”

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Yesterday, someone left this comment on Flickr, under my picture of Ciara (not) stressing.

Robyn, I swear, if you don’t stop giving those cats unlimited access to whisky and ganja, I’ma have to report you!

Little did she know that, probably at the VERY MOMENT she was leaving that comment, pictures were being taken.

I love how she’s pretty much spooning with the bottle.

“Wush up, guysh?”

Note to self: keep liquor cabinet locked! (Further note to self: get liquor cabinet.)

I’m so sad that we didn’t have a pack of cigarettes around. Though I’m sure we could have come up with plenty of pill bottles to scatter around her, now that I think about it!

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This is Scarlett:

I guess you could call her Maw Peppers. Isn’t she a beauty? She’s the mother of The Peppers Gang – you remember (maybe) that the man who found her on his doorstep decided to keep her. She’s been spayed and tested, and she’s all set to live the life of a pampered princess kitty. From all reports, she loves her daddy quite a bit.

Harlan looks a LOT like her.

Know who else Harlan looks like? It’s the funniest thing, these two pictures were side by side in my “to share” folder.

Here’s Harlan:

Annnndd…..

Da Corbs.

I sure do love the brown tabbies.

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“WHAT YOU WANT, LADY?”

“Git over here and pet us, lady! Geez!”

One Lucy leapin’.

Everett’s all “What just happened here?”

“Wait, I better get in on this!”

Later, Everett got into it with Harlan.

Until Everett decided that Sally’s butt needed a big bite taken out of it.

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Loony Jake…

is loony.

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Previously
2010: I guess that toy knows who the boss is now!
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: Bye, bye gallbladder.
2005: No entry.
2004: Fucking toes.
2003: No entry.
2002: Evil.
2001: Cat pics.
2000: I know you women out there are jealous since I got me one o’ them SENSITIVE guys who can cry.