Feb
11
Cats of all kinds.
by Leslie
Julia and I don’t have the best track record when it comes to Valentine boxes.
Remember The Unicorn? I don’t even have a picture of last year’s box because it was supposed to be a cat that ended up looking like a bunny and it was at the last minute and the arguing and whining distracted me from capturing that beautiful memory.
This year was much more successful. I did not argue or whine! Mostly, I stayed out of the way and let Julia do it herself. I did give her a deadline (we’re just no good at the last minute stuff), helped her Google for ideas (she liked the Valentine Kitten box from Calling All Sleepyheads), and dug up some supplies. Then she created this:

She is exceedingly proud of it.
Meanwhile, I took my favorite picture ever of my real cats Picasso and Holy Guacamole!

I love this picture because it captures so perfectly the dynamic of their relationship which is:

Jan
23
around a napping kitty
(unless you hate cats)

require medication
to be so mellow


And then Picasso was like, “Oh, are you photographing me? Allow me to pose.”

“Here’s my best side. Oh, the tail. Are you getting the tail? Like, the whole tail? I cleaned it for about fifteen minutes before I fell asleep.”
And then Holy Guacamole! was like, “Um, don’t forget about me over here! Hey! Hey look!”

“Cute Show starting in 3…2…1…”

“BAM!”

“Okay, you realize now is when you’re supposed to pet me.”
And I did.
Jan
3

we have two calico cats
who love our blue chairs
Oct
17
Finally.
by Leslie
I posted the following video, How I Ended Up With Seventeen Kittens, a little more than four years ago.
Of course, we didn’t give away all seventeen of those kittens. The truth is, few people give a rat’s ass about cats. We had more people offer to come and shoot them for us than we had offers to adopt them. Only some of the cats were adoptable, anyway. Some of them were pretty feral. Instead, we got them fixed and cared for them ourselves.
By 2009, we had fixed nearly thirty cats (give or take a few, courtesy of the drop-offs we’d gotten, the handful of adoptions we organized, and the cats we couldn’t catch right away). Thirty cats. And you know how hard it is to catch them (and to pay for them).
Now, three years and a whole lot more spay/neuter surgeries later, I can finally, for the first time, tell you that all of our cats – and by that, I mean every feline that shows up at dinnertime to eat at our house – is fixed. Some of them, we’ve fixed and never seen again. Others, like that very first wild cat we couldn’t catch right away, are still hanging around, lounging on our porch and enjoying the comforts of our garage.
To some people, that makes us crazy idiots; to others, heroes. To me? It makes me able to sleep at night. Tonight, I will sleep better than I have in more than four years.
Oct
3
The past couple of weeks, we’ve had a rafter of turkeys hanging out on our property.

This is a terrible picture of them. I’ve been trying to get one for days, but turkeys are high-strung and also fast runners and nearly impossible to sneak up on. (I took this from my bathroom window early this morning.)
They come a little closer to the house every day, though. The girls are hoping we can tame them, name them and dress them in festive holiday sweaters.





