primsong: (cat hug)
I recently realized from the way my cat responds that while her name is Pi, she believes her name is Beautiful Kitty.  It has made me suddenly self-aware of how often I greet her as "Hello, beautiful" and "Come up here, beautiful kitty!"  Now that would be a nice sort of nickname to acquire, no wonder she has such confidence in our servitude to her.

Splink!

Jun. 21st, 2016 04:38 pm
primsong: (threejo bessie)
We sadly lost Millie the Millet Muncher a couple weeks ago, and the remaining two budgies were morose without her, so I checked with a local bird rescue lady and she had some to look at. We picked out a happy, bouncy little fellow and he's been just an absolute joy. Rhubarb and Treacle-cake are getting along with him just fine. He's bright neon yellow on the back and bright neon green on the front.

His name is Splink. Hee hee.

primsong: Mr. Morton (morton)
Spent a couple afternoons poking intermittantly at imovie in my ongoing attempts to comprehend the usefulness of my new macbook thing. Made Baby's First Movie by using random footage of my cat on my lap gleaned from the "oh, I found the camera!" moments, adding sound effects, music, credits, etc. Kind of like it, in an odd sense of the word. The whole thing definitely has promise (imovie, not my er..."movie"...) I can see why so many people like to mess around with making vids of stuff in their life now that we have tools like this readily available.

Still feel like an old dog struggling to learn that new trick, but getting there.
primsong: (starry sky)
Just finished another round of our annual preschool fundraising dinner and basket raffle - as we were setting up the tables one of the grade school girls, the sort who has several small siblings and as a result speaks more like a wise mom than a kid, made the observation that "Oh yes, now all the little girls will come in and get their heart set on something in baskets, and then when they don't win they'll cry and cry." 

Watched as families mobbed the hallways, enthusiastically dropping tickets into the little buckets.  Plenty of little girls (and boys) who obviously had already decided whatever was in their chosen basket was theirs - especially the three beta fish artistically floating along among themed items in three different places.  Winning tickets were drawn and the halls filled with the sound of wailing as small children were given the "Sometimes these things happen, that's just the way it works" lesson.  One girl whom I would have thought old enough to already know that stood and just sobbed - she'd apparently fastened onto one of the betas and even given him a name.  In her heart, he was already in a fishbowl in her room and now a stranger was taking 'her' pet away from her.  So many small childhood hopes dashed amid the celebration.

I divvied up the decorative balloons and handed them to the kids who seemed to need to have something that they'd 'won' in their hands the most.

Beach time

Feb. 13th, 2016 07:59 am
primsong: (beach)
An update: Our Pi-Cat has thankfully continued to improve and is pretty much back to her former petite weight (she's only a 7 lb. kitty at her fattest), still no idea what caused her illness so I just hope whatever it was doesn't come back as she's now our Gold Plated Kitty from vet bills. We are grateful that she is with us even when she sits on the keyboard now.

Also, looks like my eldest is headed for the beach! She's been applying for work, etc. along the coast and is making plans to move over there. Ironically the rents around here have spiked so badly with all the out of state people moving here that the beach is no longer the expensive place, it's cheaper for her to live there than anywhere near Portland once you get out of the easy day-trip range of that city. Sounds good to me!
primsong: (cat hug)
Made coffee this morning and our sick kitty came waltzing into the kitchen, drank a little water and ate about six bites of food. First time in a week and a half! My son was running up and down the hall rousing the family to come and see, Pi is eating! We were all gathered around, trying to not disturb her groove, twittering quietly like fans of a famous artist watching them paint.

The cat ate! Let the parade commence!

Now we just hope she does it again - back to Cat Watch.
primsong: (pi)
Our dear little Pi stopped eating or drinking last week - we've now put sufficient funds into that cat we are calling her our "gold plated kitty." So far all they know is she's healthy as a horse except for unknown reasons her digestive system is moving in slow motion. I've had to take to squirting a syringe of warm water into the corner of her mouth when I can get away with it to try to keep her hydrated. She goes back in for another expensive vet round on Monday, but darnit...she's OUR cat, a part of the family, our little fur-person. You know how it is.

A lady I swim with in the mornings is a vet tech, she said she would come to our house and show me how to do sub-q injections if needed. :-(
primsong: (beware of the thing)
Just a note to anyone who has a dog in their life - when my pet care class was going over various common poisons I knew about grapes, raisins, chewing gum, chocolate and (of course) antifreeze, but xylitol was a new one to me so I thought I mention it.

Seems some folks get 'healthy' peanut butters that are sweetened with xylitol, put it in their dog's treats and then end up with doggy kidney or liver failure. 0_o My husband uses it all the time as a preferred sweetener, so this was good to know.
primsong: (cat hug)
A lady in my church has a pet-sitting business and has agreed to have me be her backup person when she gets overbooked (yay) - I was trying to think of something I can do that doesn't involve being on my feet 8 hours a day or doing data entry stuff so this could fit the bill. I mean, a dog doesn't really care if you stop to rub your sore feet a few minutes unlike a human manager. ;-)

So I'm getting ready to head out to a day seminar on pet first aid today as part of prepping for that, I figure it will be useful info to have even if the sitting thing doesn't go anywhere, after all, I have pets! And it's free, which is always nice.
primsong: (columbine)
For any who may be interested, I snapped a picture of the budgies this morning

Lemondrop & Treacle-cake

Lemondrop has her injured wing there, still keeping it loose rather than tightly folded as they usually do though she's  better in all other ways, no more bleeding or panting.  They're still both a bit jumpy and shy and I keep them partly covered all day.  Treacle-cake Cricketbat as my family has now dubbed the blue chap (he responds to words with sounds that are parakeet like - 'eek, ick, ack' so he ended up with a Benedict Cumberbatch misnomer, *snert* - quite a lot of syllables for such a little slip of a thing.  I'll probably just end up calling him Treacle)  - he's slowly beginning to be more vocal and briefly played with some of his toys, so we're looking up.

primsong: (seagull)
Quite a bit of snow yesterday and last night, and more coming tonight, so I went out and swept a bunch of snow away in a circle around my birdfeeder out back and sprinkled seed for the ground-feeders, then added an extra suet block, some old pistachios we needed to get rid of and a chunked up peanut butter sandwich my daughter forgot about a couple days ago.  It's been nonstop out there, I'm seeing varieties of bird we almost never have come through, which is kind of cool.

I think this cold caught more than just us humans by surprise. My cat is unimpressed with getting her paws in the snow, though I also swept around her catflap she set a new record for the time between when she went out the front door and reappeared through the back catflap leaving "kitty rapidly bounding" marks around the edge of the house.
primsong: (seasonal)
Uh-oh, the Cold Winter of Doom that thus far we'd been able to hide from has apparently found us - quite the drop in temps and wow, look at all that white fluffy stuff out there!  A bit of a novelty.   I swept and salted the entry at the church so the few preschoolers we had and their families hopefully don't slip, some of the high school girls that usually wait on the property for their rides after school were huddled inside the narthex, can't blame 'em!  All the schools are out early and the roads are full of people creeping along at 10mph trying to not slide into one another.

Filled my birdfeeder out back and it already has a young squirrel and a handful of chickadees trying to get some food amid the snow, the little squirrel keeps getting blown over onto her nose when she tries to sit up to eat, obviously her first winter, the older ones are cozily holed up somewhere already.

Little yellow parakeet (now dubbed Lemondrop, slightly more complimentary than Lemonhead) is doing better every day, coming down to the middle of the cage instead of hiding up in the corner and even chirping a little if you talk to her.  I added a heating pad on low alongside the cage to help keep her warmer, so far so good - I'm figuring at this point on keeping them til spring to stabilize and forget about whatever it was they went through, then we'll see about maybe finding them a home of their own.

Time to make hot tea!

primsong: (unimpressed)
Well, my two formerly homeless budgies are still settling in - the little yellow girl was fluffed, stressed and otherwise miserable enough over this past week I was pretty worried about her, but every day she got less stressed and less fluffed - now she's slimming down to normal parakeet appearance.  Her blue laddie was quite concerned, always sitting right by her and moving to be between her and me if I reached in to fix their food.  She didn't like to move except to get food and water, so I kept her half-covered and added extra vitamins and molting food to her diet.

Last night she finally began to move around a little and slowly stretched her wings - which let me see she's been injured on the one!  It looks like it's healing up nicely, but.no wonder the poor little thing was miserable!

Very pleased that they are starting to take interest in their surroundings and sing a little now, they aren't aggressive at all.  The man from the church who brought them in said he doubted they'd ever had a normal or healthy home-life, which is sad for anyone, person or critter, definitely time for Better Birdie Days Ahead.
primsong: (eagle)
I was working at the food cupboard at church and heard what I was sure was a parakeet chirp - so I tracked the sound into the preschool down on the same level and found a supply room where a birdcage was sitting with two 'keets in it.  They had no cover, an oversized dish for water and a cup chock-full of wild bird seed. 

Asked around, seems one of the guys in our church had rescued them from an unstable home situation - he seemed to think they'd be just fine down there but I know how cool that building gets on the lower level at night ("They come from Australia right? It gets cold there," he reasoned)... but I told him I wanted to take them to my house where they could be with other parakeets and he agreed.

SO - I have FIVE parakeets now, my three (Millie, Freckles and Rhubarb) plus these two - we're calling them Lemonhead and Sky Guy for the moment.  I outfitted their cage with toys, mirrors, budgie food, grit and a celery stalk, they chirped along with some upbeat music, all is well.  Guess I better buy more millet, I don't know how long we'll have them.
primsong: (snood)
Merry Christmas to everyone - hope all is well in your assorted households, palaces, balloons, hovels and floating shrimp boats...or wherever is currently 'home'.

Y'know, when we got this house I was blown away at the thought of having an extra room (think about it - EXTRA room. An extra one. Like, a whole room that is extra!) It quickly became half storage, half guest room and has seen pretty constant use. Friends, travelers, relatives, strangers, all kinds of people have been in there. More than one has lived there for an extended time.

So speaking of extended times - My folks sold their house and therefore had to move into their 5th-wheel. Technically. Actually, my mom would completely lose her mind living in a tiny 5th-wheel, so they're in our 'extra' guest room. How long? Who can say? Until they find a property they like well enough to buy. And they have a weiner-dog (our cat has mixed feelings on this part). Good thing we get along pretty well. Full house!

Time to go watch a Christmas show - maybe 'Shop Around the Corner,' I love Jimmy Stewart.
primsong: (tarzan)
My mom called me to let me know their house, which they've had on and off the market for over a year with no nibbles, and which they were about to take off the market for winter, has sold!  They close on the last day of November.  So much for Thanksgiving relaxation... I can understand the buyers being anxious about getting in, they've already sold their old house and are living in an apt with stuff in storage, but my mom is a bit freaked at how fast it's all suddenly moving along. 

Thankfully they have a friend with an empty airplane hanger that they can store things in til spring, and an RV.  Into the camper they go, weiner-dog, cat and all yo-ho! They'll spend the winter as rolling stones gathering no moss while they check into other people's moss growing at various towns and decide where they want to plant themselves again.  I expect we'll see a fair bit of them as my house will now be the 'stability point' for Mom, Dad doesn't need one, he's happy with wheels on his feet.

The cat, Bentley, wasn't too happy with having to learn to wear a harness, but they've gotten him to where he and the dog both get harnesses put on each day ("getting the kids dressed for the morning") and he's finally ignoring it instead of spending the day trying to back out of it, heh.  Adventures never cease.
primsong: (pi)
So, over at Death by Aspirin there's been a small challenge to 'time-ify' our cats.

Pi loves being a Time Cat.  She is very patient about how long it takes me to sometimes open the TARDIS door for her, in spite of the pompous reputation. 

Pi the Time Cat



primsong: sunrise over Haleakala (clouds)
In about an hour I have to do one of those rotten Grown Up things and be the one to take in one of our parakeets to be put to sleep... or whatever they do. I'm not sure if the avian vet has something like a little birdie gas chamber or what...

Gradually over about four months her abdomen swelled up until she was a miserable bird-balloon, so we took her in to the vet who drew off a huge (for a parakeet) amount of what is essentially egg white - a malfunction of the bird innards that are supposed to make the occasional useless egg instead filling up the whole bird. She was back to her svelte, bright green and otherwise happy self but I knew we couldn't keep on 'draining the bird', it all depended on how quickly it came back.

One month later and she's a bird balloon again and a very miserable one indeed. She's been well loved and had a good life, but she's only 6 so we had hoped to have her longer than this - still, it serves no purpose to have her panting and fluffing and trying to waddle around full of albumen. Poor little Sherbet. I'm glad Freckles and Millie, her cage-mates, are happy with one another so they hopefully won't miss her for very long. Freckles has been nursing her, cleaning her feathers and feeding her seeds, dear little chap.

Drat.
primsong: sunrise over Haleakala (clouds)
I dearly love going by the field at the end of our road each day where Cow peacefully grazes or stands beneath the big fir tree, watching the cars putt by.  Cow holds court over a middling sized field with a tiny brook running through a bit of it, she and Baby-Cow (who is now nearly Teenager-Cow) amiably stand in the winter sun, swishing tails and nosing at bits of hay.

Almost invariably ranged around Cow is an irregular circle of little goats, cinnamon-sugar and taffy and licorice colored friendly nannies who follow their leader wherever she goes.  If Cow stands under the tree, they graze near the tree or play among its roots.  If Cow stands over by the hay, there they faithfully go also.  It makes a delightful picture on a cold morning to see Cow up to her knees in hay with Baby-Cow by her side and a little circle of cheerful goat-heads all sticking up out of the hay around her.

A white turkey was added this past summer and a little turkey-house which promptly filled up with curious goats.  The turkey house was retired and the turkey began settling in.  "Someone's Thanksgiving dinner," we thought - but no, there it still is.  And turkeys being very social, it has taken to following everyone else around too, as an honorary goat.  Now when I drive by, there stands Cow, holding court amid the green and gold winter grasses with a circle ranged all around her, the soft brown little goats and one white turkey, all drifting along in perfect harmony.

Kitty dots

May. 20th, 2011 06:47 am
primsong: (pi)
Pi-cat climbed into my lap while I was typing and demanded a pet, but every time I tried to scrub the permanently-in-need-of-petting spots on her head, her head would whip from side to side. What?

Finally realized the sun was reflecting off my watch so if I pet her head a bright DOT of light appeared on the wall and moved around enticingly only to disappear again when I pulled my hand back *because* her head was following the DOT so closely.

Cat-brain = fascination with DOTS OF LIIIIIGHT.

Always.

Oh, and the cursor moving around on the screen, of course, which makes me occasionally wish I had a transparent cat so I wouldn't be rubbernecking all around a cat's legs and tail like a ground-squirrel on drugs just to see where to click.

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primsong: (Default)
primsong

August 2023

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