Did you hear that there are new Dumbversation video podcasts up?
We have someone visiting us!
We’re calling him “Ike” for now, I don’t know that that’ll end up being his name, but he’s only going to be here ’til tomorrow morning. Another Challenger’s House foster mom rescued him at the emergency vet clinic. She didn’t have room for him at her place, so I took him, knowing that we’d figure out a way to fit him in somewhere. Luckily, the shelter manager told me that she’d have room for him after today, so he’s just passing through.
He’s three weeks old and (obviously) he’s awfully cute. He’s a pudgy, active, bright-eyed little guy. When I feed him, he purrs. When I kiss him, he purrs. When I clean him up, he purrs. When I put him in the big carrier with the heating pad and a big stuffed cat and a smaller stuffed bear, he crawls around and examines everything, then conks right out. He’s an active sleeper, this one. I’ll look at him (he’s in the computer room where I spend most of my time) one second and he’s in one position, then I glance again, and he’s in another position entirely. He moves onto the heating pad if he gets cold, then he moves off the heating pad if he gets hot.
He’s no dummy.
Apparently he was abandoned and found by the person who brought him to the clinic, but he mustn’t have been alone for long, because he’s in really good shape. (He was kind of nappy and flea-ridden, but the other foster mom who took him home cleaned him up and he’s an awfully pretty little thing.)
Don’t get me wrong – if the True Bloods didn’t have the whole surgery and recovering-from-surgery thing going on, I’d be glad to keep him. But with their surgery and their recovery and all the time I spend worriedly peering at them thinking “Is that eyelip going to pop right off his face and go bouncing across the room, or am I imagining things?”, I’m afraid he wouldn’t get enough attention.
It sure is hard to stop kissing his purring little face!
Since it was a holiday weekend here in the U.S., and since it was one of those holiday weekends where everyone grills out, we decided that Sunday we’d make a big grilling-out type meal of burgers, potato salad, three-bean salad, and I wanted to try Pioneer Woman’s/ Pam Anderson’s Best Baked Beans Ever.
Holy. Moly. She is NOT exaggerating when she says those are the best baked beans ever. They are SO good. And really, SO easy. I made them, put them in the oven, and then ignored them for two hours and voila! Yum!
I also made horseradish potato salad, which I’ve made before and which is super tasty as well.
The three-bean salad is more Fred’s thing than mine – it gives me heartburn – but I had a few bites, and it wasn’t bad.
And now… ::sigh:: It’s Fall, isn’t it? We go out every evening at dusk to lock the chickens in their coops and give the pigs their evening snack, and whereas at the middle of the summer it was after 8:00 when we were out there, we’re now done and back inside by 7:15 or so.
I’d complain, but to be honest it’s still so nice and warm that I don’t have a whole lot to complain about. It just seems wrong that the longest day of the year is in mid-late June, and then as the rest of the summer goes by, the days get shorter and shorter. It still feels like summer out there to me, the days should still be long, shouldn’t they?
I went out to the garden Sunday morning to pick the tomato plants bare. It was my intention to pick all the decent tomatoes and then have Fred pull up the tomato plants – this has been a very disappointing tomato year, let me tell you – but there were so many tiny green tomatoes still on the plants that we figured we’d just let them be. Either they’ll grow bigger and we can pick them, or the plants will die, and we’ll toss them to the chickens and pigs. Whatever happens, happens, right?
I have plenty of green tomatoes to make fried green tomatoes, in any case.
Jake and Elwood are truly making themselves at home, let me tell you.
Exhibit number one:
Do you see how close those boys are to Spanky? And do you see that Spanky is just laying there sound asleep, unbothered by their proximity? Do you know how often Spanky lets other cats get this close to him? Try NEVER.
Do you see that Jake is eating
OFF
THE
SAME
PLATE
as Kara? Do you SEE this? Do you see that Kara is neither hissing nor smacking nor stomping off in a huff? DO YOU SEE THIS? It’s like we’ve entered another universe completely. Kara does NOT like other cats all up in her shit. At Snackin’! Time!, she might occasionally get so excited that it is Snackin’! Time! that she accidentally rubs up against Tommy, but that’s okay because he’s the Ambassador of Love, and no one can hate having Tommy near them. Other times, she gets so excited at Snackin’! Time! that she accidentally rubs up against Spanky, but then an alarm goes off in her head and she thinks “MAYDAY MAYDAY AN INTRUDER CAT HAS ENTERED MY PERSONAL SPACE” and she hisses and smacks him first with one Paw o’ Doom and then the other.
But here, in this picture (let me refresh your memory):
Jake is all up in her shit, eating off her plate, and she just keeps on eatin’. Jake is NOT the first kitten to attempt to nomnomnom off her plate, and always before she has squeaked and then hissed and then double-smacked, and the poor subject of her rage has gone running.
Apparently Jake is special.
Never ever EVER thought I’d see the day. Ever.
Tomorrow, Terry goes to have his hernia fixed, his bits neutered, and possibly – hopefully – his eyes done as well.
I won’t lie, I will be so glad when all these babies have had their eye surgery. I’m going to drag Bill and Hoyt to the clinic with me tomorrow when I pick up Terry and ask the vet to give them the once-over. I think they look good, but reassurance from a real vet goes a long way toward calming my worrywart nature.
(Trick sentence! Nothing will stop me from worrying!)
Look who’s being greedy! Sookie doesn’t know if she wants to play with the mink tail or the packing strap, so she’s claiming both of them as her own.
Waiting for the feather toy to come juuuust a little lower.
Look at Sam back there, all sitting at attention! I can’t decide whether he looks more like a rabbit – you know how they sit up at attention before they go bounding off? – or a meerkat. A squirrel? Whichever, he’s such a cutie that pardon me, I must go pick him up and kiss him right this minute.
Look at Miz Poo back there, all disapproving of the little gray kittens.
Previously
2008: Yes, more chickens.
2007: No entry.
2006: I think that “Proven to be beneficial to livers” should be Fred’s new tagline.
2005: Give me some of that, Barbara Bush, you ignoramus.
2004: No entry.
2003: Because believe it or not, it never once occurred to me that the Walton family was comprised of hillbillies.
2002: Look, I drink a gallon of water a day. I need to know that I can pee when I need to, so stop rolling your eyes at me.
2001: No entry.
2000: Can I tell you how much I loathe Bret Easton Ellis?