Sunday, February 09, 2014

THE WINTER OF OUR PETS!

As usual, a bit of time has gone by since I had a chance to add to this blog.   Most of what ends up here in this blog is of general extended and historical family interests but sometimes it is simply miscellany such as this commemorating how our furry family members add to our lives in so many positive ways.

Christmas Day - wow, it has been a while -- Baxter was a part of our annual reading of The Littlest Angel - a wonderful story and our tradition since the girls were infants.  This year Baxter got into the act!  He started out a little bit happy to be on a lap, but by the time we got to the end, he was looking more resigned and less like he had scored. 
I generally start my days (when I don't have early appointments away from home) with my coffee and morning devotions. It's always a better day when I get God's perspective on life. If I can't read, I'll listen to Christian music on the radio while commuting, but my favorite time is in the mornings in my husband's chair.  In the photo above he was not in his chair either.  I was in his chair because I like it best.  He is very tolerant of me liking his chair best -- wonderful man.  Well, this one morning I sat down to read and got the dog to join me.  Not to be outdone the cats converged as well.  Usually whichever cat gets there first holds his territory.  And if the dog is around he often nips at the cats and chases them away.  But this one morning they called a truce and got along on the lap. 
My husbands perspective - if you can't see Baxter, he's the reflective green lights in a black background.
My perspective - and this is great -- all the little furry friends are WARM. 
 It's like having a lap full of little hand warmers. 
 
Last week we had a different experience with one of our furry family members.  One of the flaws of Caspian (the cat on the armrest in the top of the two photos and in the bottom right corner on the 2nd) will absolutely not use a litter box.  To my knowledge he has never used a litter box.  The problem with that is that he always has to be let outside.  Most of the time that works well and we just remember to put him out.  It used to be when we went to Portland for the weekend that his bowl of food and his furry body were left outside on the deck and Duncan (the cat by my feet in the first photo and on the top right of the second photo) was inside out of the weather.  We usually don't forget, but every now and then Caspian gets stuck inside.  In his defense, he contains his "accidents" to a spot in the laundry room downstairs or he does his business on the run in the main bathroom.  It is extraordinarily annoying, but he doesn't leave little presents around the house which is good. Otherwise he probably would never see the light of day.  Anyway, last week Kurt came home to discover that a little present had been left on the rug in the bathroom.  He took it out and shook it off the rug into the backyard  and left the rug out there to wait for a lone wash in the machine.  What he had not noticed but what I discovered when I came home was THIS!

Apparently from seeing people in action, he figured out that while he had no idea what people DID with this roll when they were done relieving themselves, he knew that he was supposed to be doing SOMETHING with it.  I took the  photo in the bathroom, but he had shredded this down the hall, probably chasing after it.  He had taken it out of a basket of replacement rolls which sits next to the toilet.  In the ten years that we have had cats in this house, we have NEVER had a cat tear apart a roll of toilet paper before.  Hopefully he will remember that this was not a successful attempt and not waste more.
 
The last of our winter animal events for this entry was today.   For the past few weeks while the rest of the country has been in the cold grip of an icy winter, we have had relatively mild temperatures.  But just to make sure that we knew it was still winter, we had a relapse of earlier snow this year and woke to a beautiful winter wonderland. 
 My husband had to go down and get the hummingbird food so we could warm it up for our little feathered friends.  The photo below is lousy, but shows the instant interest that the little hummers had in warm and tasty nectar.

Baxter surveys his kingdom, checking out and barking at songbirds, squirrels, crows, and cats (his own and others). It's always nice to have a white background for the little dog so everyone can actually see how cute he is!  A wonderful snow day to be a pampered pup!!


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