Mishkat

Short Update

2010-11-03T15:56:00.001-04:00

We apologize for not posting for so long! Everything is fine here. Our human unexpectedly had to assume responsibility for a large project at her job so she's been working almost every day. So she has not had time to help us blog and visit.

The good thing about the situation is that she hasn't had time to make the bed either. We've been enjoying that!

We want to send many purrs to everyone - and we're sending special purrs to our friends who are ill. We hope to be back as soon as possible. Please feel free to e-mail us!

Love and purrs from Franklin, Dobby, and Tasha (and mom Katie)

Finally Friday with Tasha

2010-10-08T00:00:00.087-04:00

Finally Friday! It's been a long week and the humans have been working far too many hours. We apologize for not blogging and visiting this week - we hope to do better next week. The good thing is that the weather has become warmer and sunny and we have been able to have the windows open.

A friend told us about some beautiful two-week old kittens that will need forever homes in several weeks, so we wanted to spread the word .

The kittens and their mother, a lovely dilute calico, were rescued by a very kind person, Victoria, after the mother gave birth outside Victoria's house in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

You can read more about the kittens on Victoria's blog here - and please spread the word if you can.

Thanks so much - and we hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mancat Monday with Franklin

2010-10-04T06:43:00.003-04:00

It's cool and rainy today - and we're sleeping!

Actually, Dobby is almost always sleeping. We have about 100 photos of him on this quilt and they all look exactly the same.

Back to bed for me!

P.S. Our human's tendinitis is acting up, or so she claims, so she may be really slow about visiting today. We will be around as soon as possible.

LiveStrong Together!

2010-10-02T00:00:00.055-04:00

We are joining Milo and Alfie and many other pet bloggers to support all beings who are currently dealing with cancer. We are also remembering our friends and family who have passed on. And we are purring for hope, courage and peace for all.

Love and purrs from the Mishkat cats and their humans.

P.S. Many thanks to Ann for the LiveStrong Together graphic we used in our collages.

In the garden with Franklin (sort of!)

2010-09-30T08:35:00.012-04:00

We don't have any actual garden photos today because our mom has been working some extra hours this week, and also because it's been raining on and off all week. We really needed this rain so we are very glad to see it.

We do have photos of LOOKING at the garden, which will prove that I'm not the only camera hog around here. Mom took these photos in about 5 minutes, in the following order.

This is the photo which started it. I am trying to look at my garden.

Oops, looks like a tortie heard the camera.

Hi Tasha!

Phew, she left without creating a scene. But I think I hear something else!

It's that big orange cat! I am not sure if there is room for both of us!

I'm outa here! Dobby can have the window.

(After I left, Tasha appeared again, and she and Dobby had the nerve to congratulate each other on successfully chasing me out of the window. I did get it back later, though!)

To see more gardening cat posts, please go over to Jonesie's. And have a great day!

Mancat Monday with Dobby: Thank you!

2010-09-27T00:00:00.131-04:00

It's taken forever for our human to post about it, but we want to send out a big thank you to the Casbah Kittens! We won some of their very cute (and very tasty!) night frogs in a giveaway. Our human thinks that they are too cute to be cat toys, but we talked her into giving them to us - and we think they are great.

Mom also ordered some Casbah Kitten jelly beans at the same time. We all love them, but they make Franklin act like he's crazy! He likes to hook them with one claw and throw them up in the air. It must be that homegrown Kentucky catnip.

And because I know everyone is going to ask: yes, Tasha liked the frogs too!

Thank you, Jane and Alice and Rita!

P.S. If you are looking for gifts for humans, we encourage you to check out Wildcat Woods Vintage Treasures. Our human bought several things from the Wildcat Woods human, Cheri, and they are really wonderful. We can only show you the great vintage rolling pin that she bought for herself because the rest of the items are for presents. Cheri gift-wrapped everything and included a very nice note on a handmade Wildcat Woods cat card. All proceeds go to help the Cats of Wildcat Woods - so it's a win-win situation.

Adopt A "Less-Adoptable" Pet!

2010-09-24T00:00:00.011-04:00

Hi everyone - Tasha here. When we first started thinking about a post to support Petfinder's Adopt A Less Adoptable Pet Week, I was shocked to find out that I qualify as a "less adoptable" cat just because I am blind in one eye. In fact, some people think I am funny-looking, if you can believe that! I think people like that do not appreciate true beauty.

I was also sad to find out that many pets do not get adopted because they are older. I was adopted when I was a 6-week-old feral kitten. My humans had not been planning on adopting and weren't sure they would be able to give me enough time and attention. We were all very lucky that they lived with Fletcher and Henry, two amazing senior cats who took me in hand and brought me up the right way.
Here is Fletcher giving me some instructions on how to be a good cat. He was about 13 when this photo was taken. I miss him a lot, and wish he and Henry were still around.

So, if you're thinking of adopting, please consider adopting a senior pet or a pet with a disability (like me!) We think we make the BEST pets.

To see and learn more about "less-adoptable" pets, please check out this week's posts from Cats of Wildcat Woods , Marg's Pets, Sparkle the Designer Cat, and many other blogs. We thank everyone who has posted and/or helped spread the word!

P.S. We are sending many purrs to the Cat's Cats family - their beloved senior cat Molly went to the bridge yesterday.

In the garden with Franklin

2010-09-23T00:00:00.009-04:00

Our cat calendar says that the autumn equinox for the Northern Hemisphere is today, but we looked it up and it really began here very late Thursday evening (11:09 p.m Eastern U.S. Time). And the September full moon - also known as the Harvest Moon - peaks today at 5:17 a.m. Eastern U.S Time. The full moon has not fallen on the autumn equinox since 1991, and it will not do so again until 2029, so it is a very auspicious day! NASA is calling this a "Super Harvest Moon."

We don't have any moon photos today since our humans are not very good at taking photos of that kind of stuff, but we wanted to show you our toad lilies (aka Tricyrtis hirta).They are just starting to bloom.
We are not sure why more people don't grow these. They like shade, and they do need some water throughout the year (you can see the brown spots on the leaves where mom forgot to water them during the droughts we've had!), but we think they are pretty easy to grow. Maybe the problem is the name "TOAD lily"? We like toads around here but we know some people think they are funny-looking.
Here is a close-up of the flowers - they look like tiny orchids.
And here is a close-up of me - this is kinda artsy because of the texture of the screen, but I like it.

We hope everyone has a very happy autumn (or a very happy spring, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere!) And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, please go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links.
P.S. If you have not seen our "Winnie's Wish" post, please click here to check it out! We are purring for all those kitties to find wonderful forever homes!

Tortie Tuesday: Winnie's Wish

2010-09-21T00:00:00.007-04:00

Tasha here. I am writing a special post today - it's about 6 cats that need homes. I was a rescued cat who probably would have died if my dad had not found me when I was a very sick 6-week-old kitten, so this is very important to me and my humans.

The cats have all been rescued by the wonderful and kind Chrystal of Daily Dose of Dogs aka Cats with your Coffee. She and her family run a small private animal rescue in Illinois, USA. If you're familiar with Chrystal's blog, you know that she and her family are caring and compassionate people who do so much to help animals.

Chrystal has a small cat house for her rescued cats, but it is full right now, so she cannot rescue any more animals until some are adopted - and there are many cats who need help where she lives. The Cat Blogosphere is hoping to help them by running a "Winnie's Wish" campaign to spread the word. (Winnie was a small gray kitten that passed away shortly after she was rescued this summer.)
Right now, Chrystal and family have 6 beautiful cats who need loving forever homes: Alice, Ash, Mooney, Possum, P.C., and Sparkles. You can read more about each of the cats on Chrystal's blog here. Here are a few photos:

Here is the beautiful Miss Alice. She has a calico tail!

And here is a photo of Ash. He looks like a mini-Franklin!

You can see many more photos on Chrystal's blog.

We are hoping to help Chrystal find forever homes for all these beautiful cats. If you can provide a home for one of these kitties, that would help so much. But we know that many of you can't (we can't either), so here are some other ways to help:

1. Spread the word! Send people to this post on Chrystal's blog: http://dogsandcats.typepad.com/blog/2010/09/winnies-wish.html
Our humans are not very good at helping us with social networking, but we know many of you have lots of connections.

2. Volunteer to provide part of a transport to forever homes.

3. Donate to help Chrystal and family with the expenses associated with their rescue. Every little bit helps! There is a PayPal button on the right sidebar of their blog under the photos of animals who need homes. Chrystal hopes in time to be able to build a larger cat house so she won't have to turn away any cat who needs help.

4. Purrs, woofs, and good thoughts are always needed, of course!

Our human has e-mailed with Chrystal and she is a really nice person. You can contact her at c3k [at] lazernetwireless.net or leave a comment on her blog.

Thanks so much - you all are the best! I'm sending you many tortie purrs.

Fuzzy Picture Friday with Dobby

2010-09-17T00:00:00.004-04:00

Here I am sleeping peacefully.

Mom, do you have to use the camera? You know what will happen now!

Told ya' so!

(Ooops! We had some technical difficulties with the bottom photo earlier - it's all our human's fault! - but they are fixed now. Sorry about that!)

We hope everyone has a great weekend!

In the garden with Franklin

2010-09-16T00:00:00.014-04:00

There are some plants in the garden that are very hard to photograph. Unfortunately, some of them are among our favorites. And if you think we have a lot of "favorite" plants, you are right!
The blue flowers are Lobelia "Crystal Palace". We try to grow this every year. Our camera just cannot get the color right. It's actually almost a neon blue without any lavender in it. The color is so pretty, but we can't show it to you in a photograph.
Our mom has taken about a hundred photos of these two plants and none of them look right. The ornamental grass is Calamagrostis brachytricha, also known as Korean feather reed grass. It looks like an ordinary clump of tall grass until early September, and then it grows beautiful feathery plumes. But the photos do not show how beautiful it is!
These white flowers are Kalmeris pinnatifida (also known as Asteromoea). This plant doesn't really have a common name but some people call it Japanese aster. We have this planted all over the yard - it blooms for a very long time in summer and fall, grows almost anywhere in sun or part shade, and looks good with almost all other plants. But it's also difficult to photograph.
Oh well, sometimes it's hard to get a good photo of me too!

Thanks for visiting our garden today! If you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, please go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links.P.S. Purrs needed!
Our friend Inigo (Rumblepurr's brother) is having heart problems and could use your purrs and good thoughts. And our friend Lynn is having her second carpal tunnel surgery tomorrow - purrs would be appreciated! She says the first surgery went so well that she moved up the date for the second one, and that all your purrs and good thoughts helped a lot.

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-09-14T00:00:00.001-04:00

Our mom has been really busy and hasn't had time to take photos, so we are featuring some old photos from our Flickr account. This one is from 2008, the year that mom's friend Cyn in Singapore talked her into watching American Idol for one season so they could discuss it via e-mail.

Our mom thought the show was okay, but it hurt our dad's ears so we've never watched it again. As you can see, I didn't like it very much either.

P.S. We tried to visit everyone yesterday but we had some real problems with Error 503 on Blogger. It took us two or three tries to leave a comment on most Blogger blogs, but we were unable to leave comments in a few places. We apologize (and we think Blogger should apologize too. They are interfering with our social life!)

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2010-09-13T00:00:00.005-04:00

Our human is working on another one of those "dead lines" again, so we thought we'd just post a couple of photos of me in the bedroom window. The back of our house faces almost directly south (SSE) so we do not get much sun in the bedroom until the end of August.

Needless to say, I've really been enjoying it! But Tasha has been confused about where the sun in the front of the house has gone. (She still hasn't found my window - yet!)

Happy Monday, and we'll be around to visit as soon as our human has time.

Fuzzy (and favorite toy) Friday with Tasha

2010-09-10T00:00:00.004-04:00

Here I am "going all tortie" on my favorite toy. I was moving so fast that the camera couldn't take a clear photo.

The humans buy us all kinds of cat toys but this one is my absolute favorite. It's a stretchy string that mom pulled out of the bottom of one of her winter jackets. She was going to throw it away, but when she saw me looking at it, she gave it to me. I LOVE it! I insist that my dad play string with me every day - especially right after he gets home from work.

We hope everyone has a great weekend - and lots of time to play with your favorite toys.

In the garden with Franklin

2010-09-09T00:00:00.008-04:00

What's in our garden today?

Lots of bees on the sedum flowers. (We think this is Sedum "Matrona.")

Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum "Pictum") .

This looks surprisingly good after the hot dry periods that we've had this summer. Most of our other ferns are pretty beat up.Here's a close-up of the leaves.

And last but not least, Dobby (along with some Virginia creeper that mom needs to pull off the house pretty soon!)

Thanks for visiting our garden today. And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, please go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-09-07T00:00:00.002-04:00

Happy Tortie Tuesday! I hope everyone's weekend was as good as mine was. It has been a bit cooler and much less humid here so I spent almost the entire weekend sleeping under blankets. My mom said a photo of a cat-shaped lump under a blanket was not very interesting for a blog post, so she had the nerve to lift up the blanket and take my picture! With the flash! I still don't have the humans trained very well.

But never mind that - I have a couple of announcements:
First, thanks very much to everyone who sent purrs to our friend Lynn for her carpal tunnel surgery! She can't type very much yet but she left the following message in the comments:
"Got my bandages off. Looking good and NO pain. I'm back to typing with both hands but will have to limit myself. Thanks everyone for your thoughts, prayers and purrs. It means a lot."
Her second surgery is in a few weeks so we hope that one is just as successful.

Secondly, if you are one of those humans who make things, our friend Dana of the Creek Cats is looking for handcrafted items for a silent auction to benefit the Beaufort Community Cat Project. You can read more on the Etsy for Animals blog here - there are also some great photos of some of the feral cats that have been helped by BCCP. We know how hard Dana and the other BCCP volunteers work and we think that this is a very worthy cause.

Many purrs to everyone!

Finally the weekend, plus Blackie update

2010-09-03T11:49:00.006-04:00

It's almost the start of the holiday weekend here in the U.S. and we are all very happy because our dad (and possibly our mom) will be home for an extra day! Hooray! We know the humans will be watching a lot of college football (Go Hokies!) so we'll get a lot of lap time.
We also have an update on our cousin Blackie. The photo above was taken when he was coming home from the vet last week, so he doesn't look his best, but we think he looks pretty good considering.

Blackie's humans talked to his vet, and she feels that his heart problems are quite serious, enough to preclude any further attempts at surgery. So his humans have decided to provide hospice care for him at home. So far, he's doing quite well - he is still eating a lot and is interacting with everyone. The swelling from the abscessed tooth has not returned. He has pre-filled pain medication shots in case he begins to experience pain but they haven't had to use them yet.

Our mom and her sister found the following links to be very helpful for guidance in making decisions about senior cat care and wanted to share them with everyone:

Dr. Truli's discussion on how to know when cats are in pain on VirtuaVet here. We think this is important to read because a cat's instinct is to mask pain.
The discussion on Cat's Cats about when to let your senior cat go to the bridge here. Many thanks to Cat for asking the question and special thanks to those who answered and shared their experiences.

And our mom's sister says to thank everyone again for all their purrs and good thoughts for Blackie.

P.S. The human says that this has been a very tiring week and she still has some work to complete over the weekend, so we're going to take a few days off. We hope everyone has a really good weekend - see you next week!

In the garden with Franklin

2010-09-02T00:00:00.001-04:00

It's September and we're starting to get more sun coming in the windows at the back of the house. And the hardy begonias are finally blooming!
These are Begonia grandis, and although they are not as showy as some of the tender begonia plants, they really do live through the winter (at least where we live - US Zone 6). They grow in part or full shade, and although they are supposed to like moist soil, ours are doing well even in some drier areas. They seed themselves all over but are easy to pull up where you don't want them. Here is what the plants look like from the back. They have a sort of red fur on the back of the leaves so they look beautiful when the sun shines through them.

We have never seen these for sale (although somebody somewhere probably sells them) but the lady who used to live next door to us gave some to our mom. We really like them!

Thanks for visiting our garden today. And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, please go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!P.S. We're sending lots of purrs to the Creek Cats and everyone else who lives near the path of Hurricane Earl.

Purrs for Sophia's Human

2010-09-01T00:00:00.005-04:00

Some of you know that Dobby has a beautiful orange girlfriend cat named Sophia. Sophia has a lovely human, Lynn (also known as LolaLynn), who is a talented artist and craftsperson. That's one of her paintings behind Sophia above. She's also a very kind human who does many things to help animals and other people.

Lynn has been having problems with carpal tunnel syndrome for a while. It's has finally become so painful that she has not been able to do a lot of things and has decided to have surgery. Her first surgery is tomorrow, and we want to send Lynn lots and lots of purrs and healing energy towards a successful procedure, an easy recovery, and, most importantly, pain relief. We hope you'll purr along with us!

P.S. Once again, many thanks to everyone for being so generous with your purrs and good thoughts.

Blackie Update II

2010-08-31T12:02:00.006-04:00

We wanted to let you know that our cousin Blackie is OK. During his surgery this morning, he started to have bad heart arrhythmia, so the vet took him off the anesthesia immediately and woke him up. He's still a bit woozy, but is recovering. However, the vet was not able to remove the tooth, and says that any future surgery is really iffy at this point.

Our human's sister and her family still have to make some decisions about what to do now. But since Blackie has been feeling so much better after an antibiotic injection that he received at the vet about 10 days ago, they may just keep him on antibiotic injections and pain meds for his tooth, and see how he feels as time goes by.

Right now we are all just glad that Blackie is all right! We think that he must have a very good vet.

Thanks again for your purrs and good thoughts - they really means a lot to all of us. My mom's sister Kris sends special thanks!

Purrs to all of you -
Franklin, Dobby, Tasha, and Mom Katie

Blackie Update

2010-08-30T18:20:00.001-04:00

We would appreciate your purrs once again for our cousin Blackie. He is having surgery tomorrow (Tuesday) to remove his abscessed tooth. He had a good vet visit today: his eye is almost healed and his blood pressure is way down, but he still needs to get the tooth out to feel better.

The vets will use the lightest possible anesthesia and be as careful as they can, but there is a possibility that Blackie won't make it through the surgery, since he's an older cat and has some ongoing physical issues. His family has been able to spend a lot of time with him this past week and they are OK with knowing that it might be Blackie's time to go across the bridge.

And thanks again for your purrs for Blackie and his family (including his brother, Puck, above). We appreciate it more than we can say - everyone has been so kind and caring.

Our mom will update this post Tueday afternoon or evening as soon as she knows anything.

Purrs from Franklin, Dobby, and Tasha, and mom Katie

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2010-08-30T00:00:00.006-04:00

A package for us came the other day from Robyn at VivaLeChat. She makes these amazing knitted mice full of catnip. We all love them, but Tasha or Franklin usually get to play with them before I do.
This time my mom handed the mouse right to me, so I got to play with it first!And I made a complete fool of myself! The humans were really proud of me because I am usually too shy to play when they are watching, but this time I couldn't help myself.
I'm giving this mouse four big paws up! Thanks, Robyn!
P.S. The humans say they like buying from VivaLeChat because Robyn donates a third of what she earns by selling mice on Etsy to imom.org to help people who cannot afford necessary emergency vet care for their companion animals. And these mice are really well made and durable - so it's a good deal for everyone (especially me!)

Scafflaw Week - starring Tasha!

2010-08-27T00:00:00.008-04:00

The lovely Miss Fin is hosting Scafflaw Week, for all cats who enjoy breaking rules!
I am sure everyone knew that I would be the one from our house who would be featured. Franklin and Dobby are occasional rulebreakers, but torties don't believe in rules. Period. So we don't have many rules around here at all, but the humans insist on one thing:

Cats Should NOT Eat Plastic Bags!

I think this is a really silly rule because plastic bags are delicious! I've even trained Dobby to chew on them! But the humans keep saying it's bad for us. So our house is a plastic-bag free zone, except for our mom's sewing room. We are not allowed to go in there because it's full of ziplock bags, which I think are the most yummy kind.

But every once in a while I sneak in and this is what happens. (I'm still not sure how mom got these photos of me. It was incredibly sneaky and rude!)Here I am nomming on the bag. Yum yum! And here's it looked like after I was done. I didn't even get a piece torn off before mom took the bag away!Lately I've been reduced to chewing on mom's reusable grocery bags. I figured out fast that they were made of delicious polypropylene. She didn't get it until I'd already chewed the handle off one and started working on another one. So now she's hiding those too. It's hard being a cat sometimes!
We hope everyone has a great weekend! (And our human says PLEASE do not eat any plastic bags!)
P.S. Our mom's beautiful niece Jenny and mom's sister Kris asked us to say thanks to all of you for your purrs for Blackie. They really appreciate the support!

In the garden with Franklin

2010-08-26T00:00:00.003-04:00

Happy garden day! It's been much much cooler and less humid here this week, which is very nice, especially for us furry people.

A couple of cats asked us about hummingbird plants. The preferred hummingbird plant in our garden this year is Salvia coccinea "Lady in Red". We're not sure about the common name for this plant, but some people call it hummingbird sage, which fits! We have tried a couple of cultivars but we like "Lady in Red" the best. These are tender perennials - it is too cold here for them to live over the winter.
We usually plant these in the yard, but since our mom wasn't supposed to dig this spring, we put the ones that she had grown from seed in pots on our porch. They are doing really well so we might do it again next year. And if you look really closely at the top of this photo, you can see our neighbor's hummingbird feeder in the background. He says we get more hummingbirds on our salvia than he does at his feeder!

The hummingbirds also like our Buddleia (butterfly bushes).This one below is Nanho Blue - it's our favorite. The leaves are narrow and silvery.
We don't know the cultivar name of this purple Buddleia below. It was the one plant growing in back of our house when we moved in. It was a big mess back there but somehow this plant managed to survive. The hummingbirds like both varieties - and so do the butterflies.

Thanks for visiting our garden today. And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, please go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!

Tortie Report

2010-08-24T15:45:00.002-04:00

I'm not too happy with my human for falling asleep last night and not putting up my Tortie Tuesday post. But her sister fell asleep too so we didn't get to hear the update on Blackie until this morning. So it might have worked out for the best (although I imagine that my fan club was probably extremely disappointed!)

Once again, we need to thank you for all the purrs and good thoughts! Blackie is doing better than his family or the vet expected. My mom's sister says that all his blood work looks good except for his ongoing thyroid issues, which are under treatment, and that his eye infection looks a bit better. One of the scariest problems he had was high pressure in his eyes, and that has gone down to normal levels with eye drops and other medications.

The vet is thinking that Blackie might be able to have the surgery to remove his infected tooth next week, but that decision will be made later. Meanwhile, he will continue to receive treatment at home. He has to take blood pressure meds, increased thyroid meds, and eye drops (not fun), but his humans are also supposed to try and see if they can make him gain a little weight, so he's getting all the food that he wants (sounds great!). Our mom's niece bought him all kinds of good food to help him gain weight and he's enjoying all of it. We are envious, but we know that he really deserves it. Thanks again for all your purrs for Blackie. Our mom is kinda skeptical about the benefits of purring, but she's starting to believe a little. And I'm purring too, of course!

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2010-08-23T00:00:00.003-04:00

It's Monday again!

We want to thank everyone for their purrs, prayers, and good thoughts for our cousin Blackie. His family is not on Blogger, but they have been reading your comments and really appreciate them. Blackie was not feeling too well the day that he came home from the vet, but he seems to have improved a little since then. His family still has to wait for the results of some tests and then talk to the vet some more.

We hope everyone has a good week - we're sending many purrs to all of you! Thanks again for your kindness.

Purrs needed for our cousin Blackie

2010-08-20T00:00:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone! We would really appreciate it if you could send purrs and good thoughts to our cousin Blackie and his human family. He just went to the vet yesterday and the prognosis is not great. Blackie is 15 years old and has an eye infection, plus an abscessed tooth and a suspicious growth on his leg, both of which will require surgery. But the vet says that Blackie's chances of surviving surgery are not the best because he is hyperthyroid (on medication), has a heart murmur, and weighs only 8 pounds. He is on antibiotics now to make him more comfortable, and he has had blood tests. He goes back to the vet on Monday.

Our mom's sister and her family know that they might have to make the quality of life decision for Blackie soon, so we are asking for purrs and good thoughts to help them make the decision easier for them, and also purrs and good thoughts to make Blackie feel as much better as possible while he is going through all this. He is a really nice cat and his family loves him very much (we do too), and they want to do the best thing for him.

Thanks so much - you all are the best!

In the Garden with Franklin

2010-08-19T00:00:00.012-04:00

We are so sad here about the sorrowful news from around the Cat Blogosphere, and we're sending many purrs to everyone. But we decided to go ahead and do our gardening post to remind ourselves that life continues to go on. This is a one really good reason to have a garden - it does make you realize that.

We've had a lot of rain the past few days. We have had torrential downpours with no thunder and lightning, which is unusual for this area. Our mom says it reminds her of Hawaii, and it does feel tropical. We cats are glad because it isn't as hot as it was during much of July and August, although it's very humid and sticky.
We want to show you one special plant that shows up in our yard about this time every year. These are Indian Pipes (the scientific name is Monotropa unifolia). We had never seen these plants in person before, but our mom recognized them from wildflower books. Unfortunately, these photos did not turn out very well because our mom had to crawl way up under the hemlock hedge to get them, and the flash washed out all the details. If you want to see better pictures, check out the Indian Pipe page on Wikipedia
Indian pipes are sometimes pink, but ours are pure white. They were growing in our yard when we moved here. You can't transplant them because they need a very special environment - they grow in deep shade and are parasitic on mycorrhizal fungi that have a symbiotic relationship with tree roots. (Lots of plants have relationships with mycorrhizal fungi - it helps them to grow.) We were afraid that they wouldn't come back this year because it's been so dry, but they showed up right on schedule.

Thanks for visiting our garden today. If you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, please go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha UPDATED

2010-08-17T15:33:00.006-04:00

We're interrupting Tortie Tuesday to bring you the following impawtant announcement:

We just found out that the Casbah Kitten mom's e-mail has been hacked - so if you have received any weird e-mails from Rita about being mugged on a trip to the UK, they are FAKE! You can read more about this scam here.

Now back to Tortie Tuesday, already in progress:

Yes, my foot is in the air. Now can I finish my bath in peace?

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2010-08-16T00:00:00.002-04:00

I think good grooming is essential for all mancats. I like to be brushed every once in a while during shedding season, but I do a pretty good job taking care of my fur.

Franklin disagrees about grooming. He'll do a little licking here and there, but mom has to go after him with the brush and furminator every week or so. A lot of hair comes off!

We are not sure if he just wasn't raised right or if he thinks it's not worth the trouble, but we think it's the latter. Mom says we are all lucky that he has short hair because otherwise he'd be a mess all the time.

We hope you have a great week, no matter what your grooming habits are! (And please don't suggest that I give Franklin a bath - I have tried, but he takes it as an invitation to a wrestling match!)

Versatile Blogger Award: Human Edition

2010-08-14T17:40:00.004-04:00

Ellen, Au, and Target of Katz and Other Tales gave us the Versatile Blogger Award! Thank you so much.

Here are the "rules" - Ellen called them a "To-Do List", which we prefer!

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award:
Thank you Ellen, Au, and Target of Katz and Other Tales! If you do not follow their blog, we highly recommend it. It has cat posts (usually Tuesday and Friday) and posts by Ellen on other days. The cats prefer the posts about Au and Target, but I am most interested by Ellen's posts about life in Malaysia (her book reviews are great too.) Ellen is a columnist, writer and author - you can read her writing credits here.

2. Share 7 things about yourself:
According to Ellen, this has to be about the human, so here goes! Note that these may be repetitive of the answers I have given for other awards - I was too lazy to go back and check.

I'm a soil scientist but started out in college as an art major. I gave up on doing art as a career after working in an advertising agency part time during college, but I still like to do it for fun - plus I get to do scientific illustration sometimes.
My father was born in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar) and I was fortunate enough to be able to live in Japan and Hawaii when I was a child.
As a result of the above, Japanese food is my "comfort food". My favorite is norimaki sushi. I'm very pleased that this is now sold in our local grocery store even though we live in a relatively small town.
I'm addicted to reading. My favorite authors are mostly women - in particular Ursula LeGuin, Lee Smith, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell's alter-ego), Alice Munro, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, and probably a lot more that I can't think of right now!
This blog was originally intended to have both posts about the cats and posts about me - hence the title, which is a combination of two of my nicknames. I soon found that it is much easier for me to blog about the cats that it is to blog about myself - and that more people are interested in hearing about the cats!
(I love to use parentheses when I write - I think they imitate voice rhythms. I usually go back through anything I've written and delete parentheses because I know I overuse them.)
I really dislike being photographed or videotaped, but couldn't resist posting the following photo. This is me working at one of my favorite field sites in the Virginia coalfields several years ago. Pat, the woman who took the photo, was doing the GPS for me - she particularly likes the photo because all the guys are standing around talking while I'm working. To be fair, the guys really did help - the guy in the middle ("Bear") dug this and 20 more soil pits for me with his backhoe. They are letting me do my job without interfering.

3. The original instructions say to "pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic." I've been so busy lately that I do not have very many "recently discovered" bloggers. So I'd like to pass the award on to 5 bloggers who are members of the Society of Feline Gardeners (hosted by the lovely Jonesie!):

The Cory Cat Blog human
The Four Crazy Cats human
Tiny and Lautrec's human
Alfie and Milo Marshall's human (we checked and they already did this award, but Alfie and Milo answered the questions instead of the mom!)
The Casbah Kitten human

Note to all - please only do this if you feel like it! Franklin and I have really enjoyed doing the Society of Feline Gardeners, and we'd like to recognize some of the other bloggers who participate.

Finally Friday with Franklin

2010-08-13T00:00:00.003-04:00

It's been so hot here that I am the only one in the house that's been active at all. I think it is because I am the only one here who doesn't need to lose weight. (Mom says it's rude to say that, but it is true! The vet says I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I think that vet is delusional!)
Tasha's been lying around like this. I don't know why everyone thinks she's a supermodel.

And the humans let Dobby sleep on the coffee table (where we are NOT allowed!) because he was so hot. I think this is unfair to skinny cats.

Our humans have been suffering from the heat also. Mom refused to help me with my gardening post yesterday because she said it was too hot to go outside and take photos. I gave her lots of purrs last night after she went to bed to try and make her feel better but I'm not sure if it worked or not.

The good news is that it's supposed to cool down into the mid-80's (about 30 degrees C) next week. Plus we might get some rain. We're glad to hear this because our water bill doubled last month because of all the watering we've been doing in the garden.

We hope everyone has a good weekend - and we're also hoping for great weather for everyone (including us, of course!) next week.

P.S. Our mom will still be working on her Dead Line this weekend but she'll be around to visit everyone as soon as she can. She says the heat is interfering with her ability to leave coherent comments and that she hopes everyone will understand.

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-08-10T00:00:00.001-04:00

Here I am hanging out in MY cat cubes. The boys sometimes play in them when I'm not looking but they really belong to me! We have three cubes hooked together, so the middle one is great for storing toys. You can see that I have MY special tortie soccer balls that the Monkeys sent to me stashed in there. The boys are not supposed to play with these either, but they sometimes do.
Our living room fan blows right onto the front of the cube so I like to rest my head on the edge to catch the breeze. The humans think this cannot be comfortable, but it is. And they also say I look silly! In my opinion, they are the ones who are silly. Torties always look good!

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2010-08-09T00:00:00.002-04:00

Happy Monday, everyone! The humans let us keep the window open this weekend because it was not humid for a change, and Franklin and I really enjoyed it. We love our air conditioner, but open windows are the best. Our mom is going to be really busy this week (another one of those silly Dead Lines), and while she says she will do the best she can to post and visit, she might not be able to. We think she is a slacker, but never mind! She had to move her office AGAIN last week and she's still complaining about it. One of the guys she works with saw her carrying boxes of stuff down the stairs and suggested that she get rid of some of her 20 zillion pieces of old paper so she wouldn't have to move them all the time. We think that is a good idea, and we would even help her shred them - but of course, she doesn't listen to us! Anyway, if we don't get to visit you, you will know why.

We also wanted to let you know that the Zoolatry girls' dad, Vic, is very sick, and could use your purrs and good thoughts. We are sending many purrs to Vic, Ann, Maggy, Zoey, and the rest of their family.

And our beautiful Siamese friend Chey has been having problems with an unexplained illness - she would very much appreciate your purrs too.

Thanks! And we hope everyone has a good week!

In the garden with Franklin

2010-08-05T00:00:00.005-04:00

Hi everyone! I missed doing my gardening post while we were on blogcation, and I'm glad we're back.

I wanted to talk about some flowering shrubs today but there are so many mosquitoes in our back yard right now that the humans did not feel like taking a lot of pictures. So I'm just going to talk about our pink clethra. (We hear that some people call clethra summersweet but everyone we know just calls it clethra - it is technically Clethra alnifolia.)
We had never heard of clethra until we read about it when we were learning about plants that are native to the eastern U.S. We were lucky enough to find it at a local gardening center. It blooms in late July and early August right outside my favorite window and it smells SO good when it blooms.
And the flowers are really pretty too.

Clethra is supposed to like a semi-shady spot with moist soil, but it is doing really well in the yucky clay fill on the north side of our house where it gets no sun for half the year. Plus the guys that removed the ice from our roof this winter broke off about half of it at ground level and it just grew right back. So we know it is one tough plant - and that's the kind we like to have in our yard.

Happy Thursday! If you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, including my doppelganger Alfie's, go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-08-03T00:00:00.002-04:00

We only get sun at the front of our house late on summer days, so every evening, no matter how hot it is, I make sure to take a long bath in the sunshine in the front window. Everyone else in the house thinks I am crazy, but I think the sun feels good.

And I also have an impawtant announcement! Our very talented blogfriend, Cindy, is giving away a beautiful custom made necklace with a Viking braid and a wire-wrapped stone. The necklace is absolutely gorgeous - and the winner gets to pick the kind of stone and wire they would like! Click here to see the giveaway - it's really easy to enter by leaving a comment, and you can get extra entries by signing up to follow Cindy's blog, or by spreading the word.

Happy Tortie Tuesday!

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2010-08-02T00:00:00.001-04:00

My beautiful girlfriend, Sophia, asked to see a photo of me "strutting my stuff". The problem is that there aren't any photos of that! I do strut around sometimes, but not for long, and I don't really like to be photographed while doing it.
Here's the best I could do. I am sitting on my dad's lap thinking about strutting my stuff - you can tell that I'm about to run around because my ears are back.
And here I am resting after playing with Franklin. My mom said she thought Sophia would really like this photo, even though I am sleeping, because I look so cuddly. (I'm not sure if mancats are supposed to look cuddly, so I hope my mom is right!)

P.S. I want to thank everyone who came to our birthday party! We really appreciate all of your good wishes - and we're sending everybody many purrs.

Finally Friday - and it's our birthday weekend!

2010-07-30T00:00:00.008-04:00

Hi, it's Franklin here. Since I'm the only one that's awake around here, I get to be the post author!

We are all VERY glad that it's Finally Friday. Our mom worked a lot more overtime than she anticipated, so our blogcation was longer than we expected. (Plus we did not get enough attention while she was working.) But she was able to get a lot of work done and she is happy about that.

But enough about that - this is our birthday weekend! Our humans are not sure exactly when any of us were born, but they guess that Tasha was born during the last week in July and that I was born in early August. We don't know about Dobby, but his gotcha day is sometime in August, so the humans just gave us all an August 1 birthday so they could keep track. I am gonna be FIVE - but I'm still a kitten compared to the other two.

Tasha will be SEVEN!

And Dobby will be seven too!

We will be partying all weekend (in between naps, of course) so we invite all of you to come on over to help us celebrate!

We'll have fresh catnip.

Temptations (my favorite!)

And if you're still hungry, you can have some of our kitty crunchies. But make sure to get here before Tasha eats everything!

We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend - see ya Monday!

Updated! Sammy and Joey have homes

2010-07-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

Updated to let everyone know that Sammy and Joey have found homes! You can read all about it on Love and Hisses here. We can't tell you how happy we are about this - we have been so concerned. Thanks so much to all of you for your purrs and good thoughts - and please continue to send your purrs to the boys for a smooth and happy transition to their new homes.

Hi all! We are still on blogcation (we hope to be back soon), but we needed to let everyone know about Sammy and Joey. You may remember reading about them on here before, but their situation has now become urgent. Their brother Simon has thankfully been adopted, but Sammy and Joey must find a place to go by Thursday night or they will have to go to Animal Control. We are afraid for them since they are both very shy.

Sammy and Joey are in Northern Alabama. A foster home is fine, and the boys do not have to be adopted together.

You can read more about them at Love and Hisses here:
or on their Petfinder pages here:
Sammy
Joey

Please spread the word if you can. And please purr for a good outcome for these guys.

Thanks so much,
Franklin, Tasha, and Dobby

(Short) blogcation

2010-07-11T10:39:00.004-04:00

The human says we have to take a short blogcation. She has another one of those stupid "deadlines" at work (whatever that is!) and she is having trouble switching back and forth from the boring writing that she does at work to writing about all the interesting things we do and think.
We think she should just stick to writing about us, but she says it has something to do with green papers. We are glad we don't have to worry about those!
We hope everyone has a wonderful week, and if you need us for anything, please e-mail. We will miss seeing everyone!

Purrs from Dobby, Franklin, and Tasha

In the Garden with Franklin

2010-07-08T00:00:00.002-04:00

The big garden news is that it is HOT here! Yesterday was a record high and today is not going to be much cooler. We know it gets even warmer where some of you are, but this is really hot for us!
We haven't had any significant rainfall in a long time.The human has been spending hours moving the sprinkler around to water some of the plants in the garden (we don't bother watering the lawn).

The birds like to hang out in the sprinkler spray. We have a dish of water for them but they much prefer the running water. Here's a really bad photo of a cardinal taking a bath in the sprinkler water (mom took this through the screen, so it's sorta fuzzy!) We are purring for rain, but some of our plants, like the purple coneflowers (Echinacea), seem to be doing OK without it. Most of the other plants aren't as happy.
Happy Thursday! And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, including my doppelganger Alfie's, go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-07-06T01:37:00.006-04:00

My human says that this photo of me looks really angelic.

And this one doesn't!

Happy Tortie Tuesday!

P.S. Edited later to add: Yikes! Blogger is having a problem showing comments (we thought it was Tasha's yawn scaring everyone away!) Plus the comments we are leaving on other Blogger blogs are disappearing.
The Monkeys' mom gave us this link to the Blogger help thread (thanks, Karen!) and it looks like it's a problem all over the place:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?hl=en&tid=3dcb02c83302034f

Mancat Monday with Franklin

2010-07-05T00:00:00.003-04:00

Our human said that everybody is going to get tired of photos of Dobby and me sleeping in the same place on the bed, but since we're still hanging out there most of the time, you may get to see even more of them! She also thought that this one was unique because Dobby is actually allowing me to snuggle with him - probably because he is sound asleep.

I would love to cuddle with Dobby and Tasha more often but they don't usually let me. The humans say that might have something to do with the fact that I just can't help putting the bitey on them to show how much I love them!

P.S. Our human is very happy that one of her favorite animal charities, Help Animals India, was chosen as the Etsy for Animals charity of the month for July 2010! You can read her blog post about it on the Etsy for Animals blog here.

Fuzzy Friday with Dobby

2010-07-02T00:00:00.003-04:00

As most of you probably know, I am not a diva cat. I do not care about having my picture taken - in fact, I try to avoid it! But the humans insist on photographing me. Here, the human was trying to take my picture while I was peacefully sleeping in the breeze from the open window (this really isn't that fuzzy except for the curtain!)
Here's the fuzzy part: Franklin heard the camera and came rushing in.More fuzzies: Tasha had to show up too. No matter what she says, she can't resist the sound of a camera either.
Notice all the kitty litter all over the floor. The kitty litter and cat hair are reaching critical mass around here and our human says she HAS to vacuum this weekend - among other things.

P.S. We hope everyone has a great weekend - and Happy 4th of July to those of you in the U.S.!

<---P.P.S. If you are not on our left sidebar, and want to be, please leave us a comment. Our human has not been maintaining it all that well (to say the least!) Thanks!

In the garden with Franklin

2010-07-01T00:00:00.005-04:00

Dobby is helping me snoopervise the garden today. I appreciate the help but sometimes it's a little hard to see out the window when his rear end is blocking the view.

Most of our daylilies are blooming this week, so I wanted to show you our favorites. The orange one below is Dobby's favorite (of course). We got it from a friend, and we think it is called "Flore Pleno". It is a triple-petaled version of the common orange daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) that often grows by the side of the road. Everyone around here calls them "ditch lilies".
Tasha's favorite is this one: "Baby Tiger Paws". It's perfect for torties!
Here's a close-up of the flowers.
The one below is my favorite - at least until the plant breeders come up with a gray daylily! It is called "Dallas Star". It's also my mom's favorite.
Happy Thursday! And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, including my doppelganger Alfie's, go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links! We are hoping that Jonesie and everyone else in the Pacific Northwest saw a little sun this past week - it's been very cool and damp there.
P.S. Happy Canada Day to all our friends in Canada!

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-06-29T00:00:00.002-04:00

Happy Tortie Tuesday! Here I am in my favorite place to sit - right in the middle of the living room window. Sometimes I have to share it with Franklin and Dobby, but lately they have been obsessed with being in the air conditioned bedroom, so I have the window all to myself.If only the humans would stop taking my picture, things would be purrfect!

P.S. our human is going to be very busy for the next few days so she says we have to skip Wordless Wednesday (!!!) We'll be around to visit everyone as soon as we can.

Mancat Monday with Franklin

2010-06-27T23:10:00.003-04:00

Happy Monday! It's been so hot here that our dad finally gave in and put an air conditioner in our bedroom. Dobby and I have been hanging out in there even more than we usually do. Tasha has watched all the World Cup* games with the humans this weekend, but I have not been very interested. (There is no air conditioner in the living room!)

Dobby loves the air conditioner! He refuses to leave the bedroom except to eat and use the litter box.
Here is one of the ways Dobby likes to sleep. We think he looks like a sleeping duck!

We hope everyone has a good day, and a great week!

*In case you want to know, the humans are sad that the U.S. lost in the knockout round, but think that Ghana deserved to advance. They are still going to watch the rest of the games. Our mom is cheering for Japan now (long shot!)

Fuzzy Friday

2010-06-25T00:00:00.006-04:00

Our human has a lot of blurry pictures of us that are too cute to delete, so we decided to start doing Fuzzy Friday. We thought we stole this idea from The Monkeys, but they claim they got the idea from us! They definitely came up with the name, though.

Both of today's Fuzzy Friday shots are of Tasha the supermodel. The human really wishes these were in focus.

Tasha hears something outside!

Tasha is listening to something behind her (thus the owl ears).

Happy Friday - and we hope everyone has a great weekend! See ya Monday.

In the Garden with Franklin

2010-06-24T00:00:00.010-04:00

Hi everyone! It's been very hot here so a lot of flowers are blooming, and I can hardly keep up with supervising everything that's happening in the garden. This is part of what I can see when I'm looking out of the front window. (The human says please ignore the lawn - the people who used to live here parked cars all over it and it is a big mess.)

I keep a close watch on both the garden, and on anyone who is in or near our front yard. And even though the humans don't seem to realize it, the house and yard across the street belongs to me too. I do not like it when the man who lives in my Other House comes outside into MY territory. My humans are always making fun of me for this - they claim that house and yard belongs to him!
We grow plants which like dry and sunny conditions all around our mailbox, since it is in one of the only parts of our yard which gets full sun all day. Everyone on our street likes this garden - even the mailman.

From left to right, the plants are Santolina chamaecyparissus; then thyme and California poppies (Eschscholzia californica); then two kinds of ornamental oregano. We don't know the name of the light green oregano but the dark green one is "Herrenhausen" and it is a great plant. I will post more pictures when it blooms.

(Everyone always wants to know if the humans eat the oregano. It is edible, but it doesn't taste like anything. It is just meant to be pretty.)
We used a gravel mulch in this garden so the California poppies would reseed themselves and it works. So far, they have come back every year. Of course, weeds seed themselves in there too, so we have to pull them out a lot. We also put a lot of rocks in there so the humans who park on our street for football games wouldn't step on the plants - this seems to work pretty well too.

Happy Thursday! And if you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, including my doppelganger Alfie's, go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-06-23T00:00:00.001-04:00

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-06-22T00:00:00.004-04:00

I want to thank Inigo and Rumbles of Rumblebum for making me one of their Foxy Friday picks! I shared the post with the pawsome Miss Daisy - which made it even better!
The Rumblebum staff also made this great graphic of me and gave me permission to post it today. I love it, and so do my humans!

I'm normally not a huge fan of mancats since the boy cats I live with can be a bit disrespectful. But I think Inigo and Rumblepurr are true gentlecats.
I'm sending many purrs to both of them! (In case you are wondering, claws out means I'm happy!)

P.S. Rumbles is in the running to be New Zealand's next Top Cat Model! This is a great contest because five of the top 10 finalists will be chosen from the cats who raise the most money to help animal charity. Rumbles is raising money for the Cats Protection League of Wellington. Right now, he's having a contest for everyone who donates - you can read more about it here. (Our human says to say that the New Zealand dollar exchange rate is really favorable, so you get a lot of bang for your dollar, or pound, or whatever.) Rumbles has my vote for sure!

Mancat Monday with Franklin

2010-06-21T00:00:00.006-04:00

Happy Monday, and a very happy Summer Solstice to everyone! We are in our favorite sleeping spot again. Our house does not have air conditioning, so this is a good place to hang out when it is hot outside.

At least I opened my eyes halfway for these photos. Dobby didn't even try! We hope everyone has a very happy week, and that it is not too hot (or too cold!) where you are.

In the garden with Franklin

2010-06-17T00:00:00.019-04:00

Franklin here - and welcome to our garden (I am not actually outside, but it does say "Gardener" on the curtains.)

I'm going to try to explain the difference between Pelargoniums and Geraniums. If you think this is boring, you can just look at the pictures!

The plants that most people call "geraniums" are really in the genus Pelargonium. The plants that many people call "cranesbills" are in the genus Geranium. They are also sometimes referred to as "hardy geraniums". My human says it's all Linnaeus's fault!

This is a Pelargonium (the photo is from the University of Georgia because all our pelargoniums were eaten by vishus mealybugs last winter). They come in lots and lots of colors besides red. Pelargoniums are killed by frost, so we have to bring them inside in the winter.

All the rest of the photos are Geraniums. Almost all Geraniums are hardy - you can plant them in the yard and they survive throughout the winter. We have lots and lots of Geraniums around our house because we found out that they will grow almost anywhere. Every time we have a problem getting plants established in a particular spot, we put in a Geranium. They grow in the dry shade under a hemlock hedge! The only thing they don't seem to like is bright hot sun all day.

Our Geraniums mostly bloom in the spring, and by the time we remembered to get these pictures, they had almost gone over. So you will see a lot of seed pods.
This is Geranium x cantabrigiense 'Karmina'. This was the first geranium that we acquired, and it is how we found out what great plants they are. (The original of this plant is older than Tasha!) The leaves on this plant have a very good smell.Our former neighbor gave us these white flowered Geraniums, so we do not know the name (if anyone knows, we would love to hear it). These make big clumps that are taller than I am.
We grew these pink Geraniums from seed! They are Geranium sanguineum "Vision Pink". Sometimes these will bloom on and off all summer if we remember to take off the seed pods.
Phew! I hope I explained this well enough so that people don't get even more confused! It was exhausting - I think I need a nap!

If you want to see more Feline Gardener posts, including my doppelganger Alfie's, go over to Jonesie's and click on the auto-links!
P.S. Our human says she is really tired from physical therapy, too much worrying, and other things, and isn't doing a good job blogging or visiting (we agree!) So we are going to take a break until next Monday. See you then!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-06-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-06-15T00:00:00.004-04:00

Happy Tortie Tuesday! The humans took the quilt book away from me because I wouldn't stop chewing on the cover. So I'm thinking about eating some of mom's work papers in revenge. It's her own fault for leaving them on the floor.
P.S. Do you like my new box? It's really strong cardboard and I haven't been able to put much of a dent in it so far - but I'm still working on it

Mancat Monday (early!): Brothers

2010-06-13T19:00:00.002-04:00

We are posting this a few hours early because our human has been having problems with Auto-publish (we suspect user error!). Anyway, we debated using this photo for our Wordless Wednesday post, but it was so appropriate for Mancat Monday that we decided to post it today.

And speaking of mancats, we wanted to post one more plea for purrs, good thoughts, and maybe a new home for these three mancats in northern Alabama (relatively nearby cities include Birmingham, AL; Atlanta, GA, Nashville, TN, and Knoxville, TN.) We forgot to mention earlier that the boys do NOT need to be adopted together.

Please feel free to right-click and copy the above blog badge our human made (we have permission to use the photos). Or e-mail our human at katmish at gmail dot com to get a copy. We have linked it to Love and Hisses (direct link: http://www.love-and-hisses.com/?p=1630). You can also check out the boys' Petfinder pages here: Sammy, Joey, Simon

And please spread the word if you can. Murph's new family heard about him on Ravelry, which is a site for knitters and crocheters, so you never know!

We hope everyone has a great week!

"Hey Tony"

2010-06-10T23:07:00.001-04:00

(This is the first time we have ever tried to embed a video - so we hope it works!)
Louie Ludwig is an long time friend of our human who lives in Louisiana. He's on the left in the very, very, old photo above. Our human is on the right. Please don't laugh TOO hard - they were going to a (sort of) costume party!

Louie is a singer-songwriter. He wrote a song called "Hey Tony" about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill - addressed in particular to the comment by Tony Hayward about his desire to have his "life back" - and put it on YouTube. Our human is not a musician, but she thinks it is a good song. We hope you think so too!

P.S. Purrs and good thoughts urgently needed for Anya and Kareltje!

Gardening with Franklin?

2010-06-10T00:00:00.004-04:00

Since my friend and doppelganger Alfie Marshall might not be able to put up his gardening post today because his mom is out of town, I thought I would try one.

I don't get to go outside like Alfie does, but I like to snoopervise from the window. And even though my mom's vet said she is not allowed to work in the garden right now, we still have a lot of flowers blooming.

These are heirloom marigolds (Tagetes patula) that our friend Mike grew from seeds. Mom made me put the Latin name because she says that in England, Calendula is called "marigold". I don't care about that - I just like the variety names. This one is Mr. Majestic - purrfect for ME!

And this one is Tiger Eyes! We didn't even know what these would look like - we just picked them because we liked the names - but we think the flowers are beautiful. We have to grow them in pots because otherwise they get eaten by those vishus slugs.
Happy Thursday! And I hope Alfie approves of my gardening post!

(Almost) Wordless

2010-06-09T00:00:00.005-04:00

P.S. This is a recycled photo. It was taken about two years ago, and the cats have since trashed this set of cat cubes. We really like it even though it's blurry.

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-06-08T00:00:00.007-04:00

Our human has a beautiful new quilting book.

It is delicious!

Note from human: The book is The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking by Jane Brocket, and it's already one of my favorites. I highly recommend it. And I guess it tastes good too!

Mancat Monday with Franklin

2010-06-07T00:00:00.008-04:00

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a good weekend - I sure did. I picked a fight with Tasha, tried to steal Dobby's quilt, woke up my dad at 3 AM with loud purring, and complained so loudly when I thought my mom had forgotten to give me my pill* that she almost gave it to me on the wrong day!

I hope your week is as fun as my weekend!

*Note from the human: Franklin takes prednisone every other day for asthma. He doesn't mind taking the pill at all because he gets treats afterward. But he hasn't quite grasped the concept of "every other day".

P.S. Our PSA for the day: Three very shy (and scared) mancats in Alabama (USA) need homes with cat lovers - that is a photo of Sammy above. His friends Simon, a brown tabby and Joey, an orange tabby, also need homes. It is another situation that makes us very sad - their owner died unexpectedly and they have been left alone. Franklin is also very shy around humans he doesn't know well, so we feel for these guys. Please see Love and Hisses for more information, including their Petfinder profiles - and please spread the word if you can.

Sunday with Tasha

2010-06-06T10:09:00.002-04:00

Oops! This was supposed to be a Tortie Tuesday post but our human posted it on Sunday by mistake. (She is not too with it lately.) We hope it doesn't mess up everyone's reader.

The good news is that you get to see even MORE photos of me on Tuesday!My mom accidentally took another artistic photo of me the other day (she forgot to turn the flash on). She said it would be more artistic if I wasn't in a Gatorade box on top of the clothes dryer, but I think torties make everything glamorous!

We were FURminated! Our reviews

2010-06-04T00:00:00.010-04:00

Our Furminator came in the mail yesterday! We received this for participating in Romeo's National Hairball Awareness Day campaign. You can't see it very well in our human's bad photo, but it is the purple deluxe model with fur ejector. Of course, we think the best thing about it is Romeo's picture on the package. Thanks, Romeo!

Our reviews of the Furminator:
Franklin gives 4 paws and a tail up! He LOVES it. Our human did not take a photo of the massive amounts of hair it removed from him, but it was impressive (Franklin is not real big on self-grooming). The only problem is that Franklin won't leave her alone when she's trying to furminate Dobby and Tasha.
Dobby says 3 1/2 paws up! He is not a brush fan, so he was very skeptical at first, but he much prefers it over the the other cat brush we've been using.
Tasha is reserving judgement, mostly because she didn't like Franklin sticking his nose in while she was getting groomed. She let the human furminate about half of her and then she said she'd had enough and threw a small tortie fit. She has a very thick undercoat and gets a lot of hairballs, so we'll keep trying - maybe when Franklin is taking a nap?

Note from the human:
The Furminator really works! I am not 100% sure of the mode of action, but I think it cuts the undercoat, so it's possible to remove too much hair if you are not careful. And fur (especially tortie fur!) can go everywhere when you are using it, although it is not as messy as the loop shedding brush we have tried. I am sure it's better to do it on a sweepable floor, but the cats are picky about where they want to be brushed. Our regular sleeker brush plus a damp paper towel were very helpful in cleaning the excess hair off the cats after furminating.

We hope everyone has a great weekend!

Happy Cat Award!

2010-06-03T00:35:00.003-04:00

We received this wonderful award from the super kitties at The Kitty Krew! Thank you, Bugsy, Sassy, Roxy, Pixie, Gypsy, and Ziggy (and Miss Stephanie)! The rules say we have to list six things that make us happy, then pass this award on to six of our friends.

We had a little trouble figuring out six things that made all three of us happy, but here they are:

1. Sitting on our dad! (Do you think this looks comfortable? Franklin will do this for hours!)
2. Getting treats after Franklin takes his pill!
3. Quilts and blankets!
4. Having the windows open!
5. Sneaking into Mom's sewing room - an endless source of amusement!
6. Ambusing Tasha's rear end! (oops, that one only makes Franklin and Dobby happy.)
Now on to the hard part - passing it on. We know that this award has been going around for a while so many cats have already gotten it, and we are WAY too lazy to check and see who has it. So we are going to cheat and give the award to everyone who reads this post. Thanks again to the Kitty Krew for the award - it was fun!

P.S. Murph (see yesterday's post) has found a great new home! For more info, check the SpacePaws blog here. We are really starting to believe in the power of purrs!

Wordy Wednesday - Murph in Maryland needs help! (Updated)

2010-06-02T00:00:00.007-04:00

This is Murph. He is a 14-year-old senior cat in Maryland who needs a new home ASAP. His human is dying and, although he has been able to stay at home with her until recently, her nurse is very allergic to him, so that is not working out. His human is very worried about him and it would make her feel much better if she knew he had a place to go.

You can read more about Murph on the Space Paws blog here: http://hubblespacepaws.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-bean-is-dying-and-i-need-home.html. Or if you think you can help, you can e-mail the Space Paws lady at hubblespacepaws@gmail.com.

We are really worried about Murph (our mom always worries that this might happen to us!), so please send him lots of purrs - and please spread the word if you can! We think senior cats are the best.
Thank you so much!
Franklin, Tasha, and Dobby

P.S. If you are not familiar with Eastern U.S. geography, Maryland is a relatively small state. So Murph is also within fairly easy driving distance of the DC area, Northern Virginia, Delaware and the West Virginia panhandle, and is not all that far from the Philadelphia area or Charlottesville or Richmond in Virginia. If you know anyone in those areas who can assist in spreading the word, it would really help. Our aunt in Northern Virginia has put it on her Facebook :)

Note: edited this to add the following update from SpacePaws - things are looking up a bit. We're still purring! 9:23pm, 6/1/10 Update
I've heard from Murph's folks... they're starting to make calls/send emails to see if they can make a good match. This may take a bit of time but I'll feed you news as we know it.

We're now up to 12 offers of a home, 5 of which are in driving distance. There have been many offers of fostering, folks offering up frequent flyer miles if the match is distance away, former adoption counselors who have offered their services in interviewing and follow up... and I haven't finished answering all the email!

Everyone involved with Murph is just overwhelmed by the love and care that everyone has so freely (and quickly!) given. This has been one of the most heart warming experiences of my life, gentle readers... to think that so very many people would open their hearts this way. I am truly humbled and can not thank everyone who has responded enough! And especially to our readers, who got this news out there so very quickly, and to everyone who picked up the message and carried it one blog, one tweet, one person further! Thank you, thank you!

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2010-06-01T00:00:00.001-04:00

Happy Tortie Tuesday, and happy June 1! This is my first Tortie Tuesday post in what seems like forever (my mom says she is trying to get it together, but we'll see!)

My dad accidentally took this very artistic photo of me, and I think it really shows off my tortie paw.
Also, we posted about some of Beaded Tail's jewelry on Sunday, and the Beaded Tail kitties were nice enough to tell me in the comments that their mom had made a necklace named after me! (Do you think MY mom noticed this? No!) It's really beautiful!

It is supposed to be for humans, but I think it would make a beautiful collar - for me!

I hope everyone has a very happy June!

P.S. Our mom's sister and mother drove for 5 hours this weekend to see her! They came over to our house but Franklin and I played hard to get by hiding under the bed (don't tell anyone, but we are sort of sorry now because Dobby got a lot of attention and we didn't). Plus her sister gave our mom a therapeutic massage, which helped her a lot. We think she is MUCH smarter than our mom.

(Edited later to add another P.S. My fellow tortie Sweet Pea is going in for her spay surgery today. If you get a chance, please stop by The Monkeys and send her some purrs!)

Announcements! (hosted by Dobby)

2010-05-30T10:40:00.017-04:00

Dobby here. We have a lot of announcements today and we hope you don't mind reading them all. (Fortunately, no one ever said you have to be awake to make blog announcements!)

1. First, many thanks to everyone who nominated or donated to VSPCA/Help Animals India! We think we have the nicest blog readers ever!

2. The talented Ann of Zoolatry has made this great blog sidebar tag to encourage people to spay and neuter (she was inspired by a request from Fuzzy Tales). We've put it on our sidebar and you can too.
3. The lovely Miss Chey of Chey's Place is asking people to vote at the Animal Rescue site for the rescue organization that her mom volunteers for: Purrfect Pals in Richmond, WA (Washington state, USA). To vote, click here and enter WA for state and Purrfect Pals for the organization! First prize is a $100,000 grant, but winners for each state get $1000, so every vote helps. You can vote every day.

You won't believe this, but our human has actually gotten it together to do this almost every day because she has signed up for daily e-mail reminders to click at the Animal Rescue site.

4. Almost last but not least: Sharla of Beaded Tail has made a wonderful pair of earrings named after Franklin! Franklin is so honored!
Personally, I prefer this pair ~~even though they are not named after me~~. Thanks to the Beaded Tail gang for naming them after me!

Through the end of this month, Sharla is donating 100% of her proceeds from shop sales to Chintimini Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Corvallis, Oregon.

5. We hope everyone is having a great weekend! I plan to do a lot of sleeping :).

Tortie 2 - Couch 0

2010-05-27T11:54:00.007-04:00

First things first: if you are looking for the VSPCA/Help Animals India post, it is here, and was also cross-posted to the EFA blog here. Thanks for helping!

Now on to less serous stuff. Apologies in advance for not-so-great photos - for some reason, Tasha did not want to pose for this.

The largest piece of furniture in our living room is a futon sofa. The humans like it because they can replace the cover when it (accidentally!) gets a little scratched up. Tasha has discovered another way to wreck it, though! You simply pick one spot on the top of the sofa and sleep there ALL the time. This makes the mattress sag in that spot and no matter how many times the humans turn the futon, they can't fix it. It makes it far more comfortable for cats. (Technical note: you have to be a relatively plump cat to make this work. Tasha is good at it because she has a high weight to volume ratio.)

Tasha has already smashed one futon irreparably and is working on ruining the second one. The second one has taken more work because it is an innerspring futon, but torties are persistent!
Dobby says "Thanks, Tasha! This is far more comfortable now!"
Franklin says thanks too. "We couldn't have done it without you!"
Tasha is also good at smashing cardboard boxes flat, although this Gatorade box has been exceptionally durable.

P.S. Our human says thanks very much for your kind words and purrs! She went to the human vet yesterday and he thinks she has osteoarthritis in her right hip. She has to go to physical therapy to try and fix it. Meanwhile, the human vet says NO field work and NO gardening - or anything similar. We just hope she doesn't get too cranky!

Impawtant post!

2010-05-24T16:21:00.002-04:00

(This is a serious post today so Franklin is putting on his best serious face!)

We have mentioned the organization Help Animals India on here before. They could really use our help right now! Their primary beneficiary is the Visakha Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (VSPCA), and VSPCA's shelter in Andhra Pradesh was severely damaged in the recent typhoon, Cyclone Laila.

Here is a portion of the latest e-mail we received from Eileen, the founder of Help Animals India (note - if you would like us to forward this e-mail to you, please drop us a line!):

"Cyclone Laila has struck the coast of Andhra Pradesh, and has continued up the Indian coast through Orissa. The VSPCA shelter which is home to around 1,100 animals has sustained a lot of damage.

Pradeep Nath, founder and president of VSPCA, writes: 'Trees have fallen on the roof of the ABC/TNR [Animal Birth Control/Trap Neuter Release] center; this needs immediate repair so we can continue our ABC (spay/neuter) program. The bigger generator and even the small generator are not working and are clogged with water. Three of the pigeon shelters have been damaged. All the bird areas need to be fixed to better withstand storms. The goshala shed where the buffaloes live, needs the sheets on top replaced, the goshala shed on the other side, for the cows, has been swept away by the winds, and another one needs to be put up for them. The drainage system needs to be improved to prevent flooding.

Our first obligation is to the 1,100 rescued animals we have here; they all need to have shelter and be in out of the rain - and to the continuation of our ABC (spay/neuter) program. We conduct more than 40 surgeries a day to help the street animals, and we need to continue this program.

Animals in the areas around us also need urgent help because of the severe storm and the flooding, and we hope that we will have the funding to do disaster relief, as we have always done in the past, since these animals too are dependent on us. We are thankful that there have been no deaths, and all the animals here at the shelter have survived. Our heart-felt thanks to all of you who can provide any help for the animals.' "

(photos by Eileen Weintraub)

If you'd like to help, here are two ways:

1. If you have not nominated an organization for Romeo the Cat's Furpower recipient for June, we ask that you please consider nominating Help Animals India. They are a U.S. 501(c)3 organization, so they qualify. You can nominate at http://www.romeothecat.com/contact/ - it is so easy that even our human had no problems doing it. All you need is a valid e-mail address! Please nominate ASAP since Romeo and his staff plan to choose a charity later this week.

2. And if you can, please consider making a small donation, since our money goes a long way in India! As Eileen says:
"Donations go directly to benefit India’s animals. In India, these funds continue to go a long way. Typical monthly salaries are the equivalent of $500 USD for a veterinarian and $100 USD for shelter or office help. Dog and cat spay/neuter operations average just $12 USD."

You can find out more about how to donate at http://vspca.org/donate.php. We donated via PayPal and since the donation goes through Help Animals India, our contribution was 100% US tax deductible.

P.S. We hope to be back with some non-serious posts after our human goes to the human vet on Wednesday.

Thanks and Congratulations!

2010-05-16T13:06:00.009-04:00

There is a lot going on around here, but we haven't been able to post about it because our human is still whining and complaining about her hip joint. (She has an appointment with the specialist vet but it is not until May 26 - we think that is excessive!)

First, she made a cat quilt! We were excited, but then she put it in the mail and sent it away! It turned out that she did a trade with Dana of the Creek Cats, so we got these beautiful cards and wonderful print in the mail. We love them! We can't wait to hang the print on the wall. Our human is not a good product photographer, so if you want to see better photos of Dana's artwork, please look at her Etsy store. She contributes part of her profits to the Beaufort Community Cat Project, the organization she volunteers for, so it's a great deal.

Dana also sent us some pictures of those gorgeous girlcats, Maggie May and Saylor, enjoying the quilt. Here is a sneak peak:Then our humans' niece, Jenny, graduated from college on Friday! We didn't know that graduation was a big deal because it happens twice a year around here, but our mom says it is a huge accomplishment.

Congratulations, Jenny!

This is Jenny with her brother (our nephew!) Patrick - we love them both. Our mom's brother took this photo - he is an amazing photographer.

We'll be around to visit as soon as possible!

Human update (by Franklin)

2010-05-06T15:50:00.006-04:00

In case you have been wondering where we have been, it's our human's fault, as usual. She finally went to the human vet and she does not have sciatica - she has problems with her right hip joint. (She says it's an occupational hazard after years of field work - I'm not sure about that!) They took X-rays, which didn't show much, and she came home with a bunch of prescriptions, but she's still having problems sitting or lying down. She says it makes her feel old, but I already knew that she is about a thousand years older than I am! No wonder she feels old.

Anyway, she has to go to a specialist vet. Frankly, I think this serves her right for all the times she has dragged me to the vet.

As I'm sure you can imagine, this hasn't been easy for all us cats. She cannot lie down without moving around all the time so she disturbs our sleep!
Meanwhile, I've been doing the best I can to harass Tasha. Here I am lying on her quilt AND her favorite string AND touching her tail - and she's ignoring me! The humans says she is being really nice (for a tortie), but I think she is just too lazy to fight.

P.S. In case you are wondering what Dobby's been doing - check it out.P.P.S. Our human says she will get around to visit everyone as fast as she can.

Flannel Quilts (for cats!)

2010-04-27T18:30:00.014-04:00

In case you think our human has been really lazy because she has not been blogging (actually, she HAS been lazy, but nevermind!), we wanted to show you some photos of the flannel quilts she made for us. She noticed that we were trying to sleep on the flannel sheets all the time, so she figured we might like these. We do! And as a side benefit, they catch a lot of our hair...

The quilt that Tasha is modeling above is a prototype - it was later taken apart and remade into the one Franklin is sleeping under below.This particular quilt is also Dobby's favorite. The humans put it on their bed and he sleeps on it every night.
Dobby also likes this quilt with roses all over it (our human says this one is made of the best flannel ever - it feels so soft and does not pill).
The quilt below is a slightly bigger quilt that Franklin and Tasha both like - and fight over. It has pictures of cats all over it. Our human says the flannel isn't the best quality, but we like it anyway.
Our human says these quilts are really easy to make (and wash!) because they are just made out of two layers of flannel with no batting in between.

Also, we wanted to remind everyone that National Hairball Awareness Day is Friday (can you believe it is the end of April already!?) If you have not nominated a charity for Romeo the Cat's May FURPOWER recipient, you can do so here. We are nominating Help Animals India. They are a U.S. 501 (c) 3 organization founded by Eileen Weintraub, who is a really wonderful person that our human has corresponded with, and they support one of our favorite animal organizations, the Visakha SPCA. If you don't have an organization you wish to nominate, we hope you will consider nominating them - our donations go a long way in India, and they are very needed. Their website address is http://helpanimalsindia.org/ (Note: edited to add that Caroline, Romeo's mom, just informed us that she has already chosen the charity for May, but she is accepting nominations for June's recipient.)

We hope everyone is having a great week!

Wordy

2010-04-14T09:54:00.008-04:00

Hello to everyone from Franklin.

Our human says she is sorry - again! - about not posting, but she has been suffering from sciatica. So she has been trying not to sit for too long unless absolutely necessary - like for her job! If anyone has any tips on dealing with this (besides not sitting down) she said she'd love to hear them.
And thanks to everyone for their sympathy about my asthma! I had one really scary attack but the increased medication seems to be working now. There is pollen all over everything around here so we think that might be increasing my sensitivity.
Or the problem could be all the tortie hair floating around the house. It is difficult to believe that one short-haired cat could shed as much as Tasha does.

We hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Helping Romeo! Part 2: Cats Against Clay

2010-04-05T07:00:00.002-04:00

Here's the story: our friend Romeo and Cats Against Clay (sponsored by Feline Pine) are working together with bloggers to raise money for animal rescue.

For every badge displayed on a blog during April and May 2010, Cats Against Clay will donate $25 USD to Romeo's April FURPower organization (Forever Home Feline Ranch) AND $25 USD to his May FURPOWER organization (to be chosen)! So it's a great way to raise money to help animals.

You can read more about Cats Against Clay on their very creative website - or check out their Wiki page. If you want to join the campaign, please e-mail Romeo's human, Caroline, at caroline [at] Romeothecat.com - or you can e-mail us and we will forward you the e-mail she sent to us.
We had a small ethical problem while trying to decide whether to join this campaign or not. Two of us don't like clay litter very much, although we are very good about using our box no matter what. Our humans doesn't like clay litter either because of all the dust and the hard pellets that get everywhere.

But Dobby is a traditionalist and INSISTS on clay litter. The humans are still trying to find a non-clay litter that he will use consistently. So we figured two of us could be members, and we will work on changing Dobby's mind.
P.S. We still haven't nominated an organization for Romeo's May FURpower recipient. So if you're running a campaign to get a particular charity nominated, please let us know!

Helping Romeo! Part 1: National Hairball Day

2010-04-02T08:32:00.014-04:00

Hi, it's Tasha, with an important announcement!
Our friend, Romeo the Cat, has teamed up with FURminator to promote National Hairball Day on April 30. (It's really National Hairball Awareness Day, but we think National Hairball Day is easier to remember. Plus we have plenty of hairball awareness around here!)
We are helping him by posting his badge on our sidebar. For every badge posted on a blog, FURminator will donate cash and a FURminator shedding tool to the animal charity that Romeo chooses for May. It's a good deal!

They will also send us our very own FURminator, and we really need one around here. Dobby and I have a real problem with hairballs, although the humans and I think mine are the worst! (Franklin doesn't seem to get them - probably because he never takes a bath...)
P.S. If you'd also like to help Romeo raise money for animal rescue by promoting National Hairball Awareness Day, you can e-mail Caroline (Romeo's human) before April 7th. Her address is caroline [at] romeothecat.com. You can also nominate an animal charity for Romeo's May FURpower recipient here.

P.P.S. Stay tuned for Part 2 of Helping Romeo on Monday!

Dobby and the photo game

2010-03-26T11:53:00.007-04:00

Alice and Jane, two beautiful girlcats from the Casbah Kitten, invited me to play a photo tag game (they said it was because they LIKED me! Yay! I'm not used to girlcats liking me!)

We were supposed to look in the first photo folder, and find the 10th photo and then post it. But our humans have so many photo folders and subfolders that it's hard to figure out what is the "first folder." Plus we have played this game before. So we looked for the 10th photo in the 10th subfolder of the first folder in our Adobe photos, and it was a picture of ME!
This was taken in March 2008 - I am sitting by the window enjoying the sun. You can sort of see how torn up the screen is - that is something Tasha did about 5 years ago. (She doesn't do it any more but the humans STILL haven't fixed it!)

Another photo in that folder was this closeup of the heart on my shoulder. I usually don't let anyone photograph this, so it's a special picture.
This heart is for Alice, Jane, and all the other girlcats out there. Especially my girlfriend, Sophia!

Love, Dobby

P.S. We are supposed to pass this tag on to other bloggers, but we think just about everyone we know has already played this game. If anyone hasn't played and would like to, please feel free to consider yourself tagged!

P.P.S. We hope everyone has a great weekend! We plan to watch a lot of college basketball with the humans. Mom was heartbroken last weekend when her University of Maryland Terrapins team lost at the last second. But she says she is mostly over that now and will enjoy the rest of the tournament.

Update on our water fountain (and congratulations!)

2010-03-23T11:52:00.008-04:00

Back in October, Samson and Delilah (and their mom, Karen) sent us a drinking fountain. Several people asked for updates if we liked it. We do!

Dobby and Franklin started drinking out of the fountain after a week, but it took me over six months to try it. Torties are picky! But now I drink out of it all the time. I still don't like to pose with it, so mom had to take this picture really fast, and you can't read the name of the fountain - it is the small CatIt Fresh and Clear drinking fountain. It doesn't make a lot of noise, and mom says it doesn't get very dirty inside. We keep ours on a tray because some unidentified cat around here splashes when they drink (not me!)

Since we don't live near a pet store, we buy the extra filters from Petsdirectweb on eBay. They were recommended by Karen as being a good buy, and they sell on eBay Canada also. You can get the fountains there too. They ship very quickly.

We are still keeping the old water dish around because we like to drink out of it sometimes. It is heavy stoneware and keeps the water cool in the summer.

Thanks to Karen, Samson, and Delilah!

P.S. We're all really happy around here because mom's niece, Jenny, got accepted into grad school! She was applying to a very competitive program which only takes ten students and the application process was a lot of work - it included an open house interview which our mom thinks sounds very scary. Jenny was one of the top applicants! She will be training to be a school psychologist in grades K-12, and we know she will be wonderful.

Congratulations, Jenny!

Happy Spring!

2010-03-21T10:50:00.007-04:00

Happy spring, everyone! This was the very first flower to bloom in our yard - it is one of the "Firefly" crocus bulbs that Britta, Siena, and Chilli of Cat with a Garden sent us from Germany! Thank you so much!
We apologize again for the humans being so bad at blogging and visiting. Our mom keeps talking about "major revisions" on a project she is working on. We have no idea what that means but it sounds bad. And Franklin has been having asthma attacks again - the vet warned us that this might happen when the weather got warmer. He has to take medicine every day now. He actually likes this because he gets treats when he takes his pill - in fact, he nags our mom to give him his pill every night!
Otherwise, everything is fine. We are enjoying the sun and we think we have finally persuaded the humans not to make the bed until nighttime. It's so much more comfortable that way.

Our mom says that when she finishes her "revisions" she will try to be better about blogging. We've heard that before! So we'll see what happens.
In the meantime, we hope everyone is enjoying the springtime as much as we are!

P.S. Forgot to say that the humans have been watching something called "March Madness" on TV. (For those who don't know, this is a U.S. college basketball tournament.) They have been doing a lot of yelling and screaming, but they seem to be enjoying themselves. Mom says this is one of the best tournaments she has ever seen - lots of upsets!

Happy weekend!

2010-02-20T10:28:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone - we're back (at least temporarily!)

The good news around here is that our mom finished the first draft of her big report. It was 150 pages! She says it was the hardest thing she has done in a long, long, time. She still has to make revisions (she hopes not too many!) plus she has two other professors who want her to write things for them as soon as possible. But she feels lucky to be have work.

The bad news is that Mom cleaned most of the house yesterday. She said it really needed it but we disagree - we had just finished carefully covering everything with cat hair and she wrecked it. She ran the vacuum cleaner for a long, long time - it was awful!

Tasha was NOT pleased...

But Dobby and I slept through most of it.

It's been very cold here, so we've been doing a lot of sleeping, but it's supposed to be around 50 degrees F (10 degrees C) today and tomorrow! We might even open the windows a little bit. We have a lot of snow on the ground - almost 2 feet in some places - but we're hoping that at least some of it will melt.

But before the snow melts, we wanted to show you this photo that our mom's sister took during one of the big Washington D.C. snowstorms:

We think this is one of the best snow photos ever! Our mom's sister has a lot of statues of this guy around her house. We hear that he really liked animals, so we approve.

P.S. We hope to get around to visit everyone in the next few days or so. Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Happy February from Franklin and friends!

2010-02-01T12:39:00.006-05:00

Happy February! We're sorry our humans have been so bad about updating the blog.

Everything is fine here except that the humans are working too much. Plus they are not happy that a foot of snow fell this weekend - right after all the snow that we got in December had almost melted! (We know that might not seem like very much snow to most of you, but it is a lot for us.)

We don't mind snowy days at all. We think they are very good for sleeping.

We hope to get back to more regular blogging in a few weeks. In the meantime, we wish everyone a very happy February!

Happy January - and happy new year!

2010-01-01T14:52:00.005-05:00

We want to wish everyone a very happy 2010!

Our main New Year's resolution is to make sure to get plenty of rest. We're already working on it!

We hope everyone has a wonderful year this year - and we will try to get around and visit you all within the next week.

Happy holidays! And an update

2009-12-18T11:02:00.005-05:00

Greetings to all! We are sorry to have been gone so long - what started out to be a short break ended up being a very long one- and it's all the humans' fault!

As it happens, our mom is going to have to work hard through the holidays and into January. We are not too happy about that, so we persuaded her to put up this post to let everyone know that we're all still here and doing well. And we also wanted to thank everyone for all their comments, e-mails, cards, and e-cards - they are very much appreciated.

We send purrs to all, and special purrs to our friends who are having a rough time right now.

Love from Franklin, Dobby, and Tasha

P.S. Our mom says she will try to get around to visit everyone in the next week or so. We hope so, because she is absolutely ruining our social life!

Taking a break

2009-10-14T01:00:00.006-04:00

Our human says we need to take a short blogcation. She is really busy at work, and on top of everything, she found out she needs to move her office at work (don't ask! She is not too happy about it!) She has to carry all her papers and equipment to another building and then set everything up again, so it's a lot of work.

We think she should just throw everything out the window into the dumpster - or bring it home for us to shred - but she claims she needs it all. Plus she hasn't even had time to take photos of us lately. (Actually, that part has been great!)

We hope she can get things under control soon, but you know how slow humans are. So we'll see you as soon as we can.

Purrs from Tasha, Franklin, and Dobby (and Katie too.)

P.S. if you need to get in touch with us, please feel free to e-mail!

Tortie Tuesday - Catching Up!

2009-10-13T01:00:00.008-04:00

We're (finally!) catching up on awards today.

First, Zoey of the Island Cats gave me this Island Princess Award. She said it was specially for girl cats who had to live with boys, like me. I know she understands how difficult this is! Thank you, Zoey!

And more thanks to Jane and Alice of Casbah Kitten for the "You make me want to DANCE" award. I'm really impressed with Jane's pose in this photo.

Meghann and Linda gave us the Over the Top Award. It came with a bunch of questions which mom refused to answer because she said it might incriminate her. We think it is really because she is lazy! But many thanks to Linda and Meghann for thinking about us.

We're passing the awards above to all our blog readers as a thank you for reading our blog. Have a happy Tortie Tuesday!

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2009-10-12T01:00:00.003-04:00

Happy Monday!

We hope everyone has a great week (with lots and lots of naps)!

Close-ups!

2009-10-09T01:00:00.001-04:00

We all decided not to look at the camera today. Instead, we are:

Looking at birds

Thinking about jumping on Dobby while he is distracted by looking at birds.

Wishing the humans would get the camera out of my face!

We hope everyone has a great weekend, whatever you decide to do.

Wordless

2009-10-07T01:00:00.002-04:00

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2009-10-06T00:51:00.003-04:00

Mom's been having a hard time getting me to agree to pose lately - I don't work for free, you know! But I finally consented to sit still for this glamour shot.

Happy Tortie Tuesday!

Mancat Monday with Franklin

2009-10-05T03:00:00.001-04:00

I get to do Mancat Monday today...

...because Dobby refused to wake up!

Unfortunately, he's also hogging the sunny spot! I'm considering putting the bitey on him for that, but I might go back to sleep instead.

Happy Monday!

Thank you, Samson and Delilah!

2009-10-02T01:00:00.007-04:00

We received a package from Samson and Delilah! It came all the way from Canada! And there was a cat water fountain inside! Our humans has been wanting to get one of those for us (especially for Dobby), but they weren't sure which kind to buy, so we're really happy to get one that's approved by the Monkeys!

Dobby says he can tell it's for him because it has an orange cat on the box.

Delilah also enclosed a 4-pack of foam soccer balls especially for Tasha.

Tasha LOVED the soccer balls! She played with one until she had to take a nap.

Thank you, Samson and Delilah! (And thanks to Karen and the Ball Guy too, of course.)

P.S. We hope everyone has a happy Friday - and a great weekend.

Edited later to add: Franklin says he appreciates everyone's concern, but he has a lot of toys - and he'd have even more if the humans retrieved the ones he is storing under the refrigerator!

Wordless

2009-09-30T01:00:00.005-04:00

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2009-09-29T01:00:00.004-04:00

Our mom has a slight cold and is not feeling very well, so we decided that this photo of me would be enough for Tortie Tuesday. Who needs to read a bunch of writing anyway?

We hope everyone has a great day!

Mancat Monday with Dobby

2009-09-28T01:00:00.003-04:00

I had a very exciting weekend.

It rained all day on Saturday, so I slept all day.

It was sunny on Sunday, so I sat in the window until I got sleepy.

Then I took more naps.

It was so much fun that I plan to do the same thing all week.
Happy Monday!

Weekend close-ups

2009-09-25T11:30:00.005-04:00

We hope everyone has a very happy weekend! We have already made our plans.

Dobby will be in the window (when he's not sleeping!)

Franklin will be looking cute.

and Tasha will be spending lots of time playing string with her dad.

P.S. The humans are claiming that they have a "lot to do" this weekend so we won't get to be around much. We'll see everyone on Monday!

A big thank you to Siena and Chilli!

2009-09-24T10:22:00.011-04:00

We received a package from Germany the other day! (Please ignore the shoelace in the photo - Tasha is obsessed with it and it goes everywhere with her!)
It was full of German cat treats - and it had a gorgeous photo card of our friends Siena and Chilli from Cat with a Garden.
We haven't tried all the treats yet (our mom says one bag at a time) but we can't wait! These cheese treats are great.
And the cat on this liver treat bag is really cute!

Thank you, Siena and Chilli!
P.S. The package also had some flower bulbs in it for our mom - and she was far more excited about the bulbs than the cat treats! Humans are weird! But our mom says many thanks to Britta for the bulbs. She has wanted to grow Tulipa turkestanica ever since she saw the wonderful photos here on Britta's garden blog - and she can't wait to see the Firefly crocus next spring.

Wordy Wednesday (we're back!)

2009-09-23T01:00:00.006-04:00

Hey all! We apologize for not posting for so long. I have been writing all day for my job and, as a result, have been having a hard time writing coherent blog posts in the evening.

Franklin posed for the camera for a long time the other day - the photos above are just a few that I picked out. He wants everyone to know that the medication he is taking is making him feel better (obviously!) Dobby is still doing very well, and Tasha is very proud of herself for being the only cat in the house who did not have to go to the vet in the past month!

Happy Wednesday! We hope to get back on a more reasonable schedule as soon as possible.

Wordless

2009-09-16T01:00:00.002-04:00

Tortie Tuesday with Tasha

2009-09-15T01:00:00.002-04:00

Look!! Here is visual proof that I have the world's most powerful laser eye! You can even see the reflection in the floor.

The humans say this is an optical illusion but I know it's not.

Happy Tortie Tuesday!

Edited by the human to add: I really did think the reflection was an optical illusion (there is a light you can't see above Tasha), but after seeing Isabella's post for today, I think Tasha might be right!

Mancat Monday with Franklin.

2009-09-14T01:00:00.003-04:00

I want to tell everybody out there how good I am being about taking my pills. For a while, mom had to catch me before she could give me the pill - and sometimes that wasn't easy. I am good at hiding!

But now I have figured out that I get treats every time I take a pill. So all mom has to do is shake the pill bottle and I'll come running in. I still don't like the pill part, but I know I'll get treats right afterward, so I tolerate it.

The only problem is that the vet says I should only take my pill every other day, and I think we should get treats several times a day! So I also run in when mom takes her pills or vitamins. But I'm usually able to talk my dad into giving me treats then if I whine loudly enough. I am also very good at whining!

Happy Monday, everyone!

Cats in the window redux

2009-09-11T01:00:00.002-04:00

Ann of Zoolatry made us this wonderful graphic of Franklin and Tasha from the photo below. We love it! Our human wants to print it so she can frame it. It reminds her a little bit of a Peter Max drawing.

And if you're wondering what this looked like from inside the house, here's the photo. We lightened it, but you might have to biggify it to see the tortie ears above the large tortie butt.

Tasha the supermodel says she had to eat a lot of kitty crunchies to get that big rear end. And she's quite proud of it.

We hope everyone has a good weekend!