Category Archives: Cats

Blasting into Summer

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Goldfish

As often happens, we’ve gone from wintery weather to summer in two days. The temperature here hit 75 degrees in the shade a little while ago. Having caught up with work for the moment, I went out and did some yard cleanup. I also restarted the pond pump that runs the little waterfall and aerates the water, after cleaning out leaves and algae for the last two days. I found one small frog yesterday, don’t see him today, but our large goldfish has made it through another winter with no problem. He’s at least six inches long now. I used to feed him, but gave it up, as I don’t really want to encourage a lot of growth. He gets by fine on what’s naturally in the pond.

Some of the daffodils have been out for over a week, more will open now, I’m sure. I wanted to plant more last fall, but somehow in October it just doesn’t seem appealing.

I did buy a few pansies Saturday, and put them out in pots yesterday, where they’ll brighten up our front walk until it gets too warm for them.

Every spring one or two of these small but charming wildflowers bloom in our yard. Wish I knew what they were, but I can enjoy them as “mystery flowers” all the same. The blossoms are about a half inch across.

ADDED: Found it! A non-native bulb flower originally from alpine Turkey and Greece: Chionodoxa. The resource is HERE. Described as a vigorous self-seeder. Certainly nothing I ever planted, but someone in the area did.

I know this one, grape hyacinth. We planted a few many years ago, and one or two still come up in the lawn. I try not to step on them.

The first of hundreds of dandelions has opened in the driveway. Pretty flowers, but annoying plants.

The cats are quite happy to have the windows open for the first time in months, here’s Tigger on a front windowsill watching me.

They’re also quite happy to have the sliding doors open to the porch, and I’m equally happy to get a break from constantly letting them in and out! They clearly approve of the return of the rockers, obviously intended for their seating pleasure.

Along with all the good news comes the return of tick season. While writing, I found this lone star tick crawling up my arm. Right, nightly tick checks begin today as well!

 

Cats, Company, Chilly Weather

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Our storm-refugee company, my friend Tim and my Mom, are still with us. Mom’s power went on yesterday, but Tim’s is still off, and they elected to stay a while longer, especially with another storm heading our way. Tim brought his computer, and it’s been nice having someone else working in my studio the last few days. Tigger seems to like it, too.

As for Leo, he’d rather try to catch the birds at the window feeder, even though he never can. He sits staring and talking quietly about those darn birds, then leaps up repeatedly, trying to get them, or at least scare them. At first they fly away, but already they’re getting used to him and beginning to ignore him.

The storm arrived as scheduled today bringing some wet snow with it. Not a lot, but enough to cover some of the ground.

Here’s the back yard with more feeders and the pond. It should all melt soon, as the ground is not very cold, but things could be different north and west of us. And the barrier islands, still trying to recover from Sandy, don’t need any more wind and storm surge, but will get some anyway. Hopefully not much.

Cats’ Bath Day

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Once a year, like it or not (and, oh how much they DON’T like it) our cats get a bath. Ellen’s family will be visiting for a week soon, and her sister Ann is allergic to cats. This seems to help some. Tigger is the first victim.

Oh, the indignity!

Getting towelled off.

Leo’s the next victim. He’s a little more cooperative.

What are you doing to me?!

Leo get’s towelled.

And now the licking begins, and will continue for several hours as they put all that cat saliva back onto their fur. Our older cat, Katie, has been spared the ordeal this year, Ellen says she’s too old to go through it. Just as well, she got the drift quickly and is thoroughly hidden!

Summer Days

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Summer is here, and intense critter watching has given way to more lazy heat-bath sleeping on the porch for Tigger and Leo. Summer has begun with two heat waves already, allowing us to enjoy two Saturday afternoons at the beach much earlier than usual. Both last week and yesterday the water was as warm as we usually only have it in August, the water was clear with no seaweed or jellyfish, and the beach was lovely. Perhaps this year we’ll be telling our summer beach visitors, “you should have been here in June!”

We had a battalion of strong thunderstorms and high winds that blew through Friday night causing lots of power outages and fallen trees in the area, but fortunately we dodged that, finding only some downed branches and lots of leaves on the ground Saturday morning.

The heat outside makes it easier to stay inside and get things done, and that’s what I’ve been doing. The run-up to the San Diego Comic-Con means editors are pushing to get work done before everyone heads out there, and I’ve had plenty to do. This past week wasn’t too bad, but the week before I lettered over 100 pages, which is a lot for one week. I have some to work on this weekend, and expect more next week. Meanwhile, I’m also trying to get more logos from my files scanned for my “Logo of the Day” feature on Facebook, gradually going through all the DC logos I copied when I went to the offices in 2009. There are a lot, and I’ll have more of my own logos to scan as well, but there are plenty of others out there I still need good copies of, mainly from companies other than DC.

This afternoon we’re attending a performance of “Man of La Mancha” at a local playhouse for Ellen’s birthday, then having dinner out, so that should be fun. Summer is here, and we need to find our fun when we can!

My New Camera

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The digital camera I’ve been using since 2003, an Olympus C-730, has served me well, and taken thousands of great pictures, but at times I ran up against its limitations, too. It has a 10x optical zoom and 3.2 Megapixel image size, and has been great for a point and shoot camera. A few weeks ago I noticed that there was debris inside the lens, some of it on the lens surface, creating blurry spots in my photos. I had no way of getting it out, and didn’t think it was worth having it professionally cleaned. I decided it was time for a new camera. I spent about a week reading up and shopping online and settled on this Panasonic Lumix FZ150. It’s what’s called a “bridge” camera, meant to bridge the divide between point and shoot cameras and full-fledged SLRs. It has a single non-changeable lens, but what a lens! It zooms from wide angle to 24x optical magnification. Picture size is about 12 Megapixels, so four times more detail in the images than my previous camera. And it has lots of other features I thought would be handy, including a large LCD screen for shooting or viewing photos and videos (it does that, too) as well as a viewfinder, image stabilization, a top-rated automatic mode and lots of manual options. The camera arrived yesterday, and today I spent some time using it.

This morning I went out birding and picture-taking first in Belleplain State Forest, and it was a beautiful sunny morning. I was hoping for some good birds to test the abilities of the camera, and I found a few.

Here’s a Summer Tanager shot at full 24x zoom, then cropped to make the bird appear even larger.

And here’s a Worm-Eating Warbler at much the same settings. These are two birds I could never have captured this well with my old camera, so I’m very pleased. Of course, the opportunities to get good photos of small songbirds are always rare, so there were plenty I missed because they were moving to much, hiding too much, or just plain invisible!

As far as wide angle shots, the camera does great with those as well, with East Creek Pond, above, as an example.

I then drove to Beaver Dam Road for another birding spot and found this Snowy Egret, a much larger bird, and one that’s much easier to photograph.

Butterflies are smaller than birds, but usually easier to photograph because they sit still for a while. This Spicebush Swallowtail posed helpfully in the sandy road.

Some butterflies are quite small, like this Red-Banded Hairstreak, and they’re more challenging, but the zoom on the new camera made it pretty easy to get this shot. Compare the size of the sand grains here to the picture above to get an idea of the size difference.

Back home I tried out the flash on our older cat, Katie.

And took this of the boys, Tigger and Leo, on our screened porch.

I took lots of yard pictures, but I’ll show just this one, which I like the best, of a Bumblebee on an Azalea.

I’m very happy with the camera, and you can expect lots of pictures from it here in the future. And if I can figure out how to get video onto my Mac, maybe some of that, too, we’ll see.

 

Red Cats, Winter Blues

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It’s been a while since I blogged about our cats, so if you like that, here it is. Tigger and Leo, our young red tabbies are a little depressed about winter. Where they’d most like to be is on the screened porch where they can watch and pretend to stalk the squirrels and birds coming to the feeders, but on cold winter days they must resort to huddling for warmth in one corner, and even then they can only stay out there so long.

They make it clear when they want to come in if I’m in the studio by standing against the sliding door, but if I’m at the kitchen sink looking out the window I can’t see that, so one of them will jump onto the glass table in front of the window to let me know. It’s pretty funny to see a cat suddenly pop into view there.

Hel-LOOO! Want to come IN now!

The next best option inside, at least for Leo, is sitting under the window feeder (which you can’t see here because of the glare) and waiting for birds to show up.

Ha! Scared ya! Oh, he’s gone. Darn.

When that fails to amuse, there’s always running around the studio and through the house chasing each other and wrestling. Tigger’s about to pounce on Leo.

Galloping cat trails on the freshly-vacuumed studio rug. Some days it looks like a herd of elk came through.

Eventually they tire themselves (and me) out, and a nap is always a good idea.

As mealtimes approach, bothering Ellen and I for food is always popular. That’s the favorite occupation of our older cat, Katie, other than actually eating and, of course, sleeping.

“What’s going on here?” says Leo. “I want some of that attention, too.” A rare moment of truce just before mealtime. Most of the day Katie hisses and swats at the other two when they’re this close.

Leo loves to eat, too, more than Tigger. Probably why he’s bigger and about five pounds heavier.

Stealing Katie’s food is even better than having your own!

Lap time is usually appreciated by everyone, though again Leo seems to like it more than Tigger. Here he is hamming it up for the camera.

This is the usual view I get, though, as Leo likes to wedge himself between my legs when I have the recliner up, “The End.”

We’ll all be happier when spring arrives, but for now, that’s a cat’s life in winter.

Tigger & Leo’s other new toy

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Ellen found and ordered it online. It’s called “Fling-ama-String.” Above the top part shown here is a hook you put over a doorknob. At the bottom is an elastic band that goes under the door and up around the inside knob. These hold the device in place on the door. After adding batteries, you turn it on, and a long white belt rotates along the length of the toy. There’s a stretchy nylon string attached to the belt, and as the string travels over the top, it gets flung out onto the floor to attract the cats, but then is quickly drawn back inside as the belt turns, until it comes out the top again.

So far we’ve run it twice, about 15 minutes each time. You have to watch while they play, in case of accidents, but it seems pretty sturdy and they haven’t destroyed it yet! The paw pounce is something Leo keeps trying…

…but that doesn’t work often, as it’s gone pretty quick! (Occasionally he snags the string with a claw and stops it for a few seconds. When pulled, the little motor just waits for the tension to be released.)

Tigger had better luck grabbing the string with his mouth, but then wanted to hold it with his paw, and that didn’t work, it just disappeared again.

Leo tried that, and got a good grip with his teeth and PULLED the string almost all the way out! But then didn’t know what to do with it, and let it go. This technique, if continued, could possibly wreck the toy, so we’ll see how things go. I have to say, it certainly keeps their interest better than most toys.

Below is an Amazon link, if you’re interested.

Tigger and Leo’s Christmas

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“Look, Leo! Crackly paper and string and shiny things! Must be that time of year again.”

“Yes, Tigger, and I think these two round ones are for us! They have that catnippy smell, and I see something chewable inside! Now if we can just get them open…”

“We’re getting there! What is it? What is it?”

“Yay! A new chewy toy for each of us!”

We also got our spoiled boys another new toy, but I’ll have to get pictures of it in action another day. Merry Christmas to all of you and your pets!

Christmas Lights, a Cat Pic, and a Bit of Dialogue

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It’s finally starting to feel like winter around here, though not so much today. Still a little cold for the cats on the porch, so they get their birdwatching in through the sliding door in my studio.

Our outside Christmas decorations are minimal, but I do like to have a few lights up and some artificial garlands with red bows under the windows. I’d been using those icicle lights the last few years, but when I got them out today they were a tangled mess, and some of the bulbs were coming apart, so I scrapped the lot and bought these blue LED lights to run along the front eaves instead. We also use electric candle lights in the windows, the kind that have a light sensor so you don’t have to turn them on and off. My goal is always to have something out there I can put up and take down inside two hours. We have neighbors that go all out, more power to them. For me, I’m happy with this.

And a nice wreath made with fresh greens is always a good addition, here on the new front door we had installed last month. Quite happy with it, and also happy not to have Ellen complaining about the old one, which hadn’t shut right for years.

Ellen, on seeing the wreath: “Did you put a nail hole in our new door?”

Me, doing my best Oliver Hardy: “I certainly did, dear.”

Ellen rolls eyes.